BEHIND THE SCENES OF ALMOST A BRIDE…THE WHOLE STORY!

Hello everyone, a big thank you for following us through till we found Brother Shola. Thanks for sharing, liking, following, tweeting and all. During the course of this series, everyone kept asking different questions, some thought it meant I was searching for Le Boo. This post brings you how it all started, work done and the end result. Enjoy.

While Stella and I attended Christian Medical and Dental Association Students national conference 2013, we had Pastor Biodun Famojuro of Freedom Court, RCCG talk to us on real life situations concerning relationships. He made a joke that made us write Almost A Bride just for fun but it became bigger than we conceived and we shared it with you. 🙂

“Just because brother Shola can’t speak good English, sisters will not be interested”, everyone laughed and I mumbled “hmm…” that was the beginning. Stella wouldn’t let me rest, she would say “That’s what you do abi, why did you say hmm?” she wouldn’t even let me explain. She began to tag any guy that was “Work in progress” brother Shola, and she would tease me with them till I was speechless, at the end of the session, while queuing for lunch, we teased ourselves and we decided to write about it. Over time, Shola stood for any guy we liked, disliked, didn’t every know but fitted the context. Some of our friends will hear us talk about Shola but will not understand because Stella will tell them a twisted version (I’m glad everyone knows the truth now, I don’t know any Shola). 🙂

We got back to Lagos, a new year came, school resumed, we kept talking about it but kept postponing when we’ll write it until July 2014. On that beautiful evening, we drew our plan, by the end of August we must be done writing. Stella had school, I had school, project, conference presentation and more.

August 2014 was my busiest month ever. Almost A Bride was all I could think about. It was fun and work together.

Stella’s roommate Grace was supportive, she would listen to Stella and I talk about our frame, she would add ( she wrote the poem in episode 7) remove or appraise as appropriate, she also edited pictures with Stella. I doff my hat for renowned writers, that thing isn’t easy!

Name: Grace Cocoma Ekpo
Contact: I’m not on social media.I’m old school like that, hehe.
Twitter: I don’t tweet. 😀
Instagram: It’s only for fine gehs 🙂
About me: Book lover, food lover and writer. Dentist (in view), sometimes funny. I’m passionate about planning and bringing ideas to life, either mine or yours.

A special shout-out to Adanma, she was a huge source of support.

Name: Adamma Olisa
About me: A very disciplined and outspoken lady. i love travelling, sleeping, shopping, eating (don’t call me fat) and gisting.

“I love to guard my heart with jealousy for out of it flows the issues of life.”

September was drawing near and we thought, “What picture will we use”, we thought Google images but we wanted something exclusive to ALMOST A BRIDE then boom! “Let’s look for someone whose figure will fit Ihuoma and Shola”, our classmates came in very helpful. God bless Sandra and Segun, no other person could have fitted perfectly, and they were very willing to take the pictures after explaining what we wanted.

Name: Sandra Imazenobe.
About me: Dentist. I love dancing, travelling and singing. I am a very jovial and easy going person.
Contact: Instagram ms_imaz

Name: Isioye Olusegun Damilare
About me: Cool, calm and collected. I am 192cm tall. Dentist (in view). My greatest asset is optimism and favorite quote is Don’t be afraid that your life would end, but be afraid that it wouldn’t start.
Contact: Twitter: sm1uknow
Instagram: segunisioye
BBM: 7B42861D

“In search of brother Shola” did not seem like a good title; Gracie then said she had a friend who always had a view on whatever you ask her, Tope came on board by suggesting “ALMOST A BRIDE” as the title of our story.

The beautiful lady in the center

Name: Temitope ‘Sean Ojelade
About me: Christian, Physiotherapist(in view), loyal, nice writer, debater, actress and blogs at topsyojel.wordpress.com

We needed someone to help with taking the pictures, the search was real, we latter called on twitter Lord and blogger, Saga christos and he helped even within very short notice, the photo sessions were long, creative and interesting, He took the pictures we used for each episode. Photographers are heroes, it looks like ‘is it not to just take picture’ but that thing is work, we spent hours in what we thought will last minutes.

Name: Samuel Abiola
About me: Final year medical student by chance, active dreamer by choice. Aspiring Jack of many trades and master of all. Jovial and care-free to a fault. Saga tweets at @sagachristos

Moyo, the lil sis, brought her critic and editorial skills on board too, we submitted our stories and she did justice to them.

Name: Moyosore Ajayi

About me: I am the “Lil sis” I’m a student of Law at the first choice University of Lagos. I write poems, stories, plays, articles and edit. I love spending time with my family and friends, and anything we do at that moment is fun to me. I do many extra curricula activities; I love life and living it to the fullest! Viola!

