Blissfully bankrupt

Breaking the bank - despite the economic crunch, wedding expenditures show no signs of abating.

Amir and Sana had a decision to make. The two had been going out for more than a year and were ready to get married, but Sana had not yet completed her university education. Amir had saved enough to either have a grand wedding or finance Sana’s education from the prestigious Indus Valley School. The choice was now between a lavish ceremony or a better future.

In the end, the couple calculated their savings and, after setting aside the funds for Sana’s schooling, had a simple function with the leftover money. While the trade off between a secure future and a lavish wedding ceremony may not be as clearly defined for many other couples, for many people, expenditure on wedding celebrations constitutes a lifetime’s worth of savings.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event,” says ace event planner Frieha Altaf. “People believe they ought to spend on it.”

Some certainly do. At a wedding of a close acquaintance recently, Raania was stunned by the opulence on display. The pre-wedding festivities alone included a qawwali night at which Rahat Fateh Ali Khan performed, and more than half a dozen dholkis including a musical night. At the mehndi, guests were plied with alcoholic beverages while the catering at the reception was from Sakura. You’d be forgiven for thinking that this was a marriage between the scions of Pakistan’s aristocracy.

But according to Raania: “These people are well off though not really very rich. Guests at the event were speculating that they had taken loans to put up such a grand display.”

Over the past ten years, wedding expenditures have been on the increase and, despite the economic crunch, they show no signs of abating. Expenditures which were unheard of a decade ago, are now de rigeur: imported fresh flowers, elaborate giveaways, sit-down dinners, personalised photography, jacquard tents custom made to reflect the theme of the event. . . the list is endless.

Nor is it any longer a simple mehndi-shaadi-valima triad of celebrations anymore. A paradigm shift has taken place as far as the number of events go. Separate shaadi and valima functions have been replaced by a joint reception and separate mehndis have been replaced by joint mehndis. But this has little to do with simplicity, as the myriad of pre-wedding dholkis and the skyrocketing expenditure taking place at a single event show.

“You should budget to spend seven to eight lakhs for each event,” says Shayan, an investment banker who got married recently. Arsalan, a financial economist who got married this month estimates that the joint reception cost a total of five lakhs while Samia, a TV producer who has hired a professional to do her event management, says that the wedding will cost her family 10 lakhs. In fact, people willingly spend anywhere between half their annual income to thrice their annual income on their shaadi.

For the sake of perspective, let us remind ourselves that 10 lakhs is also the tuition fee for bachelors programs at the most prestigious universities of the country, and the down payment for a small shop, both of which are long term investments which generate future income. Wedding expenditure on the other hand is pure consumption spending, but it doesn’t seem to be bothering anyone that such a massive amount is splurged on a single night.  Least bothered of all are the financial institutions that happily fork out loans for this. A few years ago, massive hoardings advertised a personal loan facility from a local bank. The billboards depicted a bride at the moment of rukhsati; the personal loan was marketed as a shaadi loan. Others have tapped into this need in a more financially responsible way. Insurance companies routinely offer ‘marriage plans’ to policyholders — these ‘marriage’ plans, of course, are no more than funds for wedding expenditure. Now banks have started offering account holders insurance plans based on when customers anticipate they would need to give their offspring a ‘dream wedding’.

Where does the pressure to shell out this kind of money on a social event come from? Is it embedded in the subcontinent’s culture or driven by capitalistic marketing? Or do the nouveau riche, eager to display their newfound wealth, up the ante?

The subcontinent does have a strong tradition of the dowry for which finances and jewelry are painstakingly accumulated over a lifetime. Still, this is distinct from the spending now being witnessed. Traditionally, the bulk of the expenditure was on the jewelry the bride wore or took as dowry — now the focus has shifted away from the dowry and to the event. Fifty years ago, the marriage ceremony itself was relatively unsophisticated; the bride and groom sat on a crude takht and dinner was a basic affair, a far cry from the seven course meals and elegant lounges that are now expected at a wedding. Now, given a choice between a small apartment (the equivalent of yesteryear’s ‘dowry’) and a lavish ceremony, couples tend to choose the latter.

