Hi Kay. Thanks for your compliments and question.

Yes, in Nigeria of today, N2m can realistically plan a traditional and court wedding. The secret is in your number of guests, which controls the catering budget and venue budget (larger venues, more cost). If you can cut down your number of guests to an affordable number, you are good to go. Do whatever you can to keep unwanted guests away – a strictly-by-invitation wedding or hiring bouncers or choosing a far venue.

How you are able to make that amount work depends on how you can plan it. That’s why wedding planning is key. If you hire a planner and tell them your N2m budget, they’ll help you plan how many people to invite, how much to spend on venue and vendors, and outfits – and then source the best vendors and venues for that budget.

If you are planning yourself, I recommend to start by breaking down your N2m budget. I created an automatic online wedding budget calculator that will do that for you.

SUMMARY TIPs:
-Start by putting a number limit on your guest count, get a budget breakdown and use it as a guide to not go over-budget.
-Keep your number of guests small, so that your catering/ food budget can cover. It’s better to have a smaller quality crowd than an overcrowded wedding. You just can’t invite everyone, you know.
–Find a venue within your budget breakdown, and options to keep venue cost down include outdoor venues
-Consider renting some wedding things from quality places to cut down cost
-Having both your traditional and court wedding on same day is an additional way to keep cost down. That way, you’re cooking only once for both weddings.

The reality is that one man’s idea of small budget is another man’s reality of huge budget, especially in Nigeria. The fact is that many couples don’t earn a lot, and are struggling to save up even N500k for a wedding, and some are happily spending N300k on a wedding in today’s Nigeria.

Hope that helps.

Hello Evelyn, the best place to start is to know your numbers, which is: number of guests (you’ve done that) AND budget.

So, look into your bank accounts (you and your partner) and decide how much of your saved-up funds you are willing to put into the wedding. There is no right or wrong AMOUNT – set your budget within your affordability.

Once you have set your budget AMOUNT, go to our automatic wedding budget calculator page to get a suggested budget breakdown.

After getting your budget breakdown, you should start looking for a venue and vendors that fit your budget breakdown.

*Also, you may want to follow any of my ready-made wedding planning checklists:

*Also check out my wedding reception planning guides;

*Wedding Budgeting Guides to Help You Make Your Own;

*Wedding Colour Combination Ideas (Lists and Colour Combos in Photos).

Many Naija brides in and outside Nigeria tell me how my step by step DIY wedding planning articles guides made their planning journey shorter and stress-free. Go through those articles and implement the things in there and you should be fine. Trust me, you will.

Let me know how that helps.

You may be able to find out by asking ‘the event manager’ that your couple booked with. I don’t know.

Thanks. You asked this same question twice.

Hi Efe. First, let me congratulate you on being engaged. My reply (below):

The number of guests you’re looking at for that budget is too much. Consider reducing it.

I think N600k for 200 guests is too tight and unrealistic, given the recent spike in the cost of foodstuff and everything. That comes to N3k per guest (N3k x 200 people). It would be easier to pull if you can bring down the number of guests to 100 or 120, or 150. But here’s an idea for you:

-Host traditional and white wedding ceremony on the SAME DAY, meaning one-time feeding of guests.
-It would be easier to pull this in a place that is not high-brow/ GRA, such as in a village or not-GRA part of a state.
-Find a free venue (e.g. your parent’s compound, your village community square, etc.)
-Cook the food in-house (by your mum and her women’s meeting or selected relatives)
-Buy raw food, drinks and other materials in bulk at wholesale markets.
-Try working your budget breakdown this way:
Allocate N300k for Food + drinks, which breaks down to N1,500 per guest
Spread the remaining N300k on couple’s attire, photography, venue decor, DJ, MC, etc.
>Allocate N100k for bride and groom’s
-Rent your wedding gown and buy an affordable material for the traditional, and then do cut-and-sew with an affordable tailor. [If you ask and search very well, you should make the budget for your outfits].

*I have already written tips for pulling off small budget weddings. Read my 19 ideas on how to plan an inexpensive wedding without looking cheap.

Hope that helps, Efe.

Hello VIBride, I’m happy to learn that our articles are helping your wedding planning journey. Also, thanks for the lovely feedback. Here are my thoughts on your questions:

– Can that (N20m) budget be real? Yes, it can. Cost of wedding things are either high or low, depending on the class you want of venue, outfits, decoration, food and drinks, photography and live music band – there are the cheap and the expensive types of everything. If the venue your fiance booked is an upper class location and property, it could cost millions. And most such venues have expensive catering that may include continental dishes. Here in Nigeria, you could find an event venue of N5 million and also one of N500k (5 hundred thousand Naira); You can find a caterer serving jollof rice of N1 thousand Naira per plate, and also an upscale caterer doing jollof rice of N3 to 5 thousand per plate. And people with more money prefer to have a number of assorted dishes served at their weddings – that adds up the cost. Upscale, tasty venue decorations are also very expensive – costing in the millions. Music bands can also be very expensive – some popular ones cost over a million to be hired.
>So, as a Nigerian, people’s wedding budgets are guided by the social class they belong to, and how wealthy they are. >Maybe your fiance is from a popular, wealthy family – and that’s how they roll.

-On what a typical wedding budget looks like in Nigeria, AND the spending power in Nigeria: There’s no typical budget with Nigerian weddings, and that is because there’s a big divide between the very rich, the average, and the poor. The very rich Nigerians can spend as much as N10 million or N20m and above on weddings alone, with their class of event venues costing above N1m (one million Naira) and up to N5 million naira. >Weddings at such expensive venues could have food and drinks per guest cost above N10k (Ten Thousand Naira), and you can guess how much that comes to for 500 or 1,000 guests.

*NOTE that the wedding budgets in this article you commented on, are not the kind of money rich Nigerians spend on weddings. Our readers are typical Nigerians – some poor, some middle class and some regular or poor, and our content caters to all. Because of how the rich spend on weddings, many low-income couples are afraid to approach weddings and we try to show them how they also can.

-VI Venue: Lagos venues, especially Victoria Island and Lekki are very costly, usually costing millions of Naira. See some of the prices in this Encomium magazine article.
-Likely Reasons Why Your Fiance did not want to disclose the traditional wedding budget to you: Could be that they are taking full charge of it (paying the bill), and possibly, the cost is very high that you may not approve of. The truth is that Nigeria weddings can be very expensive if both or one of the couples is from a wealthy family. May be he doesn’t wan’t to shock you with the numbers – simply relax, if they are the ones paying the bill.

The primary concern here is not often about how much, but about ensuring it meets or exceeds the expectation of the wealthy friends of the couple’s parents and their extended family. Nigerians believe in inviting as many people as they know, without a care of how the guest numbers shoot up the budget. Weddings are big here, and fun too – you’ll get to see. Usually, if one or both of the couple’s parents are wealthy, they take over the planning and entire bill.

>Are they asking you for any part of the money for this traditional wedding? If not, why not just let them, and you focus on planning the white wedding there in Canada.

Finally, my advice is to keep calm and prepare to enjoy your bi, Lagos-style wedding, if your in-laws are paying for the entire expenses.

WATCH: This video excerpt from a recent Naija TV series shows a mom and dad arguing on wedding budget – take a look.