These Twentysomethings Have Started Throwing Fake Weddings

She married a fake man who arranged a fake wedding with fake family members

These Twentysomethings Have Started Throwing Fake Weddings

“I see people getting married in movies and you watch them for entertainment, so why can’t you just attend one for entertainment?”

Attendees at a fake African wedding party on June 10

“We threw a fake African traditional wedding and here is how it went,” read the overlay text on the first video I saw. Clips played in rapid succession: of young men and women wearing bright coral beads and colorful kente cloths, dancing to Afrobeats in a banquet hall; of a handsome couple decked out in traditional Igbo attire, kissing on a bedazzled loveseat.

To say I was immediately intrigued is an understatement. I have always thought that Nigerian weddings were ripe for dramatic reinvention, so much so that I wrote a novel that hinges in part on an opulent Lagos wedding. And I’ve been going to Nigerian weddings since I was a child — I have a lot of cousins who are older than me.
I have a complicated relationship to the festivities. They are fun; the music is excellent, the dancing unparalleled; the food — when it finally arrives — usually hits the spot. But you also have to tolerate a lot of waiting around, instrumental Ed Sheeran covers, odd “jokes” about the fertility of the bride, interminable prayers, wonky sound systems. And marriage in general, especially the kind of marriages Nigerians idolize, tends to include a lot of self-sacrifice on the woman’s part (because all Nigerian marriages are heterosexual, of course).
Still, I thought it was an interesting concept for a party, though just a fluke, a one-off idea by some inventive zoomers. But TikTok’s For You page kept serving me more. This time, the video was of a fake African wedding in Houston. Masqueraders shimmied on the dance floor; groomsmen wearing red Igbo caps and walking sticks strutted in front of the camera.

I did a rudimentary search of fake African weddings on TikTok and discovered that there had been at least a handful of different events all over the country: New Jersey, Boston, Houston. The taglines said they were “African” weddings, but I could see the unmistakable influence of Nigerians. I knew I had to learn more.

“I haven’t gone to a wedding in four years. None of my friends want to get married. I thought I might as well make a fake one.” 

After DM’ing the TikTok and Instagram users who were posting these videos, I was directed to Ini Owotade, known as Ini Cash by his 21,000 Instagram followers. A 23-year-old who lives in Pennsylvania and works in IT, he makes humorous YouTube videos catered toward young Nigerians. He is also the founder of The Wedding Party, a series of fake wedding events he started throwing about a year ago, during the pandemic. Not all of the fake wedding party videos I’ve seen on TikTok have been orchestrated by him, but thanks to his savvy team of fellow creatives — a group of five Nigerian twentysomethings with robust social media followings who call themselves the Vibes and Trips Crew — his parties are among the most well known.
“You can go to three weddings in a week when you’re back home in Nigeria, but in America you don’t get that vibe,” Owotade, who grew up in Nigeria and moved to the US in 2014, told me when I first got him on the phone. “I haven’t gone to a wedding in four years. None of my friends want to get married. I thought I might as well make a fake one.” He posted about throwing a fake wedding on Instagram, and he found out he “wasn’t the only one that missed the vibes.” One of his friends, Dammy Jinadu, a 24-year-old data analyst with a little event planning experience told him he should do it and she would help plan it. They held the first event in June 2021.