Ronaldo Marries at Home With Only His Children Present; Nigerian Aunties Declare It Legally Invalid

The Federation of Nigerian Aunties has convened an emergency session following reports that Cristiano Ronaldo and Georgina Rodríguez held an intimate wedding at home in Portugal, attended only by their children. The Federation's preliminary ruling is unanimous: whatever happened in that house, it was not a wedding. A wedding without eight hundred guests, forty of whom are strangers eating in the corner, is, by Nigerian law, merely a meeting.

The details, as revealed by the couple, have caused genuine medical distress across Lagos and Abuja. No aso ebi. No hall in Oniru booked eleven months in advance. No MC shouting "IF YOU KNOW YOU LOVE YOUR WIFE, MAKE SOME NOISE." No small chops that finish before your table is called. No spraying, meaning the couple danced and gained no interest on the dance floor, a financial decision Nigerian analysts describe as "leaving money on the ground, literally." The richest footballer in history got married for the price of a home dinner, while in Lekki, couples are currently servicing wedding loans for marriages that did not survive the thank-you cards.

Most devastating of all: only their children attended. In Nigeria, the couple attends the wedding; the wedding belongs to the mothers. A Nigerian mother has been compiling her guest list since the child's naming ceremony, her church society, her market association, her secondary school classmates from 1979, and one woman nobody can identify who cries at every ceremony. To exclude them is not intimacy. It is provocation. Somewhere in Portugal, Ronaldo's decision has caused a Nigerian mother-in-law he has never met to clutch her gele in solidarity grief.

Economists warn that if this "intimate wedding" trend reaches Nigeria, an entire GDP will collapse: the aso ebi textile market, the party jollof industrial complex, the souvenir cooler economy, the professional friends who attend weddings for a fee. Millions of livelihoods depend on our refusal to marry quietly.

At press time, the Federation of Aunties maintained its position: the couple is welcome to redo it properly. In a hall. With rice.