Our Owambe: It's Their Party, But You're On the Guest List; Olivia de Santos on Inclusion, Intersectionality and Working With Business Partner, Assumpta Vitcu
It’s a party and you’re all invited, though co-owner of Our Owambe, Olivia de Santos, didn’t know what an owambe was when the party began. “The blog was always Assumpta’s idea” Olivia tells me. She’s the Caribbean half of the team, Assumpta Vitcu is the African half. “[Assumpta] was thinking more seriously about the blog and deciding what the theme would be.” They came to focus on inclusive, intersectional black weddings, including the weddings of interracial couples, such as Assumpta’s own. Our Owambe also features LGBTQ+ weddings, “—which are very excluded from black wedding media,” Olivia tells me with regret. “Generally, black weddings have a look to them—they can have quite a luxe and lavish look to them—but we wanted to show the variety.”
A Nigerian, London-based wedding planner, Assumpta knew of a word in Yoruba that represented celebration, owambe.
“We extend it to being a celebration of life. My contribution is adding our,” Olivia tells me. I comment that the Y is almost silent—“It’s ours as in our community, but also as in your celebration.” When you’re celebrating, it’s our party, Our Owambe promises.
Olivia de Santos
Olivia joins me over Zoom from her new flat in Portugal. It’s a blank canvas, white-washed walls behind her waiting for possibility and color. I’m privileged to listen to Olivia speak after meeting both her and Assumpta briefly during the inaugural Most Curious Coalition meeting held in January 2022. Olivia has spent her twenties entrenched in the world of weddings; she’s loved it, but she’s aching for a new challenge, you can see it as she speaks about picking up the proverbial pen again and writing the blog, Our Owambe. She’s passionate about representing people and her hope is to make the talents and creative minds of black wedding suppliers accessible to couples that have struggled to find a footing in the alternative wedding market—perhaps because a safe and attractive place to put their foot down was never offered.
“My life has been very strange…but I think it’s put me in good stead to open a business like Our Owambe as a black woman and having grown up in this business.” While Assumpta’s personal wedding planning journey led her to enter the weddings world professionally, Olivia found her way in through a series of scented letters that landed on the right desk. “I think I knew then what I wanted,” Olivia reflects on her 19 year old self. “Props to 19 year old Olivia.” Props, indeed as she scored her first events job midway through Uni with one of those rose-printed, floral-scented letters. I have to ask her—did Elle Woods’ scented, pink CV in Legally Blonde inspire the move? No, it did not, but the fictional character and Olivia share a tenacity that’s led them both far in their respective paths. Also, they both love color. Though she’s not keen on trends, she knows color isn’t going anywhere, but perhaps it’ll look more monochromatic, she muses, people going for different shades of a single hue, or else staying true to just one shade. Elle Woods would love it that too—think pink!
Assumpta Vitcu
It would be wrong to assign the duo of Assumpta and Olivia the title of polar opposites; the more I learn about them both, the more I realize what a wonderful compliment they are to each other. From family ties to belief systems, from aesthetics to which side of their brains they most love tapping into, these two are dynamic and it’s obvious why—not even a year out from the first keystrokes of the blog—Our Owambe is already making waves.
Feeling the loss of beloved Nova Reed’s Neue Bride now that Nova has moved on to full time advocacy work, Our Owambe was begun in no small part as a tribute to Nova, who first brought them together. They only went to one of Nova’s meetups for black, female suppliers—but once was all it took. One meeting, plus five years of building a relationship. “I remember [Assumpta] read out a poem during the meeting and I was very affected by her—I was very in awe. She was a very poetic, very influential person, but it took a few years to build a relationship.” All the best, most lasting relationships do, I think.
“We come from very different backgrounds; we get along really well. For context, Assumpta grew up in a religious, traditional household. On the Caribbean side—my side—my family is very transgressive,” Olivia uses her words carefully, wielding them like a true writer, even as we speak aloud. Transgressive? “I don’t want to say odd,” she says with a grin. She’s the oldest grandchild and the youngest is sixteen; in between are grandchildren who are out to the family as Queer and/or trans. “Considering ‘a black family,’ that’s very unusual,” she informs me, her own applied air quotes hovering in the air. “To have an out child and an accepting family, that’s very unusual.”
It’s no wonder that all are invited to the party—Our Owambe is a bit of an extension of both these women’s families. Seeing people represented who reflect their own multi-generational, multi-national families is vital to them both, but it’s not without its challenges, given their different backgrounds and upbringings. “Being able to try and balance those things—those two sensibilities has been very interesting—we found a stride just before Christmas, we found a way to communicate better and divide the roles as well—it is the two of us, but we both have very different strengths,” Olivia muses. She’s the Type-A brain who loves to craft the editorial schedule and do the accounting, whereas Assumpta… ”Assumpta knows EVERYONE,” Olivia tells me with a laugh. According to Olivia, she’s brought a large network of African-Caribbean community members to Our Owambe. Despite being unable to join us for this chat today, I can tell that she’s often the face or voice of moments like these, with Olivia the calm and steady presence beside her. It feels like a gift to speak with Olivia and try and represent her through my own writing—writing for writers can be an extremely nerve-wracking experience, but her warmth and careful sharing send my fingers flying over the page as our talk progresses.
