Welcome to the modern South Asian wedding: hundreds of guests, several days of celebrations, designer outfits, mountains of food, fireworks, luxury cars and sometimes a bill approaching £100,000. Then, before the photographs have even made it into the family album, the marriage can already be in serious trouble.
There is something badly wrong when we spend more time preparing for a wedding than preparing two people for marriage.
Across Bradford and surrounding districts, we have developed a wedding culture where bigger increasingly means better. The venue has to impress, the stage must look spectacular, the bride and groom need several outfits and the food must offer enough choice to satisfy hundreds of guests, many of whom the couple may barely know. Then come photographers, videographers, flowers, cakes, entertainment, luxury cars and all the extras that somehow become “essential”.
For families who can comfortably afford an expensive wedding, it is their money and their choice. My concern is the pressure this creates for everyone else. Ordinary working families can feel they have to compete because they fear four words that have probably cost South Asian families millions over the generations: “What will people say?”
What will people say if we only invite 200 guests? If we serve four dishes rather than ten? If we don’t have a spectacular stage? If the groom arrives in an ordinary car?
Perhaps we should ask a more important question: what will people say if we spend £100,000 on the wedding and the marriage lasts only a few weeks?
There is also a side to modern wedding culture that affects people who have nothing to do with the celebration. Fireworks may look spectacular for a few minutes, but neighbours trying to put children to sleep, elderly people suddenly woken by explosions and families with frightened pets may not share the excitement.
We need to rediscover something basic: consideration for our neighbours. Your son or daughter getting married is wonderful news. Your neighbour does not necessarily need to hear the celebrations from their bedroom late at night.
Then we have the wedding convoys. Luxury and high-performance cars have increasingly become part of the spectacle. Mercedes, BMWs, Range Rovers, Porsches and Lamborghinis are hired because apparently arriving safely at the wedding is no longer enough; you have to make an entrance.
There is nothing wrong with enjoying a beautiful car. But there is a huge difference between celebrating and behaving irresponsibly on public roads. We have all seen revved engines, unnecessary horn-honking, sudden acceleration and groups of cars travelling as though Bradford’s roads have temporarily become a private racetrack. Powerful cars in inexperienced or overexcited hands can end in accidents. At that point, nobody cares how impressive the car looked on Instagram.
No wedding photograph, TikTok clip or Snapchat video is worth somebody being injured or killed.
And there is an irony in all this. While we spend months planning how the couple will arrive at the wedding venue, we sometimes spend remarkably little time discussing where their marriage is actually heading.
We discuss flowers but not finances, outfits but not expectations. We negotiate the guest list but avoid difficult conversations about where the couple will live, household responsibilities, careers, children, relationships with parents and in-laws, and how disagreements will be resolved.
Marriage requires patience, respect, communication, compromise, maturity and sacrifice. None can be purchased from a wedding planner. A £10,000 stage cannot create compatibility. A Lamborghini cannot produce respect. Designer clothes cannot teach communication. Fireworks cannot guarantee happiness. And 800 guests cannot make two people love each other.
Social media has made the competition worse. One family’s celebration becomes the benchmark for the next. If somebody had two luxury cars, we need four. If their stage cost £5,000, ours must look better. If they invited 500 guests, perhaps we need 700. Before long, the wedding stops being about marriage and becomes a public performance of family status.
I have attended many weddings across Bradford and West Yorkshire, and some of the best have not been the most expensive. They have been celebrations filled with warmth, family, friends, laughter and genuine happiness. None of that requires a six-figure budget.
For Muslim families, there is another contradiction we should confront. We tell young people that marriage is important and should be made easier, yet culturally we have created expectations that can make getting married enormously expensive. The simplicity encouraged by our faith can become buried beneath cultural competition.
Imagine having £100,000 available and spending £30,000 on the wedding. The remaining £70,000 could contribute towards a house deposit, reduce a mortgage, fund education, start a business or provide financial security. Ten years later, what would be more valuable: fireworks that lit up the Bradford sky for ten minutes or a deposit that helped the couple buy their first home?
Parents need the courage to say enough, and young couples need the confidence to resist unnecessary pressure. Have a beautiful wedding. Wear wonderful clothes, invite family and friends, eat well, laugh, take photographs and celebrate.
But don’t get into debt trying to impress people who will be attending somebody else’s wedding next Saturday. Don’t disturb an entire neighbourhood because your family is celebrating. Don’t turn public roads into racetracks because somebody has hired a powerful car for the afternoon.
Above all, don’t invest everything in the wedding and almost nothing in the marriage.
Eventually the fireworks will stop, the sports cars will be returned, the decorations will come down and the guests will go home. Then two people will be left together.
That is when the wedding ends — and the marriage really begins.
