Just over a week after the Cayman Islands took a day off work to celebrate a royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, t
aking place thousands of miles away in London, another royal wedding took place on Cayman soil.
Prince Olaniyi Fajana, son of the King of Afa in Okeagbe, Ondo State, Nigeria, was married to Yewande Giwa on May 7, at the Ritz-Carlton Grand Cayman. Their destination wedding may not have been a celebration on the scale of
William’s and Kate’s – but that is only because they had already celebrated their traditional wedding with nearly 2,000 guests earlier this year.
The couple, which lives in Washington, DC, returned to their home town of Okeagbe, Ondo, for the traditional wedding in January. A Nigerian wedding is a huge affair that can go on for several days and involves entire communities. “To the families it’s not really about the two people getting married per se,” explains Olaniyi, “It’s more about the joining of two families.”
The bride’s family is seen as losing a valuable asset and they therefore have the upper hand when it comes to the marriage – even if, as in this case, the groom is the son of a Yoruba king. During the Yoruba traditional wedding, each family is represented by a Master of Ceremonies who will carry out a form of negotiation for the bride. Eventually the groom, along with his male family members and friends must lie prostrate on the floor and beg for the bride’s hand.
It is traditional for the bride’s family to show resistance to giving away a daughter and in the past they would try to pass off another girl as the bride, thus testing how well the groom knew his beloved.
The Cayman part of their marriage celebrations was a more intimate affair, for close friends and family – albeit 100 of them. In contrast to their Nigerian marriage, this was a largely western-style wedding, save for a few details such as the parents wearing traditional costumes and a ‘money dance’ being performed.
Their decision to choose Grand Cayman as the location for this seems to have been a pre-ordained: years ago, before the couple even started dating, Olaniyi had seen the movie The Firm, part of which was filmed in Cayman and says he knew that this was where they would be married. Yewande had also set her heart on Cayman after seeing a wedding in Cayman featured in Modern Bride magazine in 2009.
As a destination, they say “Cayman far exceeded expectations” and all of the professionals who were involved in the various aspects of their wedding lived up to their reputations. Having chosen to stay on for almost two weeks after the wedding, they had a chance to see more of the Island and its attractions. The couple were especially pleased to have been able to meet Caymanian people, whom they found extremely receptive and say that they would happily return: “Whatever we have seen we want to see it again.”
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