“I cannot afford to bring up a family, leave alone a wedding”, these were words I overheard in a Matatu conversation a while back. “A million bob wedding gown?” these were words I read yesterday on the twitter stream after NTV’s Samantha Bridal. Many of us couldn’t understand why anyone would spend so much money on a wedding gown that you will probably never put on again, to celebrate a union many consider perpetually fragile. It might be that the bride and groom had enough money to splatter over their wedding budget, to an extent of spending 1000USD on a wig for the bride. Most Kenyans do not even get close to that amount at the end of the month.
However, you realize that our reactions to the ‘unreasonable’ wedding budgets are largely hypocritical. At times it is easier to speak when you are standing on the other side. If you were to ask a bigger percentage of women what they want their wedding to be like, they would ask for a private ceremony on a leafy estate tucked somewhere on the hills, gourmet food on the menu, a live band, scores of photographers, limousines, lavish after parties -something exquisitely executed! This is what they dream of. Sadly, they forget that some things are financially hard to execute, and should remain just dreams. It is a brainwash that we can blame on the numerous wedding shows, bridal magazines and expos.
Knowing this fanaticism, and trying to score the lady’s heart, most men will push themselves to the edge. They will borrow from their friends in form of wedding committee, ask the parents to chip in, take wedding loans just so they can splurge, or as they prefer to call it, afford to give her the dream wedding. It is only a ‘one day in a lifetime event’, isn’t it? So this one day is supposed to be special- an excuse to spend ungodly amounts of money that you do not have. Eventually, it leaves the lad and the lass buried in debts up to their ears. It is alright if the bride and groom can afford to go all the way to a one million wedding gown, as long as it does not call for people to contribute for it.
But the heedless consumerism that we are making out of our weddings is indescribable! The meaning of a wedding has actually changed from a transition to simply a new level of excess and indulgence, just for the show. We are afraid our friends will scoff at us if we do not impress. What our friends mean by impress is by an ungodly budget. We also want to keep up with the ‘Wedding Show’ trend even when we cannot afford it! As previously discussed here, it is a case of trickle-down consumerism, where people are doing things because they are being done. She wants her entourage to have a limo because everyone has a limo.
Most of the people getting married right now are in their late 20s or early 30s. They are probably struggling to finish paying off their car loans and student loans. So what comes after is a wedded union and crippling loans.
Here is another interesting thing about these weddings- most of the money is spend on things that no one really cares about. We ignore the stuff that is going to make people enjoy the wedding, say like comfortable seats, and spend money on labeling water bottles. A wedding that your guests will enjoy is priceless. Sometimes, all this money makes it too pretentious and hard to enjoy.
Can we just have a wedding that we can afford? If you can shoulder the lofty costs, well in. Don’t just do it because you want to bring the receipts to the next kyama to show off to your girlfriends. We all want the best for our weddings, but we sure do not want to spend the rest of our life paying off a wedding loan.