The experience: Almost A Bride swept me off my feet, beautiful storyline, fine Ihuoma, the drama, and the heartbreaks dealt one beautiful lady. I am sure we love Ihuoma and wish her a happy married life…, it’s just fiction. Sweet story!
It’s been so much fun, even the part where I get to sit down and listen to unending ideas and offer advice, make remarks and just smile gently in patience. Then the photo-shoot was beautiful, thanks to Jane’s simple and splendid touch of make-up, the first time I get professional make-up without feeling the weight of margarine on my face, bless you sista. Mehn! Bro Shola is really tall o, and our sister Ihuoma looks just like a bride. I got to borrow novels from Grace later; I eventually met Saga Christos after spying on his blog. There was Seun, the enviable photographer, do you like the name; Dafidii? Oh! The wonderful photographer who gave me a ride saved me the stress of jumping buses * i know i wasn’t such a wonderful company* Shout out to O’mide photography. Stella and the Big sis were just so tired I could not get life out of them, they certainly were not enviable. Kudos to you both!
Through the calls, the mails, the discussions et al, I had this wonderful friend by me*shout out to you* I want to shout out to my friends, Korede Adeleke and Temiloluwa Dosunmu; my roommates, Didi, Mimi, Laura, Tomi, Nancy, Scholar, especially Chidinma and Saidat for letting me use their devices; love you girls! Iyanu, and Simi aka Graceful. Tosin Ogundeko, you too.
Love you all…I mean it!

We were amazed at how much we were able to achieve amidst our other commitments, (amidst, my supervisor sending me messages, “Are you done with your work?” Whenever she saw my ALMOST A BRIDE updates on Whatsapp). Lest I forget, we choose Ihuoma because we fell in love with the name after a dude proposed to his girlfriend, Ihuoma, on twitter, we love their love story.

There was this lie Stella and I believed, “After writing, we’ll just post every week”. Whenever we remember that lie, we shook our head. My blood pressure starts to elevate from Wednesday, we start to scrutinize the next episode, and making sure the episodes were connected. Your comments made our effort worth it. Thank you very much!
Since whatever idea we had at the onset had been blown beyond recognition, we decided to take a group picture with everyone that had contributed to the success of this series. Seun Alakija Photography came to mind, she was a DM (direct message) away on twitter, and she was there for us, five hours of photo-shoot! God bless her. Special shout out to Obadafiidi and O’mide photography, photographers extraordinaire.

Name: Alakija Oluwaseun
About me: Medical student and an upcoming photographer. Likes photography!!! I love and enjoy taking pictures, I also like having fun, meeting new people and eating(I love food).
My experience: I was delighted and really interested when I was asked to help take pictures of the other crew members that contributed in making the story. I was captivated by the title of the story and it turned out to be fun at the end of the day.

My friend, Jane did a lovely make over for us, I took a million pictures that day, total transformation.

Name: Jane Ikondu
About me: I love styling people, make up, clothes, shoes…the complete outfit. I hope I’ll become a professional in all these soon.

Thank you to God for helping us through the sleepless nights, the nights I slept off telling Stella “I’m not sleeping joor”, the day I wrote jargon in my note because I was sleep-writing when Stella was talking, “Are you writing it” “Yes, I’ve written it” only to wake up and not understand what was in the book. For the nights, Stella said yes to everything I said because she was sleep talking, the nights, she didn’t even want to hear about Almost a bride, the pessimistic days I had to be the most optimistic I could be, Stella says one person has to be pessimistic. For the day, we had to re-edit on Monday morning before going to class, for the Sundays I lose sleep because we didn’t have our articles to our satisfaction for Monday. For days, I felt like crying and giving up because we could not reach Moyo, for the days we did overnight and I slept in Stella’s room. For the Monday, when a classmate told me it’s almost 12pm and my WordPress wasn’t responding but I had to smile and say yes.
I remember September 1, I had palpitations when it was five minutes to 12pm until it was posted and I started getting lovely reviews and when people fell in love with the character Femi.

Thank you to God also for ideas, finance and my friends for understanding the need for space during this period because my “I’m busy” started to sound like an excuse.

Working with every member of ALMOST A BRIDE crew is an unforgettable experience and if I have to choose a set of people to do this with again, I’ll choose y’all again and again and again. 🙂

The CMDA conference we attended that birth ALMOST A BRIDE is holding this year 26th to 30th November 2014 at Imo State. If you will like to attend, register here you might just get an idea that will turn your life around!

PS: Will you buy Almost A Bride if it was revised and made into a book?

Watch the Almost A Bride video here

Up next on Perry’s Tots: 31Days 31Voices.

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