Showmanship: Weddings no longer celebrate love but have become spectacles — war zones between families competing to outdo one another, with the financial burden falling mostly on parents, especially fathers. The guest lists stretch into hundreds, people whom the bride and groom hardly know. People come, eat, judge, and go home.
Money is spent like water. According to recent surveys, Pakistan hosts nearly 2 million weddings annually, with average expenditures ranging between Rs 5 and 10 million for middle- and upper-middle-class households. Helicopters delivering grooms, flowers flown in from abroad costing more than an entire family makes in a year, destination weddings in Dubai or Thailand, and luxury vehicles have become all too familiar.
The obsession raises unsettling questions: Is this practice really about joy, or merely about appearances, wealth, and showing off? Is wealth being used to show off to those who have less, or are families a victim of social pressure where their worth is measured in chandeliers and fireworks? The desperate urge to outshine one another reveals how misplaced our priorities have become.
Even Islam advocates simplicity in marriage. However, layers of consumerism have overshadowed this message. Designers encourage competitive excess, and brides feel inadequate if they don’t look their best. Wedding celebrations now last weeks, and with it, whole industries, namely planners, choreographers, influencers, and photographers, all depend on this business.
And then there is the dowry system — legally banned yet socially persistent. Families disguise it as love or tradition, but it imposes a crushing economic burden, too often creating debt for parents. Behind the colourful lights and choreographed dances is the unseen labour of women who go through scheduling fittings, negotiating with suppliers, running countless errands, and planning everything. They are the ones on whom almost the entire burden ends up falling eventually. falls
In the end, one is left to ponder, what are we really celebrating? Weddings were meant to be a religious bond, not a social rivalry. It is time to reclaim weddings for what they were meant to be: a union of two souls, blessed with simplicity, sincerity, and love — not a contest of wealth.