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Our neighbor’s son got married a few years ago. His now-wife is American-born to Romanian immigrant parents whose family keeps many of the old ways and attend a very large Romanian Pentecostal church.We were privy to a lot of the planning and heard all about how excited they were to do the cake tasting and all the other fun elements of planning a wedding.The ceremony and reception were held at a golf resort. The day of we were “warned” that her family expressly forbade any alcohol from being served at the reception. While that’s not my lifestyle I respect the family’s beliefs. The funny part was, the resort was still operating and had a bar available to the other patrons. Many of the groom’s guests went down to the bar to get a drink but the wedding planner had stationed herself at the stairs and was barring people from bringing their drinks up to the reception. It became a game with many of the guests.For the buffet dinner, they had included chicken fingers at the end of the table. Many invitees were no-shows so there was more food than anticipated and very few children. There was a server stationed next to the chicken fingers and he refused to allow any adults to get chicken fingers, even after all of the children had eaten as many as they wanted. They just sat there getting cold. The guy sitting next to me ended up sending his friend to distract the server while he snuck a chicken finger into his plate.The music was Kenny G-style jazz and we weren’t allowed to dance.At one point they opened up the opportunity to have the photographer take photos with the wedding couple. My husband and I had never met the bride and didn’t want them to feel obligated to pay for a photo with people she doesn’t know but then the wedding planner hunted us down and made us come over for a photo saying “we’re waiting on you.”There was a nice box of petit fours at each place setting, we thought those were the wedding favors. The cake was beautiful and displayed prominently. As dinner wrapped up guests sat around awkwardly trying to make polite conversation or trying to sneak drinks in from the bar. And we just kept sitting there waiting for the cake cutting. And waiting. And waiting. Finally, we asked our neighbors when the cake would be served and they told us it wouldn’t be and the box of treats was our dessert.This news circulated quickly and the reception ended soon after.The next day our neighbor’s older son brought us a huge piece of wedding cake and begged us to take it because there as so much left over. (It was delicious)I know the bride and groom were on a budget and I’m guessing that the facility charged by the slice to serve the cake, but it was just so strange. I wish for their sakes that they’d just not had the cake to begin with.This wedding was definitely an education in “different strokes for different folks.” I’m happy to say that the bride and groom are still blissfully married. At the end of an uncomfortable evening that’s all that really matters, but I’ll still never forget the series of unfortunate awkward events.

I am from RWANDA! A beautiful country in the East African Region.Disclaimer: I love my country, but I can’t stand the following.Aerial view of Kacyiru, my neighborhood in Kigali, Rwanda.9Expensive weddings and related traditions.I won’t go through all the traditions surrounding the Rwandan wedding. But just know that it is way too many to bear. We have a traditional wedding, civil wedding, a church wedding and a few other traditions before and after the whole wedding saga.The whole thing is crazy-time consuming and money demanding. Usually, people have so much time on their hands for such affairs, but usually the money is the problem. How do people afford these expenses?By harassing their friends, acquantances, and other family members for donations.In Rwanda, you get invited from a friend of a friend’s weddings. It is crazy! When you get invited, they want to come to a series of weddings meetings, which is nothing more than solliciting money from every single soul who has a job. For those unemployed or too young to work, they are expected to help out with logistics and all that!Many do take out bank loans for wedding’s expenses. This is sometime to shine and show off to your friends and family. So, people start off their honeymoon in loads of amount of debts. As a financial counselor, my advising ain’t shit here!Reducing emotional and financial stress is not negotiable. People really go big on these weddings. I don’t understand how and why this lady needs 9–10 bridesmaids ( see picture above)!Our GDP per capita ( PPP) is about $ 1,800.00 ( 2016 census). But, people’s wedding budgets go from $ 20,000.00 to about $50,000.00, depending on the level of education and the show off that people want to express.By no means, I am NOT talking to the rich people who can afford to spend big on their weddings. At the end of the day, a wedding is a big part of the Rwandan culture. It is a good institution and I support what it stands for and all that. What surprise me is the extent to which people are willing to go when they don’t have what society expects them to have in terms of resources.Those who have businesses centered around weddings are the real winners in this deal. They must be making a “ killing” with these weddings. Professional Photography and video, matching clothes ( dresses and suits), wedding planners, professional traditional dancers and many other traditions we have to do at each ceremony. Some of my lady friends seem to have a wedding to attend every saturday. Nothing can be planned on saturday with them. Just weddings, only!Lots of couples start to plan their weddings with only 10–30% of the expected budget. The rest 70-90% comes