When you think of Nigerian weddings, what comes to mind? A beautifully dressed bride and groom dancing on Instagram with their equally gorgeously dressed friends, but what if I told you it’s all a scam?
Everything about it is an elaborate plot to extort money from the couple, their families, and friends. How could this be? Well, stay with me as I expose the scam.
Nigerian Wedding Vendors Need to Carry Guns
The ultimate scammers are those who contribute to Nigerian weddings: the owners of the venue, the makeup artists, the wedding planner, the photographers, the content creators, and the tailors. 
Once they know their services are required for a wedding, they charge up to 10 times their regular price. Every one of those vendors aims to syphon as much money as they can from the couple. They should just carry a gun and call it armed robbery.
A Nigerian Wedding on A Budget
When it comes to Nigerian weddings, the cheapest amount you can spend if you have to pay for every service offered is about ₦6 million—and that’s for a wedding that’s not even up to Instagram standards.
In a country with an ₦70,000 minimum wage, where less than half of the working population earns up to ₦200,000 monthly, how can they afford millions for a below-par wedding without running into serious debt?
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How Much Does the Ideal Nigerian Wedding Cost?
If you want the “Instagram-perfect” wedding using top-tier vendors in 2026, here is the breakdown of what you are likely to spend:
- Bridal Fashion (How much does a Veekee James wedding dress cost?): A bespoke white wedding dress starts around $30,000, which is approximately ₦45 million. This doesn’t include the traditional outfit, the reception dress, or the after-party look or the many other outfit changes.
- Photography (Bedge Photography): High-end coverage typically ranges from ₦5 million to ₦10 million.
- Makeup (Bibyonce / Banks BMPro): These artists often charge in dollars. At $1,000 to $5,000, that’s about ₦1.5 million to ₦7.5 million.
- Hair & Luxury Wigs: A quality frontal wig starts at ₦1.5 million, with professional installation costing between ₦200,000 and ₦300,000.
- Venue (Balmoral Event Centre, Lagos): For a prime Saturday date, be prepared to pay between ₦10 million and ₦15 million for the space alone.
- Catering & Drinks: To serve a variety of continental and local dishes and drinks to a large crowd, budget between ₦5 million and ₦10 million.
- Videography/media coverage: Cinematic wedding videos from top creators and brands won’t cost less than ₦3 million per videographer or media company.
- Decor & Planning: Professional decorators and planners can charge anywhere from ₦10 million to ₦20 million to transform a hall.
By the time you are done, you would have realised your dream wedding costs between ₦80 million and ₦150 million—all for just one day. This is why many brides pivot to content creation after their wedding; they are trying to recoup the massive capital spent on the event.
The amount stated are based on online approximates, they could cost more or less.
Borrowing Money to Live Your Dream For a Day
To have their dream wedding, many Nigerians resort to borrowing from banks or having friends and family pitch in. Why do they do this? Nigerians love extravagance. They want people to look back and talk about how “majestic” it was, especially when compared to others.
Before you envy a wedding on your feed, remember: they might have gone into serious debt to bring those dreams to life.
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Content Creation is the Bane of Nigerian Weddings
Weddings have lost their authenticity. The whole point these days is to create trendy audio and do different transitions. A wedding attendee told me how exhausted he was; he had already worn his suit, but he was told to go back and wear his pyjamas so they could shoot a transition video. They did the video about 10 times before they got it right.
Pause. Why is the point of a wedding to shoot content for social media? When Davido’s wedding was trending, people noticed multiple photographers and videographers crowding the space, which makes it harder for the couple and guests to enjoy their day.
These days, even guests, especially celebrities, bring their own personal videographers to the event. It’s always interesting to watch a guest filming their own content at someone else’s wedding.
Nigerian weddings are not as glamorous as social media portrays them to be. By the time the couple goes to bed that night, they will be thoroughly exhausted and probably in debt (except they are billionaires), but at least they have nice pictures.
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