Once the summer vacation starts, the wedding season begins. Weddings in fact are occasions that seem to consume thousands if not millions of riyals in the blind imitation of others. Regardless of all the preaching and lecturing, extravagance is a problem that is getting worse year after year.
While signs of poverty are growing in some districts, people can be seen squandering their money on extravagant weddings preparations. They plan and buy useless, unnecessary and extremely costly items for the luxury of a single night without giving a second thought to the amount of money they are wasting on frivolities.
When people prepare for a one-night Saudi wedding they usually end up wasting money on the guests, the bride and the groom. There are always ridiculous fees in order to rent out wedding halls that may cost anything up to SR500,000. Then there is the aimless shopping that takes place prior to the wedding, and the excessive presentation of food and clothes done solely for the purpose of impressing and showing off. Most ludicrous is the large amount of money requested by the groom to pay for the dowry, something that may even hinder or cause the wedding to be entirely canceled. In some cases, a middle-class groom may even be forced to take out loans just to fulfill the needs of the bride and her wealthy family.
My friend was talking to me recently, bewildered that a lady she knows had spent SR18,000 on white material for her daughter’s wedding. The lady gave the material to a tailor to sew, decorate and imprint the groom’s and bride’s names on and then she used it to decorate the outside walls of the groom’s house for a couple of hours. To make things worse the expensive material was finally thrown away and ended up in a rubbish tip.
I was truly shocked when she told me this. Isn’t it time to change our weddings and social customs? Shouldn’t we exercise some wisdom and value the more important aspects of life and ignore these silly extravagant traditions?