from donations and loans.As a “money-smart” person, I have lost faith in humanity on this one. I don’t even bother telling people no more. It is not even May yet, but I have already donated to about 5-people already. Only, I was close to two of the five ( a friend and an acquaintance). I have two more coming up in May and June.Since I don’t have time to go to their meetings or participate in their “ Whatsapp” wedding chats, I just donate to get them off my back, literally! By the end of this year, I plan to see how much I will spend on wedding donations.I am averaging one $ 50-$60 donation each month so far. My estimates will probably be around $ 600 to $ 700 this year. This is our nominal GDP ( 2016 census). I am going to use my “calculations” for educational purposes hopefully. Haha..2. Very conservative culture and the peer-pressure of conformity.The culture expects you to follow some unnecessary and yet acceptable norms. If you are different, you will be criticized.No idea of privacy. They will talk about you and get into your personal business like it’s theirs. Make a mistake and do not give a lavish wedding to them, you will be the story of the month. They will comment on everything! In the end, many have no choice but to conform.I.e. You are supposed to believe in a god ( by default). If you don't, at least pretend. If you go public about your atheism, they will take it personal. People cannot mind their business here.The rest of this list is related to a poor ( university) education system and a mediocre career advising system. They still work as if we are in the 1970’s. The sector has not evolved at all.It is like learning to use a typewriter ( today) with all the computers around.The whole system can be summarized by the following.Lack of entrepreneurial drive ( thanks to a terrible education system).Go to university, graduate, and wait to get a government job. Meanwhile, the public sector can only employ 7 to 10 % of the graduates available on the marketplace. Young graduates cannot find employment and have no idea of how to start small and grow from there. Most of them sit down and hope that they will jump to the top without climbing any stairs. I don’t understand!3. Looking down on some career professions: Blue collar jobs versus white collar jobs.University graduates want office jobs in high-rise buildings. They want to wear a suit and a tie for males and cute pant suits or dress for females. Few wants hands on jobs where they get their hands dirty. Terrible to see a civil engineer who want to sit in office all day, working on their computer!Getting your hands dirty is looked down upon. Even if you make a good living. Nobody want to be a plumber, electrician, construction worker, and other rewarding careers in the blue-collar sector. I myself started from the bottom. I was a street vendor in Kigali selling sugar canes, peanuts, and all sorts of stuff. This was before graduating from high school.My high school classmates used to make so much fun of me. No girl would have dated a street vendor like me! Coming from a low-income family, I was determined to do whatever it takes to put “food on the table” and get out of poverty. I did not like asking for money for anything. Upon graduating from high school, I got a tutoring job at a local high school, which upgraded me to $ 100.00 a month. This was a lot of money for me back in April, 2008.From there, I kept climbing the economic ladder, one step at a time. From High school, to college, to grad school, working and hustling. Today, I am “balling” and I make no apologies enjoying the fruits of my labor.All the hard work I put in more than a decade ago, started paying off BIG TIME. But my fellow Rwandan millenials do not get this process. I want to tell them that there is nothing shameful about work if it pays you, but they will never understand it.4. Mediocre education System ( in University).Training job seekers ( employees) for non-existing jobs instead of job creators ( employers). Old school mentality from the 1970's! Our education is modeled upon colonial style of memorizing theories and facts, but not on critical thinking and analysis. It is at the heart of all the problems we have in higher education.Funny, yet sad example:A graduate with a degree is Accounting spends two to three years looking for a job with the government. Meanwhile, every quarter, businesses fail to file their taxes on-time because they are not enough experts in the field to support them with tax laws and other regulations.This accounting graduate should be taking advantage of this opportunity. But, they would rather be look for a “safe job”! Whatever that means. What is a “ safe job” if you don’t own sh*t. I want to tell them: “ If you don’t own it, it ain’t safe. It is not yours. You can get laid off or get fired any day”. But they will never listen.5. Intellectuals and their obsession with foreign languages.Those who went to went to university want to show it off. They want to be the next “ Molière” in French or “Shakespeare” in English. You would think that some of them work for the “ Academie Française” or some institute of Arts and Linguistics. We speak the native language, Kinyarwanda, and these two ( French and English) are learned in school.You make a small grammatical mistake on TV or somewhere public, they laugh at you and make fun of you big time.I want to tell them that foreign colonial languages don't create jobs. They don’t pay bills or put food on the table. I want to tell them that Chinese people are doing better with their Chinese. And that the Germans did just fine with their German. Sh*t, even the Ethiopians have been doing really well with their local languages ( Amharic and Oromo) only. They will never get it.Meanwhile they cannot speak their mother tongue well. They mix it with all sorts of languages, French and English, mostly. They can barely finish a complete sentence in the local language ( Kinyarwanda). They speak their language badly, but surprisingly, they don't seem to mind as much as they do for French and English.I wish some of these can change, but I would be lying to myself. They won’t be changing anytime soon, certainly my number 1 on the list ( lavish weddings and unnecessary traditions). This might be an African thing, perhaps! I don’t know!Respect!Didier Champion

