Wedding Gifts And Debt

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Wedding magazines are pretty, pretty, pretty!

Dentists still keep them as reading material to take your mind off things to come: X-rays and instruments that hum, scrape and poke.

Inside pages of wedding magazines have advertisements that are not realistic, something contrary to the marriage reality.  Bride and groom came to the reality that they are really into each and would like to hang around each other through thick and thin: in-laws from hell or from semi-heaven, makeup-less mornings, stubby chins and joint bank account budgeting.

That budgeting might not include items depicted in ads for coffeemakers, slow cookers, cutlery, glassware and pots.  Sorry, are the ads for the bridal shower?  Let’s say there are.  Very few guests can afford them unless they are of the Harry and Meghan ilk, and those two will definitely give them away.

Wedding magazines have to survive.  They are scared.  They might be the next in line for the guillotine, because advertising revenue has moved to the new neighbourhood: the internet.  That’s why they carry expensive ads.

Wedding magazines are not the only platform that dilutes reality and unrealistic expectations generated by money.  Cultures all over the world turn a love story into a financial story.  Two people are in love.  They decide to hook-up.  Parents draw up a list of gifts they want from the groom’s side or bride’s side, depending on the culture.
A Hindu wedding in Winnipeg, Canada.

Some of these lists are so expensive, it’s enough for the potential groom to say, ‘I don’t’.  In most cultures, gifts symbolized something.  Time went by and those symbols came with a prize tag. 

For example, among ama-Zulu, grass mats (amacansi), were gifts for a reason so profound, there is no space in this piece to adequately explain what they symbolize.  Nowadays, it is expensive blankets from the store.  Nigerian directors continue to make movies about two weddings, the introduction ceremony and white wedding and they both come with a set of store-bought gifts.

Animals - cattle and goats - provide food for the wedding.  They used to belong to the family, had names, were looked after by young boys and were known to ancestors because they had a history.  Nowadays, they are bought from outside, from businesses that might laugh at the culture but make money from it. 

It’s not only wedding magazines, cultures all over the world have stories to tell about how gifts, a good intention turned into a nightmare, forcing some grooms to say: ‘I don’t.’
By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.

Nonqaba waka Msimang is the author of Sweetness, the novel.

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