Most owambe problems are not money problems. They are timing problems. The hall was booked late, the aso-ebi arrived the week of, the caterer was confirmed after the guest list had already grown by eighty people. Here is the order things should actually happen in.
12 weeks out: lock the date and the room
Everything else negotiates around these two. Until the venue is signed, no caterer can quote you properly, because they do not know the kitchen access, the power situation, or how far the food has to travel from prep to plate.
Ask the venue three questions most people forget: what time can suppliers get in, is there a generator and who pays for diesel, and what time must everything be out. Those three answers decide half your budget.
10 weeks out: guest count, then catering
Not the other way round. A caterer quoting without a firm number is guessing, and the guess protects them, not you. Build the list properly — families, not individuals — then add fifteen per cent, because in Nigeria a hundred invitations is never a hundred people.
- Decide the service style first: buffet, plated, or stations. It changes the staff count more than the menu does.
- Confirm whether small chops are passed around or set on a table. Passed needs more hands.
- Agree what happens to leftovers before the day, in writing.
8 weeks out: aso-ebi goes out
This is the deadline people miss most often, and it is the one with no recovery. Fabric has to be sourced, distributed, collected for, and then sewn — and your tailor is sewing for other people's parties in the same weeks.
Send the colour family and the price to your group at eight weeks, close collections at six, and hand everything to the tailors at five. Anyone who pays after that gets their outfit when they get it.
6 weeks out: décor, rentals and the floor plan
Walk the venue with your decorator holding a floor plan, not a mood board. How many round tables actually fit with a dance floor in the middle? Where does the cake table go so it is not behind a pillar in every photograph? Where does the band set up, and is there power on that wall?
4 weeks out: staffing, MC and sound
A rough rule for a seated Nigerian reception: one server for every twelve to fifteen guests for buffet, closer to one for every eight if you are plating. Under-staffing does not look like a shortage of people — it looks like a queue, and a queue is the thing your guests will remember.
2 weeks out: confirm everything in writing
- Arrival times for every supplier, not just the caterer.
- Who is the single point of contact on the day. One name, one number.
- The order of the programme, shared with the MC and the band.
- Who takes the gifts home, and in whose car.
The week of: stop adding
The most expensive decisions are made in the final week, in a panic, and they are almost always unnecessary. If it was not important enough to decide four weeks ago, it is not important enough to pay a rush price for now.
Planning one of these?
Tell us the date, the city and the guest count. We come back the same day with a written quote — no payment is ever taken on this website.
