Pakistani Weddings: Setting High Standards

As the wedding season arrives, we started receiving a lot of wedding invitation cards, a number of functions, preparation of dresses, pre-booking of marriage venue, wedding décor, etc. The point that made me write this, are the expenses we incurred these days to make the wedding lavish.

In the desire of making the wedding, the remarkable one, we forget about the resources from where we are going to arrange money for such expenses, we just focus on how to make it an astonishing and the lavish wedding of the year.

Education has not helped in curbing the dowry. We should not make matrimonies a burden for both parties; make it decent and simple instead. This is what Islam teaches us and this is how it can be done happily without loading the families with the financial burdens.

The marriage of Hazrat Fatima (A.S) carried out under the supervision of the Prophet (S.A.W.W) himself. He made sure that his daughter got the most necessary things and at a very small cost. The things that she took to her husband’s house include:

• one shirt (price 7 dirhams)
• one veil (price 4 dirhams)
• a black piece of velvet cloak made at Khaiber
• a bedspread with ribbons
• two mattresses of Egyptian canvas (one filled with palm fibers another with wool)
• four pillows made from hide and stuffed with sweet-smelling plains – made from Taif
• a thin woolen screen
• a stone bowl for drinking water
• a vessel for storing water
• a pitcher
• a ceramic mug
• the pieces of skin
• a cotton cloth
• A waterskin

In my opinion, as being a practicing Muslim, we try to follow the Sunnah in almost all ways but why we did not get educated in this way?

A weeklong wedding function, the fairy tale kind of weddings, just raises whims and unaffordable expectations in a girl’s mind who cannot afford such kind of expenditure on her wedding. A number of people spend around million of rupees just for the decoration, around 400,000 for the photoshoots, 300,000 for the food and many other extra expenses. Why are people spending too much? It is necessary to celebrate the happiness but it should not be in that manner. It is kind of a showoff or a festival.

Surprisingly, Instead of focusing on ‘The couple’ (the Jori), the people focus more on ‘Wedding dress’ (the Jora), It is very irrational to spend lac’s on the wedding dress which is he/she is wearing for a day then it is going to be forever locked in the suitcase.

This kind of stuffs has stripped away the real essence of marriage and such trends are becoming a status symbol.

We need to extent this awareness as much as possible that, the extravagant and wasteful wedding culture is not a formula for a happy marriage and not going to make a marriage a successful one. No one can predict what will happen once the marigolds and roses fades away.

“And those, who, when they spend, are neither extravagant nor niggardly, but hold a medium (way) between those (extremes)”

 [al-Furqaan 25:67].