Marriage: Based on wealth or love?

Marriages these days are becoming too expensive and most women are to blame for these, because most of them tend to want to go all out to show the world or those that care to know that the marriage was an elaborate one.

People decide to marry for several reasons — for legal, social, and economic stability. Others decide to do that to form and strengthen a family unit, for procreation, education and nurturing of children, land legitimising and sexual relations. Yet others even do that as a public declaration of love and wealth which is what is in vogue now.

Interestingly, the procreative essence of marriage is becoming less popular as people who THINK they are too busy to bring up children are simply going for mere co-habitation, and that is a different topic for another day. Our society seems to have become more Western in its values than it was about two decades ago when marriages were less expensive, more traditional and more meaningful to the couple, the two families and the entire society.

Marriage, hitherto, was a simple event sanctioned by the two families, which also meant a lot to the couple who found more joy in making public their intentions to spend the rest of their lives together more than the jamboree that characterised the event.

Today, the engagement ceremony, which is the equivalent of the traditional marriage, is seen to be no more “proper” marriage—at least that is the undercurrent message that some of people have made us to believe. Thus, besides the engagement ceremony, which is very expensive, there is always a proper wedding ceremony that is done and is mostly a burden to many families and even the couple eventually.

“The expenses incurred during marriage ceremonies have forced many men to remain unmarried. Some have delayed their marriage in anticipation that they would make enough savings for the D-day. But the question is that can they ever make it because as they’re trying to save so is the economy becoming more difficult and in the long run the expenses keep increasing. The main ideology behind getting married has been lost thereby people measure love by the amount of money spent on the marriage. But come to think of it, do such marriages really last?” asks Mojisola Abdullah.

Expensive marriages have almost become a must even for low-income families due to the fear of what “people” will think of them.  Some say society has its own requirements for what it considers a “successful” wedding. This kind of wedding is a good example of a marriage started in paradise but which will eventually end in hell.

Some people want us to believe that the marriage ceremony, especially the wedding, is a one-time event, so we should not worry about how much we spend organising it. Thus, we often hear people say, “this is your only chance” and “it is the most important event in your life,” etc. It is a fact that marriage is a special event and so should be specially organised.

However, a special event is not necessarily an expensive one. This trend is mostly common with women who want to show off; what you hear them say is, “I’m getting married once in my life, so this is meant to be an event of a lifetime. I want it to be a day to be remembered. I want it to be better than my friends’, etc”. They forget that they need to concentrate on the marriage they are going into rather than the money to be spent on the wedding ceremony. It is very difficult to manage marriages these days as money has become the leading factor in it and even before the marriage itself.

Marriage is now seen as a contract. It is sad to hear people spending so much money on a wedding only to break up some months if lucky years later. Despite the high cost being spent on marriages nowadays, some people see it as an opportunity for the men to prove their worth in the society. By so doing, they end up taking much higher loan and running into several debts thereby making it difficult for them to take care of the family they have spent so much trying to make legitimate.

The beauty about marriage seems to have been replaced with a material consideration that has become a source of worry to many people. The challenge that’s confronting many people, especially the youth, is that they might not get married as soon as they would want to because they are afraid that they will not be able to meet up with the expectations demanded by society. The big question now is: are we setting a bad precedent? The rise of expensive marriages will definitely give rise to some sort of moral crises.