After working many weddings as an assistant wedding planner, I have a Bridezilla theory.Mainly it is due to a combination of stress and not eating right. Majority of the time once these two items were handled properly, the bride would calm down. Then there are the crazy, spoiled brides.This is a story about the one and only time we dropped a client.One day I heard the door open to the office and I popped my head out while the receptionist was explaining our policy of walk-in clients. I noticed that it was the bride, groom, and both sets of parents. The one thing that really stuck out was that ALL SIX of them wear wearing their high school coats. I politely introduced myself and said that if they were willing to wait a few minutes while I finished with my current clients, I would be more than happy to sit down and talk to them.I went back to my current clients and finished what business I had with them. As I walked them out I noticed the bride was crying and I heard her say,“But don't they know who WE are?”I ignored it and went back to my office to grab my notepad and pen. After I explained how much our services cost, I explained how we worked. Then I asked the number ONE question that every person should have an answer to, How much is your budget? The reply still haunts me to this day.“Whatever our daughter wants, she will have for this wedding.”I received a list from the bride and looked it over. My eyes went wide at some of the things on there. They ended up signing the contract and paying for our services. Typically I never took work home with me, but I took the bride's list home and calculated how much it would cost. It came out to just over 1.2 million. The next day I took the list over to her father, and after he saw the amount, his eyes damn near bulged out of his head.At that point dad became a whole lot more reasonable. I told him to give me a number that he could afford and between him and the groom's father, they agreed to pay 200,000 dollars total for the wedding. We decided to meet that Friday to cull that list back.In the meantime I found out more details about both families. Basically both fathers were football “stars” and both mothers were cheerleaders. They pretty much peaked in high school. The fathers partnered up to open a new car dealership. They all thought that they were the most popular and powerful in their town, but I heard otherwise. I gotta love those small town diners. You can learn a lot.So during our meeting I handed out the list, and then wrote what the overall budget was. We started to go through the list and after reaching a reasonable consensus on what I call the necessities, we get to everything else. I think we only kept two things and the rest was thrown out.The bride ended up having a complete meltdown and tantrum. After being explained the facts of life, she did calm down a little and they all left. Once they left, I said to my boss,“This wedding is going to be a complete s**t show.”She agreed with me and we went to work. Throughout the time leading up to this wedding, the bride's behavior became worse. Full on bridezilla. Completely unreasonable behavior. She wouldn't understand that our business and the others didn't just have her as a client, and that we couldn't drop everything just for her. Finally two months before her wedding it came to a showdown.So, that morning I was with another couple showing them a venue they were interested in, when my phone rang. It was our receptionist and the florist just called to cancel. Then I heard the phone ringing in the background. It was the venue. I asked her to get the details and write them down and I would deal with it when I returned. I read about everything that happened and held a meeting with my boss. She pulled out the contract and made a copy. After highlighting the portions that dealt with behavior, she typed up a letter of termination of services. She returned the payment to us minus the deposit. Each of the other vendors came by with a check themselves and everything was mailed off.That Friday my boss was out dealing with an urgent situation, (the officiant for one of the weddings we had that weekend was in the hospital. We were trying to get a hold of another), and I was getting ready to leave for the venue of the second wedding we had, when bridezilla and parents came into the office. All three were screaming at the receptionist. I finally had enough.Now here is the thing about me. I am overall a kind and considerate person, but I am like a pit bull. I will rip you to shreds if you manage to really piss me off. They really pissed me off.I slammed the door to my office and right there in the reception area I lit into them. I started out by calling the bride the worst client I ever had. Then I said that I didn't care if they thought that the three of them were the most popular and powerful in their little town. They were not big fishes in the grand scheme of things. I then told them,“If you don't get your f*****g spoiled a***s out of my office, I'm gonna call the cops!”I watched them leave and I called my boss to let her know what happened. Her reply?“Aww, I wish I was there too!”I didn't keep up with that wedding but the two we worked went off pretty good.