4 Facts about the Wedding industry in Nigeria

                          Wedding business is big business all over the world. According to the CDC  statistics  I obtained from their website, over 2 million weddings are registered in the US per year and they generate a whooping $50 billion. Though I wasn’t able to get the statistics for Nigeria here (for obvious reasons), I believe that weddings in Nigeria will be well over a million. Moreover, we happen to be the happiest people in the world and we spend a lot of money on festivities. After years of shooting weddings in Nigeria, here are the facts I observed about the wedding industry.

1. It is a multi billion naira generating industry.  Just try and imagine the huge amount of cash that exchange hands between the players in the industry. Consider the fashion designers, makeup artists, MC’s, caterers, photographers, rental outfits, stylists, hotels, etc. all exchanging money with their clients just for a wedding and then multiply that over a million weddings. What you get is a crazily high amount of cash. well I hope I continue to get my share of these enormous amount of cash for long as a wedding photographer.lol  

   2.   Most weddings on the average have about 300-400 guests. This is quite different from the   statistics I obtained from www.weddingwire.com where a wedding in the US had an average of 138 guests in 2012. What this translate to is a bigger reception here compared to what obtains in the US. In fact, it won’t be surprising that only 10-15% of the wedding guests are well known to the couple. I wonder where the remaining teeming guests got their invites from.

3.      January and February are usually the least active periods in the wedding industry. This might not be peculiar to Nigeria only as other parts of the world also experience this occurrence. One advantage of this period is that it allows couples that have their weddings in this period to have discounted prices from various wedding services like photography, catering, and even from wedding venues

4.      Most weddings cost below #1 million ($6,450).  But according to a survey done in the US, an average American wedding cost $28,000 (#4.34 million).This amount is pretty reasonable but on the average, most Nigerians can’t afford to budget that amount of money for a wedding. Despite this fact, high profile weddings of important people may cost as much as #50,000,000 ($322,580).