I ask Olivia to sum up the mission of Our Owambe, “I think it is to demonstrate the diversity within the black community. We already see successful wedding blogs but they’re always the same—straight, thin, young couples who put a look forward—not one I particularly identify with. As the unmarried one, I have a modern, alternative approach to weddings. Bright colors and non-religious [celebrations]; small; many flowers everywhere!”
“From Assumpta’s perspective she is married to a Romanian white man and she didn’t see herself at all when she was getting married—no interracial representation in the black wedding world. She wanted to show the validity of doing tradition in different ways.”
But Olivia’s not done speaking to the mission of Our Owambe—it’s an important one. “And to make people feel seen; to really build community—unify our voices, support black wedding business and create community around them. And to be educational—one thing we saw about wedding blogs in general, they’re just feature blogs without actual how-to information and particularly not with the nuance we have with a black, alternative approach.” They’ve written about how to wear natural hair on your wedding day and budgeting for those whose familial ties may be turning to knots. They’re cultural conversations, but Olivia is proud knowing there is overlap and that there’s something everyone can relate to on the blog, even as the work seeks to represent the black wedding experience.
“It’s been very fulfilling—even the way we do our feature work is unique—we are both writers and we’ve been very proud that the couples who’ve been featured love their features.” It makes sense that the best people to narrate your wedding day are the people who’ve crafted your authentic narrative. “It isn’t just aspirational—it’s educational, informative, communal and accessible,” Olivia says, rightly proud of the work she has achieved.
I ask Olivia about inclusion in the weddings world; as a member of the Most Curious Coalition, I want to know what she hopes the Coalition can achieve and what she personally would like to see change as we widen the door and intentionally invite more people into our party.
“Inclusion is a very interesting word—if you’re including, do you also include people who disagree with you?” she asks, rhetorically.
Theirs is an intersectional enterprise—with the hope of including further body diversity and more couples from across the globe, particularly those whose celebrations occur in the Caribbean—Our Owambe represents a party that everyone’s invited to, but not one that always receives an affirmative RSVP. “We have lost followers for publishing lesbians couples,” Olivia shares without regret, but with more than a little grief weighing heavy on her shoulders. She tells me how difficult it is to alienate people of intersectional identities via the means of publicizing people of different intersectional identities. She defines intersectionality like an adjective, it’s what you do, it’s who you represent and it forms the ethos of your brand. “And the people who understand our ethos are the people we want around,” she says, once again self-assured that she and Assumpta are on the right path.
“I don’t want to invalidate what traditional weddings look like and what religion has meant to people. My personal views are so oppositional. I’m trying to be as charitable as possible, but because of how I was raised—there was an open invitation to consider all paths; there was a do-what-you-want attitude—I’m trying to have the generosity of spirit of realizing how other people grew up, but hoping they can see and accept an alternative. I know how hard it is to grow up in a black family and to grow up in a conservative black family is even harder. I don’t know if conversion is the goal for us anyway—it’s to show up and invite people…to have the conversation,” she shares with me. “Cultures have to evolve in their own way—we have to get there our own way because we got here our own way,” she tells me as we speak of the ways intra-community struggles effect us both in our separate experiences of intersectionality. Even though we cannot share the same experiences, it’s nice to share the conversation and learn more about one another and hear one another. I imagine our hour together is somewhat reflective of Assumpta and Olivia’s day-to-day crafting of Our Owambe as two complimentary, but fundamentally different personalities.
“I can’t speak for Assumpta, but I hope [the Coalition] diversifies the show—not just from the sense of it being a safe space when you get there, but that you want to go there—because it’s been very white and cis and those are the kind of people who feel they’re accepted anywhere because they are. Black couples might feel [Most Curious] won’t have anything for them,” Olivia states. Our Owambe is hoping to bridge that divide, not just at the Most Curious Wedding Fair this March, 4th-6th at the Truman Brewery in London, but in the wider weddings world, a place where the barriers go to be broken down. That being said, from where Olivia is sitting, those barriers were brought down for only a few—now Our Owambe and other black suppliers are emerging and infusing the weddings world with a new perspective on what it means to be intentionally inclusive.
“We will introduce everyone, not just black couples, but to all couples at Most Curious to the talent of Black wedding suppliers,” Olivia promises.
“We are very excited about the next two years. We just finished the business plan for 2022—2024; we hope that we can bring our people in,” she shares. They’re looking to build communities; I’ve had this sense for a while, but Olivia puts it so succinctly, “Influencer marketing is being taken over my community marketing: people are seeking groups more than they’re seeking an idol.” There’s incredible power in this movement and Our Owambe are ready to meet the moment. It’s their celebration, but you’re invited to the party.