Mojoyin Onijala and Aderemi Jacobs
Published: March 31, 2013
Romance Aided by Counseling
Mojoyin Morolayo Onijala and Aderemi Ademola Jacobs were married Saturday at the Westwood Country Club in Vienna, Va. The Rev. Aloja A. Airewele of the National Association of Christian Ministers and an uncle of the bride, officiated.
On Dec. 22, the couple had a traditional Yoruba wedding ceremony in Abuja, Nigeria. The ceremony, which included elements of Christianity, was conducted by a group of women, leading prayers and taking the couple through traditional rites.
The bride, 28, is an associate at the New York law firm Shearman & Sterling. She graduated from Georgetown and received a law degree from Columbia. She also received a Master of Laws in public international law from the London School of Economics. She is a daughter of Moremi O. Onijala and Olutola Onijala of Abuja. The bride’s father, an ambassador, is the state chief of protocol to President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria. He works in Abuja. Until 2009, he was the chargé d’affaires at the Nigerian Embassy in Budapest. Her mother, a lawyer in private practice in Abuja, was until 2011 the special assistant on legal matters, migration and humanitarian services for Nigeria.
The bride’s maternal grandfather, Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian playwright and poet, received the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature. He now lives in Upland, Calif.
The groom, 30, works in New York as a director within the investment banking unit of UBS, the Swiss bank. He specializes in advising industrial companies on mergers and acquisitions. He graduated from Imperial College in London, from which he received a master’s in chemical engineering. He is the son of Bolanle M. Jacobs and Adekunle Jacobs of London. The groom’s mother is a senior nurse practitioner at the Princess Royal Hospital in Bromley, England. His father retired as a manager from the Industrial Bank in Lagos, Nigeria.
The couple met in October 2008 at a dinner party in London, when Mr. Jacobs was working there for UBS and Ms. Onijala was studying at the London School of Economics. “She was beautiful, very intelligent and well traveled,” Mr. Jacobs said. “She brought a different perspective to every one of my conversations.”
The next month, just after the American presidential election, Mr. Jacobs sent Ms. Onijala a text asking if she planned to celebrate. They soon embarked on a relationship, and in 2011 Mr. Jacobs moved to New York. In January of last year, they began premarital counseling through a church program in New York. “We both felt that marriage is this humongous undertaking and neither of us believe in divorce,” the bride said. “We wanted to make sure this was the right thing to do, so we discussed everything, from in-laws to finances to communication issues — everything that a married couple eventually has to face.”
Mr. Jacobs added: “Look around, a lot of marriages aren’t working out these days. Before we jumped into it, we wanted to be somewhat prepared.”
VINCENT M. MALLOZZI
A version of this article appeared in print on March 31, 2013, on page ST14 of the New York edition with the headline: Mojoyin Onijala, Aderemi Jacobs.
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