To Wed Or To Marry? (2)

If we don’t know our priorities, our needs become our wants… and our wants become our needs. That’s what exactly is happening. Many young people actually intend to wed… but not marry!

Creating an impression is the last thing that should be on a couple’s mind. Marriage, and perhaps wedding, is not a profit-making venture for one to try to create an impression.

Getting a convoy of bridesmaids, groomsmen, pageboys and page girls to follow and lead you doesn’t necessarily guarantee a blissful marriage. Importing your suit and gown (which would be worn for only a day) to show ‘class’ doesn’t mean the prospect of the marriage would be any brighter.

Am I, thus, saying one should wear tattered clothes for their wedding? Am I preaching taking an important life event, such as one’s wedding, for granted? Not at all. Am I encouraging a cheap wedding? No. Cheap is expensive. But… I am definitely not encouraging an expensive one either.

All I am emphasising is moderation; living within one’s means.

Have the best of a wedding experience but make sure you don’t need to borrow to do so. Make sure you don’t empty your bank account either to do so.

Times are hard; they have always been anyway. Spending excessively on such a non-profit event is not the best of a choice to make, especially one to start life with.

And… I say ‘non-profit’ because that is exactly what it is. If you are expecting enough gifts/donations to offset all your costs and even make profit, then I guess your expectations might be cut off before you even know; especially in this part of Africa. You can’t make profit in this part of our world where one would drop a wrinkled GH¢1 note into the offertory bowl and expect to be served enough to take the leftover home as ‘takeaway’. You can’t!

You should even be glad for the GH¢1; wrinkled or not. Others don’t get it.

I know you might be thinking I’m such a miser or worse still, the weirdest person you might ever have met. You might not be too far from the truth, you know. But… I’ll rather prefer being weird to borrowing just to create an impression.

I would rather be stingy (and be myself) than try to play hide-and-seek with friends and avoid their calls after my wedding because I have fallen in a pit of debt I dug for myself.

Debt has wrecked marriages more than infidelity. There’s life after a wedding. This, many couples fail to see. You would need to live after that one-day event.

So… what happens to you both if you sank all of your investments into making others happy at your expense… at the expense of your hard-earned savings… at the expense of your new family?