Old Westbury hosts Nigerian royal wedding
Nigerian-American princess Ehi Oviasu, of Old Westbury, married Daniel Kahn, originally from Vermont, in a traditional Nigerian ceremony at the bride's parents' home. (May 21, 2011) Credit: Photo by Danielle Finkelstein
The drumbeat began to quicken -- the signal that the bridal negotiations were about to begin.
"We are here on business. We are here to claim Ehi!"
With that declaration, the wedding of Ehi Oviasu, a bona fide Nigerian princess from Old Westbury, and Dan Kahn, a Jew from Vermont, got under way.
In a traditional hourlong ceremony that included drumming and dancing women in vibrantly colored headdresses, the bride, groom and their families re-enacted a typical bride-for-dowry exchange that still occurs in Nigeria.
"This is my son Daniel," announced the groom's father, David Kahn, 71, a retired elementary school teacher from Calaise, Vt.
"Do you know this man?" the bride's paternal grandfather, H.E. Oviasu, asked Ehi.
"Yes, yes," she replied before 400 guests gathered under a white tent outside her parents' Old Westbury home.
The ceremony followed the customs of the father of the bride's Edo tribe. The two families haggled over how much the groom's family was to pay for the bride, offering gifts that the bride's family accepts in exchange for their daughter. In this case, the symbolic gifts were baskets filled with delicacies.
Ehi Oviasu is royally linked to her maternal grandmother, Clara Kinkle Rafua, the queen mother of the Ibo people in the southern Nigerian province of Ogwashi-Uku, home to about 750,000 people.
Oviasu, who grew up on Long Island, said she decided to reach back to her heritage when it came time to plan her wedding.
Her mother, Thelma, who could become the next Ogwashi-Uku queen, is a Garden City lawyer and her father, Felix, is a cardiologist at St. Francis Hospital.
"There really isn't an unobnoxious way of bringing it up," said Oviasu, a lawyer with the Nigerian Mission to the United Nations, when asked about her royal blood. "Day to day, it doesn't come up, but I'm certainly proud of who I am."
Ehi and Dan, both 27, met in law school at Columbia University. Dan, an accomplished pianist, is an associate at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe in Manhattan. His mother, Joyce Kahn, 63, is a teacher in Montpelier, Vt.
Today, the couple are expected to hold the second part of their two-day wedding with a Jewish ceremony at Sands Point Preserve.
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