In our inbox, we have an interesting email from a Kenyan who did a wedding in 2016.The 32-year-old claims he was about to give up on his dream house but a thought came, “let me fundraise through a wedding”. Here is the man’s testimony.
Weddings are nowadays commercialized, I am one of the many couples who have used money from weddings to build their dream homes and buy dream cars. It happened in 2016 when reality hit me that I won’t afford to construct my dream house. I am cashier in a supermarket and my salary is Ksh30, 000.Since I have a family, I couldn’t afford a permanent house through my meager savings. It was one evening as we were taking supper that my wife fronted an idea of a wedding. At first I thought it was a silly joke but when she made calculations, my negative thoughts started seeing millions.
At the table, we counted our Facebook friends, they totaled 10,000.We said, “if each of these friends would give us Ksh100,we will be Ksh 1 million richer”. But my wife said only about 1000 will respond but some will send even Ksh5,000.That idea was noted down. We again counted our phone contacts, which totaled 5,000.These ones were more serious. We thought they would give us up to Ksh 500, 000.finally, we counted our WhatsApp friends, relatives, workmates and other friends who are not on social media, we estimated their contributions to be at least Ksh500, 000.
Since we agreed as a couple that a wedding was the only way to realize our dreams, we planned on how to inform our acquaintances that we would be having a wedding in August 2016.We started by announcing at the church, in our workplaces and where we live. The next step was to start a WhatsApp group for our wedding and later telling those we believe were close to us to join our wedding committee.
Within three weeks we had a wedding committee of 15 people. This committee was responsible for fund raising. We also begged for funds in our church.
Each committee member was told to contribute Ksh10, 000.In total, we got Ksh150,000 from committee members. They were also told to fundraise from their friends, which they did to amount totaling Ksh100,000.
I personally collected Ksh180, 000 from my family members while my wife brought Ksh 150,000.Our Facebook and WhatsApp friends contributed Ksh300, 000 while the church gave us Ksh220, 000.We also fundraised twice where we raised Ksh 300,000.
We also approached political aspirants, who contributed Ksh 200,000.
After two months of aggressive fundraising, we raised Ksh1.6 million. Our budget for the wedding…we did a simple wedding…was Ksh450, 000.We saved Ksh 1 million.
After the wedding in August 2016,we thanked God for the opportunity. We went for the honeymoon in Mombasa where we planned on how to construct our dream house.It was there that we also got a plan for the house.
As I send this to you,we are living in our dream house and I thank my wife for fronting the idea of a wedding”
