My sister was supposed to get married at 2 p.m. At 2:03, the cake had collapsed, the groom was missing, and I was holding a note that said he had already married someone else.
We had been planning this wedding for eleven months. Eleven months of meetings, phone calls, arguments over colours, and my mother reminding everyone that this was going to be “the wedding of the year" even though we live in Lagos and no year has ever had a wedding worth that title.
My sister, Funke, was marrying Tunde. The man with the London accent and with the three-piece suits even in December heat. Tunde who knew exactly how to speak to elders. He was the sort of man every parent will trust because he looked like he had his life figured out. My mother loved describing him as "responsible".
The venue was White Stone Hall, all glass and white drapes. The decorator had promised us "Instagram heaven." It looked like heaven at 12 p.m.
At 1:15 p.m., the five-tier cake had collapsed.
It wasn't a gentle fall but was a full one. The five-tier vanilla and strawberry cake that Funke had paid N350,000 for simply gave up. The top tier slid, the middle tier caved, and the whole thing folded into itself like a drunk uncle.
Funke stared at the mess while the decorator kept apologising. Three hundred and fifty thousand naira, reduced to a pile of icing and strawberry jam.
"It's okay," she whispered, mostly to herself. "It's just cake. People don't come for cake."
I know my sister. Whenever she said something was okay too quickly, it usually wasn't.
At 1:40 p.m., the ring bearer, our eight year old cousin, Fola, ran to me with the velvet box.
"Aunty, the ring is not in the box again."
"What do you mean 'not in the box again'?"
He opened the small velvet box. It was empty, except for a little dent where the rings had been.
The best man swore he had put them on the table beside the DJ. The DJ swore he never saw them. My mother started praying loudly in Yoruba language, which is how you know things are now serious.
Funke was still smiling, but her smile had become a fixed thing. "Use any ring," she said. "Use my old school ring. God will understand."
At 1:50 p.m., I noticed Tunde outside the hall, pacing with his phone pressed to his ear. When he saw me looking, he turned away. I should have paid more attention.
At 2:00 p.m, exactly when the officiating pastor said "We are gathered here," Tunde's ex arrived.
Her name was Kemi. I knew her because I had stalked her Instagram once. Tall, natural hair, no makeup needed. She wore a red dress. You don't wear red to a wedding you weren't invited to unless you want war.
"I just came to give him his father's bible," she announced to the whole hall, holding a small black book. "He left it in my apartment last night."
Funke looked at Tunde. "Last night?"
Tunde said, "It's not what you think. She just.... we were just talking about closure."
The pastor coughed. "Perhaps we should....." That was when the storm hit. It came from nowhere, a proper Lagos storm that turns afternoon to night. The wind slammed the glass doors open, rain poured in sideways, the white drapes flew up like ghosts, and the power cut out. The generator man shouted, "NEPA has taken light, I'm putting on Gen!"
We stood in half-darkness, with emergency lights flickering, rain hammering the roof, a collapsed cake bleeding strawberry jam onto the floor, no rings, and an ex-girlfriend holding a bible in the aisle.
My mother said what we were all thinking: "Who did we offend?"
It should have stopped there. It was already the worst wedding ever but then my small cousin Fola tugged my dress again.
"Aunty, I saw this under the empty ring box."
It was a folded piece of paper, cheap printer paper, with no name on it. Just one line, typed:
ASK TUNDE ABOUT THE MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE IN HIS CAR - LAGOS REGISTRY, 12TH MAY 2024.
My blood went cold. 12th May 2023. Last two years.
I didn't want to read it out loud. I walked to Tunde, who was still trying to explain the bible to Funke, and I pulled him aside.
"What is this?" I whispered, showing him the note.
He read it and his face changed. Not shock but recognition. The kind of face a man makes when the lie he has rehearsed finally meets its audience.
"It's not valid," he said quickly, too quickly. "It was a mistake. In London. It was for papers. She was going to divorce me."
Kemi, the ex in red, was still standing there while she heard him. "Who are you talking about? Me? We never married!"
Tunde looked at her, then at the paper. "Not you.
The hall had gone quiet, even the rain seemed to pause. Funke walked up to us. She didn't shout. Funke never shouts when she is truly angry. She took the paper from my hand, read it, and asked one question.
"Tunde, are you already married?"
He couldn't answer. He tried to. He opened his mouth and closed it. That alone was the answer.
The anonymous note was true.
Later we would find out everything that he had married a girl in Peckham for documents, that the divorce never finalized, that he had been juggling stories for a year. Later we would find the rings Fola had hidden under the cake table because he thought they were "too shiny to be left alone and later Kemi would leave and the generator would finally roar to life.
But in that moment, in the dark hall with the ruined cake, my sister did something no one expected.
She took the microphone from the pastor.
"Good afternoon, everyone," she said, her voice shaking but clear. "Thank you for coming to my wedding. There will be no wedding today."
My mother gasped.
Funke continued: But we have paid for food, we have paid for music, we have small chops and jollof and a cake that has decided to become a parfait. So we will eat and we will dance.
There was a second of silence. Then our cousin Fola shouted, "YES!"
And that was what happened. The DJ, who had finally found the extension for the generator, played Burna Boy loud enough to compete with the thunder. The caterers, bless them, scooped the collapsed cake into cups and called it "deconstructed cake cups" and people actually liked it. We used two old rings from my mother's jewelry box for a joke ceremony where Funke married herself.
She danced in the middle of the hall, alone, in her white dress, in the rain light coming through the windows. Not because she was happy, but because she was bound to bondage.
IT WAS THE WORST WEDDING EVER! A NIGHTMARE WE NEVER HOPE TO SEE EVER AGAIN.
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