Worrying Trend : Are Fake Weddings Becoming The Latest Celebrity Publicity Stunts??

Our local celebrities are some of the most uncreative hobos.

They will do anything (however bland) to remain relevant including having to imitate foreign genres,flock abroad to shoot videos,make hasty collaborations with African superstars and do whatever it is they humanly can to not fall off the radar.

Rarely do they innovate,create,invent… To most of them,they’re just waiting by the sidelines waiting to jump into the gravy and gravitate towards whatever’s cutting and whatever’s current.

Imitation is their second name and they won’t think twice about having to pull off a stunt that has been repeatedly pulled in the past. As long as it worked the last time,it will work today,they believe.

Lately,there’s been a sickening trend of reducing a holy matrimony ceremony into a farce,a joke and a celebrity prank pulled off to create hype and generate a buzz.

It all started with Jaguar back in 2014 when he flew down to the South of Africa to shoot a music video for his song One Centimeter.

Jaguar’s shock South African ‘wedding’ photos

After behind the scenes photos of the shoot were leaked to the media,Kenyans erupted into a ball of hasty conclusions declaring that Jaguar has wedded abroad.

Jaguar himself didn’t address the rumors until it was time to. He kept mum and watched the media (and bloggers) spin everything out of control declaring him a newly-married man. He must have found it very amusing.

There were many mysteries – who was the lucky girl? Was she Kenyan!? Where was the wedding held? How did we not see this coming?

Later,it all ended up as a big joke as those photos were just Jaguar and his on-screen flame acting for a music video. It was all a script. And nothing more.

We were caught flat-footed.

Couple years later and flamboyant singer and socialite Akothee pulled off a similar stunt. In the same country – South Africa.

Again,we all jumped into the bowl of conclusions gawking over the HD photos of a beaming Akothee lifted high by a pink-skinned chubby dude we all decided was her husb

Akothee’s allaged actual wedding photos

Bloggers – and the larger media – jumped into the soup and butchered the whole scenario declaring that Akothee had gotten married to a Caucasian dude in South Africa.

The lie lasted a full three days.

Akothee did nothing to address the rumors. She,just like Jaguar before her,watched the interesting twists on social media with much glee,basking in the limelight and the huge buzz her ‘fake’ wedding had caused.

Later,it turned out that Akothee was still very much unmarried and that all of what we saw were mere photos of a music video shoot. It was all a script,yet again,for her song Yuko Moyoni which,by the way,tanked immensely.

It seemed like someone had noticed a trend and now,to greatly capture the attention of Kenyans, all you had to do was simulate a wedding,leak the photos around and watch as the media disintegrates into misinformation and inaccuracy.

Having seen that the prank was actually working,some not so creative fellows at the Churchill Academy decided to pull off the same old stunt some two weeks ago at the All Africa Stand Up Laugh Festival held at the Carnivore Grounds towards the end of July.

As the most anticipated curtain-raiser, Churchill’s team disclosed to the media that Churchill would be revealing his wife for the first time in Kenya.

The story caught fire. Went viral and contributed greatly to the immense interest in the upcoming comedy bonanza.

The day came and Churchill,immaculately clad in a black tuxedo,strode onto the stage to an uproarious welcome to conduct a mock wedding to some light-skinned lanky model.

Yet another fake weeding was pulled off… And Kenyans crumbled into a collective ‘aaaawwws’.

None of it was real though. Just like Akothee and Jaguar,it was yet another major Celebrity pulling off the same old news-baiting prank- Fake Wedding.

Currently,that footage of Churchill’s mock wedding has attracted the MOST views any Churchill video has ever attracted in YouTube. It’s running into the hundreds of thousands of views less than a month after it was uploaded.

And now ,yet another uncreative clown has pulled off the same stint less than three weeks after Churchill pulled off his version.

Bahati has never been the most original of Kenyan artists. Seriously.

He’s a deeply flawed singer with deeply-terrible musical skills who will jump onto any catchy trend and try to benefit off of it as much as he gluttonously can.

Yesterday,Bahati did a ‘wedding’ too. Apparently. Complete with a picture and whatnot.

The story is now being thrown around the media and bloggers have taken it all up,pushing it across the table like a sack of cash.

Bahati and his wife…apparently.

Even DJ MO,Bahati’s close friend (I prefer associate) took to Facebook to ‘congratulate’ Bahati on the wedding writing,

I told you I got it , u did chini ya Maji now we all know – let’s all celebrate @bahatikenya – Finally ameoa

Psssssh. What rubbish!

Traditionally,Bahati himself won’t speak about the wedding just so he doesn’t spoil the broth. He will prefer to,just like the pioneers of this now-lame trend,keep mum about it all and let the rumors abound.

He knows he didn’t do a wedding. But he won’t be so stupid as to make that clear… Not this early.

We must first be fooled and pranked and then the truth will be revealed some couple weeks down the line.

Truth is, Bahati was shooting a music video for some love song called Mapenzi he wants to release tomorrow but we must first deal with the fake wedding… As a buzz-creator and a publicity stunt for the upcoming song.

I quite can’t tell why but Kenyans seem to be morbidly interested in sudden Celebrity weddings and you can be sure you will grasp the nation’s attention if you stage some snap wedding at some exotic location.

But weddings are,or at least should be,solemn,godly affairs that signify the blessed union of man and woman and such spiritual affairs should not be turned into objects of mockery and pranks and/or media stunts.

Weddings take time to plan,eat up a huge chunk of one’s finances,have a huge emotional toll on the lovebirds,involve very serious aspects of extended families and also take a lot of prayers and dedication to pull off and it’s a shame that a solemn affair like that is now being stupidly used as a accessory and a cheap publicity stunt for our local celebrities most if whom will never actually get married in a Church wedding to understand just how much work it takes to actually do a wedding.

By mocking such a dignified,religious ceremony,our celebrities have totally lost the plot and continue to show us just how direly they need proper advisers and publicity management planners.

Before the year ends,there’ll be yet another celebrity pulling off the same fake wedding stunt.

As if we are not terribly sick of the nonsense already.