My fiance and I were sitting with a spreadsheet of 200-odd names when the shape of the problem became obvious. A third of our guest list had never been to Nigeria. Some had never been to Africa.
These weren't distant acquaintances—they were close friends and family scattered across the UK, the US, the Middle East, people we needed in the room, not watching on a laggy WhatsApp video call.
Some takeaways
Standard wedding websites assume your guests know the country. Mine needed to explain visas, vaccinations, and which hand to greet with.
The design went from pastel-pink template to sharp editorial burgundy—on New Year's Day, in one sitting.
The 875-line travel guide became the actual product. The RSVP button is secondary.
We're getting married in Kano in July 2026. A four-day celebration blending Hausa and Yoruba traditions: Sa Lalle (the henna night), Kamu (the bride's unveiling, complete with a negotiation skit that confuses every first-timer), the Daurin Aure (the Islamic marriage contract after Friday prayers), and Kai Amarya (escorting the bride to the groom's home). For someone who grew up attending these ceremonies, the sequence is intuitive. For a friend flying in from San Francisco, it's a wall of unfamiliar terminology and protocol.
The standard wedding website wasn't going to cut it. Most platforms assume your guests know how to get to the venue. Ours needed to know how to get a Nigerian visa, which vaccinations are mandatory (Yellow Fever is non-negotiable), how to book domestic flights from Abuja to Kano, and what it means when someone says "Sannu da zuwa" at the door.
So I decided to build one from scratch.
The final wedding website homepage; burgundy, cream, and zero rounded corners.
The first version was tacky
The initial concept was typical wedding-website fare. Bright botanical colours inspired by Hauwa's paintings, saturated pinks, blooming animations. It looked like every other template on the internet. I stepped back, stared at it, and the word that came to mind was tacky.
On New Year's Day, I burned it down. Twelve commits between 2 PM and 11 PM — a complete aesthetic reinvention.
The new direction drew from Kinfolk magazine. Burgundy and cream. Cormorant Garamond for serif headings, Jost for body text, Pinyon Script for calligraphic moments. No rounded corners. No shadows. No gradients. Sharp borders, thin 1px lines, typography doing all the heavy lifting. Hauwa's save-the-date design, deep burgundy with elegant calligraphic flourishes, became the reference for the entire system.
The design pivot. Left: first attempt. Right: what shipped.
The "no rounded corners" rule sounds trivial. It's not. Every UI framework, every template on the internet defaults to soft edges and drop shadows. Removing them changes the entire feel. Sharp edges demand better typography, better spacing, better hierarchy — because there's nothing soft to hide behind.
The kind of constraint that sounds limiting and turns out to be liberating.
The travel guide is the real product
The RSVP form is what people expect from a wedding website. The travel guide is what makes this one different.
Thirteen sections. Visa requirements with direct links to Nigeria's e-visa portal. A recommendation to fly into Abuja rather than attempting Kano direct, then booking Air Peace for the one-hour domestic hop. Hotel recommendations with honest assessments — and a note about backup generators, because every hotel in Kano needs one during July's rainy season.
The travel guide: 13 sections, sticky sidebar, and the page that justifies the entire project.
The guide covers things no wedding website normally addresses: malaria prophylaxis options, the reality of "Nigerian time," why you should always greet with your right hand, and a pronunciation guide for Hausa phrases guests will actually hear — Sannu da zuwa (welcome), Na gode (thank you), Ina kwana? (how was your night?).
Cultural notes explain each ceremony: why the Kamu involves the groom's friends paying "ransoms" of sweets and perfume, why the Sa Lalle henna patterns carry specific meanings, what to expect during the Fatiha. Not Wikipedia summaries — practical guidance for someone who'll be in the room.
At 875 lines, it's the most complex page in the application. It's also the one that justifies the project's existence.
Raw git commit timeline for my wedding website sprint!
What this is actually about
There's an idea buried in this project that goes beyond one wedding. The template industry assumes a universal guest: someone who speaks the language, knows the country, understands the customs, and needs nothing more than a date and an address. That assumption breaks completely for cross-cultural, international celebrations. The information gap between a local guest and someone flying in from another continent is enormous.
Closing that gap, making people feel informed, prepared, and genuinely welcomed rather than anxious about the unknown, is the actual job of the website. The RSVP button is secondary.
Aure is live now. 44 commits, one contributor, two months from first commit to production, deployed on a 256MB server that costs less than the flowers will. The wedding is in July.
What hasn't been tested yet is whether, four months from now, a friend from London lands in Abuja feeling like they know exactly what to do next.
That part hasn't been written yet.
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