Eighty households. One link each. A number you can trust.
Every household you invite gets its own invitation link, and every reply comes back with a number of people attached — so the count is a fact instead of a guess.
Free to start. You do not need an account yet.
Right now it is a JPG that nobody can count.
It goes out on WhatsApp, gets forwarded, and forwarded again, and nobody knows where it stopped. Then someone spends three weeks calling cousins to ask who is coming — and the hall and the caterer still get a guess on the morning of the aroos.
A guess is expensive twice: once for the food nobody eats, and once for the aunt who arrives to no chair.
Events, households and both sides
The event sequence
A wedding is not a date. The nikah, the aroos, the shaash saar — days apart, sometimes cities apart, each with its own guests and its own venue. Add a date when you have one. “After Ramadan” is a real answer here.
Households, not names
You are not inviting four hundred people, you are inviting eighty houses. So the house is the unit: one entry, one link, one reply that covers everyone inside — and no spelling Cabdiraxmaan three different ways.
Both sides, kept apart
The bride's side and the groom's side each keep their own guests and their own numbers, and see only their own, until the two families are ready to share. Nobody has to hand over a password.
Replies you can count
Every reply lands against a household and an event, with a number of people attached. You can see which houses have not opened the link, and which opened it and never answered.
Two hours before the guests arrive. This is the part the family organiser lives in, and the part no wedding website has ever shown.
The hall, the photographer, the henna
Somali wedding suppliers are booked over the phone and found in WhatsApp groups. AROOS keeps a list a person actually checked — Mogadishu first, because that is where a consultant can pick up the phone today — and makes the introduction.
Venues and halls
Mogadishu's halls, each with the number that answers. Hargeisa, Kismayo, Garowe and the diaspora are captured and waiting to be verified.
Photo and video
The people already shooting Somali weddings in Xamar, Hargeisa, London and Minneapolis.
Henna and makeup
Booked late, booked by reputation, and the hardest thing to find from abroad.
Catering
Negotiated per head, every time. This one stays a phone call — the consultant makes it.
Cars and decor
The convoy, the stage and the lighting.
Planners
A service that barely exists yet for Somali weddings, which is exactly why it is on this list.
Flowers
A separate order from a separate supplier, timed to a different day — and usually the second thing a family asks about.
Music and DJ
The DJ, the band, and the oud — the part of the aroos everyone remembers and nobody can book from abroad.
Dirac and attire
The dirac, the guntiino, the shash and the tailor who alters all of it, often commissioned in Xamar and carried.
Gold and jewellery
Dahab, weighed against the day's rate. Priced at the suuq, so this one goes through your consultant.
Cake and sweets
The cake, and the xalwo and sweets table beside it — a separate order from a separate supplier.
Uunsi and fragrance
Uunsi, cuudi and bakhoor, burned through the night and sent home with the guests.
No vendor pays to be on this list, and no vendor can pay to be higher up it.
Somebody who picks up the phone
In Mogadishu and Hargeisa the halls are booked by phone, and nobody publishes a price. From London or Minneapolis that is a wall: you are calling a number a cousin sent you, at three in the morning, hoping it still works.
So a consultant does it. You write down what you need — the budget, the city, roughly how many people, which parts you want help with. They call. They check the place is still trading, still open on your dates, and still worth what it costs. Then they introduce you.
What they do
- Read your brief and call the halls and suppliers that fit it
- Check each one is real, trading, and free on your dates
- Build you a shortlist you can go through and mark up
- Make the introduction, in Somali or in English
What they do not do
- Run your wedding day — this is not a full-service planner
- Hold your money, or take a cut from you
- Sell a vendor a higher place in your shortlist. Ever.
A wedding planner is a real profession with real prices: day-of coordination starts around $700 and full service runs into the thousands. Most of them have also never heard of a shaash saar.
Your consultant is part of the $49 package. Once, for the whole wedding. We are paid by the vendor when a booking closes, at a rate that does not change who we put in front of you.
See what the package includes
The shaash saar. Days after the aroos, the women gather and the shash is placed on the bride — her own event, with its own guests.
Your guests never sign up
Most of them will never open a wedding website. They open a link someone in the house sent them, on whatever phone they have.
The link already knows which household it belongs to, so there is no name to search for and no password to remember. One reply covers the house, and it can be changed later without phoning anyone for help.
aroos.so/w/ayaan-cabdi- NikahThe contract, kept small.
- AroosThe wedding itself, the peak of the sequence.
- Shaash saarThe bride's own gathering, days after.
Who is paying for what
Somali weddings are paid for by a lot of people at once. The two families budget apart, relatives contribute, and somebody has to keep track of all of it without asking the family to change how any of it works.
Contributions
Not a gift registry. Relatives give, and what they gave is recorded against the household that gave it, on the side that received it — so thanks can be said to the right person.
Paying from a Somali phone
EVC Plus, ZAAD and SAHAL — the wallets that are already on the handset, not a card form that asks for a billing address in a country you do not live in.
Financing, in Somalia
For weddings in Somalia, a local sharia-compliant partner can cover the gap between the budget and the plan. AROOS introduces you and stops there: we never lend, never hold the money, and never push a family toward debt.
Offered only when a consultant sees a real gap. Somalia only — the partner cannot lend abroad.
Alindi
The pattern this whole product is drawn from is a real cloth — woven in bands, red and gold, worn at Somali weddings for generations. It is not a decorative border applied on top of a template.
The cloth.
Amaal and Yuusuf
Hodan and Cabdi
Drawn from it. One weave per wedding, worked out from its own name — these two are different weddings.
Every wedding on AROOS gets its own weave, worked out from its own name, so no two are alike. It is also what fills a page before there is anything to put on it — your wedding's own cloth, not a grey box.
The mother, the aunt, the elder brother
A Somali wedding is run by a committee, and the work is already divided before any software turns up. Everyone doing a piece of it gets their own way in, and what they can see matches what they are responsible for.
- The bride sees the whole wedding, and decides who else can.
- The groom sees the whole wedding too, and keeps his own side's money in his own side's hands.
- A family organizer — a mother, an aunt, an elder brother — runs guests and money for one side only.
- A planner works across the events, with every action attributable to them.
Start with two names
That is genuinely all it takes to begin. The dates, the households and the rest of the family can come later — and you do not need an account until you want to keep it.
Free to start. You do not need an account yet.