“The perfect wedding now entails all these other things, details that people don’teven notice anymore. No one is shocked by an extravagant ceremony but if anything is missing, it is shocking. For example, you are expected to have valet parking, it’s a tiny detail that no one remarks on but if you don’t do it, people will talk about it,” says Marium, a marketing professional.

Taimur, who comes from a prominent business family, echoes the same sentiment: “I wouldn’t want to do something cheap.”  But the question of course is, what is cheap?

“A few years ago the dulhan wore a pretty jora and that was that. Now people ask you who the outfit is by, so you feel compelled to go to a designer. Of course, anything less than Bunto Kazmi or Dr Haroon feels like a compromise,” says Inaya.

Similarly, certain venues are popular for no reason other than that they are coveted by others. “The elite don’t have their weddings in shaadi lawns,” says Taimur. “They only have them at Karachi’s DHA Golf Club.” In Lahore, the Royal Palm Country Club is a sought after venue.

Despite her claim that she just wanted the ceremony to bring warmth and be interactive, Inaya’s wedding ended up being a spectacular affair, with the bride making an entrance in a flower-bedecked doli, a wedding stage by Lal Majid, the chocolatier and floral designer, and a sumptuous dinner. Could it be that in the eagerness to follow what they perceive to be the new ‘norm’, people are collectively raising the bar?

Almost everyone agrees that though they start off with a budget, they end up veering from it, some more so than others. Most often it is the bride, the bride’s mother or the mother-in-law who push for the expenditure. It is these people to whom the concept of the perfect wedding and the perfect bride are relentlessly marketed — by beauty salons, event managers, designers, photographers and banks. The resulting social pressure is overwhelming.

Of course, those who do have the money, constantly find creative ways to distinguish their wedding functions. Destination weddings are the new trend, with the couple flying their guests out to spectacular locations like Bali or Goa. A famous society wedding had a three-storey bar, with each floor offering a choice of beverages that went with its theme. But when it comes to weddings, it’s not just alcoholic drinks that one can blow one’s money on. A family with a religious bent chartered a plane to Madina so the guests could assemble for the nikah at Masjid-e-Nabvi. While it is common to have celebrity guests at weddings in India — even Kanye West has made an appearance as a wedding guest — in Pakistan this trend is also catching on and Atif Aslam is one of the popular celebrity wedding guests here. But almost everyone agrees that the least one can do to make one’s wedding memorable, is to have a strong theme — a colour or motif that is reflected in the couple’s clothes, the invites and the decor. For the dulhan to make an entrance in a doli laden with imported hydrangeas, calla lilies, white roses and chrysanthemums is no longer novel. But guests were slightly alarmed when at a recent wedding in Karachi, the bride arrived in a helicopter that landed smack in the middle of the shaadi lawn, where a space had been cleared for it.

Though grooms generally foot the bill for the reception from their own pockets, brides — despite the fact that many of them have secure jobs and independent incomes — are given the wedding by their parents, a fairly traditional arrangement. The savviest couples, however, talk about their finances and agree on medium-term goals. “We have career goals, and we’ve agreed to save a certain amount on a regular basis so that we can both go abroad for our PhDs,” says Arsalan who married Rabayl recently.

But sometimes, even the frank financial discussion is not enough to prevent marital discord and regret later on. Rauf had already taken a massive home loan when his wedding came up and he spent over 15 lakhs on it. Now that he’s paying fines for being behind on his loan, he says: “I wish I had some of the money I spent on my wedding.”

breaking the bank

Bride’s gharara by Bunto: Rs300,000-500,000

Makeup by Shahmain: Rs25,000-35,000

Photography for two events: Rs100,000

Catering and decoration: Rs500-2,000 per head

Invites from local printers: Rs25-100 per card

Invites from India or Dubai: Rs500-1,000 per card

Venue: Rs150,000 for DHA Golf Club

Alcoholic beverages: Rs500,000

Celebrity Appearance: Rs1,000,000-4,000,000

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, January 23^rd, 2011.