Love is such a beautiful phenomenon, and one of our favourite things about it is watching two strangers become friends, best friends, and eventually inseparable soulmates. ❤️

For Laju, that journey began during a spontaneous Easter visit to a friend’s house, where he met Nkem. From the moment they met, they clicked. Their connection felt so natural that you would have thought they had always been part of one big, happy family. As the years went by, their bond only grew stronger, and Nkem knew there was only one thing left to do—ask the love of his life to spend forever with him. She said YES, and now, they’re counting down to forever. The proposal photos have us grinning from ear to ear, and we bet it will have the same effect on you.

Enjoy their proposal photos and love story below:

Their love story as shared by Laju:

Our meeting was unconventional, and I say that because of how we met. So sometime in summer 2016, right around July, my best friend at the time and I landed at his aunt’s house in Edo State to see his cousins. We were waiting to go in, and Nkem shows up, smiling so bright, happy to see her cousin and whoever these people were that he’d dragged along to inconvenience them. From that day, I just became family. I got along with Nkem and all her brothers, on top of already being best friends with her cousin. Then time passed. I left Edo State and moved to Lagos, but we stayed in touch.

Ironically, her cousin and I weren’t as close as we used to be, but Nkem and I stayed in touch. Whenever she was in Lagos, she’d come around to my office, and we’d catch up. We always had something in common. Still, at that point it was never “I’m going to marry this person.” It was just: me and this person get along. Fast forward years later, still keeping in touch, and I leave for my master’s. That’s where we started connecting on a deeper level. I was working nights at the time while studying as a student, up all night. Coincidentally, Nkem would also be awake late studying for her medical exams. So we’d just talk about life, about everything. We did that so consistently from around 2021 into 2022, and by 2023 it was so frequent that I said, why don’t you come and visit me?

 

She’d already been travelling very often, so I said, add my country to your list, and we put in the application. Along the way, her brothers found out and decided to tag along, saying Let’s all go and see Laju. So it became a family trip for them. We weren’t sure how her brothers would react to us wanting to be together, so we kept it casual, but we still managed to get time to ourselves to connect. Saying it now, it almost sounds like it was all planned. Because I was so woven into the family, and back then you couldn’t see her cousin without seeing me. Everywhere we went, everything we did, I was there. So even her uncles and aunts kept asking during the wedding whether this was the plan all along. I just laughed, because neither of us saw it coming.

We saw each other again around November 2023, and this time just us, and honestly that was when I knew we would be together, because we got along so well in the two weeks we spent together. I tried to convince myself I was moving too fast and that it wasn’t going to work out, because I didn’t want to get distracted from the life I was chasing. So I tried to talk myself out of it, telling myself it wasn’t the right time to be somebody’s partner. But we kept talking anyway, and after a couple more months we said, since we clearly can’t get enough of each other, let’s just keep in touch and see where this goes. I kept thinking about how much we had in common. From November when she went back through December, I took time to talk to a few people I look up to.

I told them, I really like this person, but I don’t know if I’m where I want to be yet. They told me there’s really no right time, and if you wait for the right time, it’s never going to happen. So I sat with myself and decided I was going to do this. We planned another visit around January 2024, and I set up a girlfriend proposal, made reservations at a restaurant, and asked her to be my girlfriend.

After that, it was a long-distance relationship, and the thing about long-distance is it forces you to connect on a deeper level, because you’re always talking. We made plans to see each other four or five times that year, because we just couldn’t be apart. Every single time we left the airport, we were crying. No matter how many times we saw each other or how much time we spent together, saying goodbye was that painful. Her last visit in 2024 was in October, when both our mothers came to visit, and we all stayed together. That was the first time her mom and my mom met officially. They’d actually spoken before, but never met.

That’s the beautiful thing about life. For me, marrying my partner also meant marrying her family. Nkem’s brothers called me brother before we were ever brothers-in-law. Her mother called me son before she was my mother-in-law. And it went the other way too. Nkem clicked with my family in an instant. The first time my mom heard her voice on the phone, she wanted to get to know her. So after they all met in October, I decided to go back to Nigeria in January 2025 for the engagement. I planned it carefully because my wife is very hard to surprise, so I had to be tactical. I told her my sister was throwing an all-white party in Lagos, and there was a dress code. I kept it as low-key as I could. I’d wanted a destination proposal, but she’d told me before that she wanted her friends there for it, and True Love Lane pulled it off so smoothly. They even gave me a guide on how to propose, which I completely forgot the moment I got on one knee. 😅

Credits

Planning and decor @truelovelane
Photography @mayo9ice