An average wedding invite gives me the feeling of being flagged down by a Lastma official. Somehow I just always sense it won’t be my favourite experience.
Take a standard wedding scenario for instance; the ambience is almost always the same. The room, which usually starts off air-conditioned quickly becomes musty. The new temperature is conditioned by the guests who keep trickling in, excited, all dressed and with gifts or envelopes in tow. I easily spot the Emcee with his sparkly bow tie and recycled punch lines. He won’t bother with original jokes for the event, but the bride, God bless her heart, will ensure he gets the balance of his initial N250, 000 bill.
Then there will be the live band, all nine of them, with its three back up female singers serenading the occasion with High Life tunes, shaking their butts and occasionally flicking their rubber weaves for effect. The caterer would have managed to charge N1, 200 for a plate of fried rice, coleslaw and chicken. But the details of the portion won’t matter because half of the guests won’t be served anyway.
Speaking of guests, I will probably sit across the apparent force fit, whose only stamp of invitation is her scarf coincidentally matching the colour of the day. She is both an amusement and a horror, cautiously stuffing her bags with the juice meant for the entire table as she looks me in the eye through the entire process, daring me to either make a remark on her third plate of food or her decision to take back spoils to her family. The gaze usually won’t last long though because there is the photographer whose true call would appear to be blinding me with incessant flashes from unsolicited photo shots.
The beautifully decorated stage seats the bride, with her plastic smile firmly in place, her lips glossed in shiny red and her face powdered to perfection, hiding the migraine induced by the pins holding her hair into a compliant bun. The groom has probably had about three hours sleep in the four days preceding his wedding, and No, it is not because of the wedding night excitement, but rather because no matter how much he tries, his bank statement isn’t just balancing out and if he is the kind who borrowed, he has about one week before his creditors come knocking.
Of course I will sit through this as I let myself literally get drowned by the misery of it all, present only by a sense of obligation; because somehow in this society, if your friend is getting married, you better be sick or out of the country to miss that wedding. And the cycle repeats itself in a copy and paste format, one Saturday after another. But wedding parties is not really the point of this article, it is rather the extent people go to pull off this social burden that marvels me. Why exactly would a human being borrow money to host a wedding party you ordinarily cannot afford?
I remember I was still an undergraduate, several years ago, when a family friend informed me in a childlike chatter that she was having her wedding party. Now this woman had been living with her husband for a little over 10 years and they have four children. I use the word husband because her bride price had been paid and there was a village reception to that effect. But she stood there regardless, beaming with joy at the prospect of legitimising her union through social validation. For 10 years, she carried her lack of a white wedding and reception like a cripple limping from a self-imposed deformity. Needless to say that this couple still could not afford this white wedding and were rallying for financial support from friends and family.
At least there was no borrowing involved, not in their case. But I have been privy to a number of incidences where young couples borrow money, hundreds of thousands of Naira, to throw a lavish Nigerian wedding and I am constantly alarmed by the distasteful mediocrity we brandish as show offs and the gross, needless squander of time and money.
To say the least, lavish wedding ceremonies are tedious affairs for which any human should eagerly be excused from. More so, I am yet to wrap my mind around the reason why people want to borrow money in planning an event whose highest return on investment is an empty hall littered with left overs.
Some event planners have presumably argued that weddings boost the economy and my response to them is that I am yet to see a nation that has prospered on debt without a cogent means of pay back. This social culture of squander is an apt reflection of the dearth of larger societal ideals.
The matter is really simple: an economy that is not prudent with her natural resources cannot house shrewd citizens. And that is why people take loans for cars they cannot afford, for foreign trips they should not embark on, for luxury designers that no one would notice and, sadly, for flamboyant weddings that are rather unnecessary.
I also know that a lot of men are unwilling culprits in the matter; their hands forced by the exorbitant demands from a list that was reeled out by obscure kinsmen. In-laws and friends who will be nowhere in sight when the bills accrue and whose only sign of gratitude is the bloated belch from the over-stuffing of jollof rice and beer.
If you have all the money and you want a lavish wedding party, please knock yourself out. But if you are just starting life and you cannot afford it, you might want to do yourself a favour and ask; is all the waste really worth it?
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