Indian weddings have become lavish displays of wealth and extravagance. Families feel pressure to outspend each other and meet social standards for weddings. This takes away from the true meaning of marriage, which is the union of two individuals. Weddings have become more about transactions and adornments than the significance of the marital bond. Excess and unnecessary spending have become integral parts of celebrations in Indian society today.

1. The Big Fat Indian Wedding And
Why It’s All About The Money
By Nidhi Sinha

2. Made in Heaven?
• If marriages are made in heaven, the production cost is
certainly paid on earth.
• In a country where weddings are largely a public affair rather
than private, we have what are called ‘wedding seasons’,
which are precariously dependent on ‘shubh
tithies’ and ‘shubh kaal’.
• And thus starts the most awaited season of the year; spring
and autumn can bite the dust.
• There is, however, nothing natural about this season.
• It is veiled by a façade of embellishments and necessary
superfluity.
• Over the years, weddings have become a wealth parade, a
means to brandish extravagance and revel in it.

3. A status symbol?
• For a typical Indian upper or middle class family, there would
seem nothing wrong with an elaborate wedding ceremony
and celebration, each element of which is grandiose.
• When a big shot wedding becomes a matter or status quo,
nobody wants to be left behind in the bid to shell out as much
money as possible.
• The present scenario in India depicts clearly the alarming
propensity of families to splurge excessively on a single day
of celebration.
• This implies that a wedding can be commemorated only if it
meets with certain standards set by certain people in the
society; if it is not up to the mark, it’s just another event
disturbing the whole neighbourhood.

4. Where is the true-self?
• This is not the only kind of deprivation that takes place.
• The adornments and transactions divest the celebration of its
real significance, which lies in the marital union of two
individuals.
• Instead what we have is one family pouring money to keep
their respectability intact and the other doing everything to
ensure that more money is in the pipeline.
• We have a bride and groom mechanically enforcing the
verses of a priest.
• We also have a bride, so laden with jewellery and make-up
that she has shrunken, and her true self is painted by artifice.

5. Too many cooks sure spoil the broth
• Why is it that celebrations inevitably imply extravagance,
unnecessary adornments and superfluity?
• It probably shows the money-mindedness that prevails in our
society today, a mindset that measures everything on the
yardstick of money.
• Excess of anything is bad; people often forget that.
• Exuberance is what should be indispensible in a wedding
celebration, and not extravagance.

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