Weddings reloaded…

It is refreshing to see young people today taking weddings back to what they should be: intimate, meaningful, inspiring to the younger generations.

The few weddings I have attended recently give me hope that sanity just might be restored to the institution. Increasingly, young couples are opting for no wedding fundraising meetings, and instead work within their means (with a little help from immediate family and close friends) to throw a wedding party to remember.

No Shs 400m decorations, ridiculously huge food buffets to waste, no mammoth crowds of mostly strangers they will not even remember as having been there. Instead, the trend seems to be rolling back to cozy, smaller weddings of no more than 200 guests, with the biggest expenditure going to what young couples truly cherish, such as the music/entertainment, photography, even social media and live streaming, like in the case of the one I attended at the weekend.

This, compared to the wedding I attended several years ago, where the reception was in a football field and from where I was seated, I hardly saw the newlyweds and at one point, we seemed to be attending three different parties in the same venue.

As the speeches continued on the other side of the football pitch, from where I was seated near the goalposts on the opposite side guests had joined their tables and pooled their drinks to make merry with no care to what was being said on the other side. It did not help matters that each table had its own cake.

If you asked me who the bride and groom were, I would be hard-pressed to remember. Clearly, I had no business being there, but so big was the wedding that every guest was free to bring a guest…

I pray that couple is at least still happily married, because eh! They spent on us. With today’s big weddings, one would think the bigger the budget, the bigger the marriage curse!

It is refreshing seeing young people clearly still in love, openly loving God and enjoying their day with the people that truly matter to them. Beyond the showbiz and competitive affair that weddings have become lately, the true meaning of marriage and commitment has got lost in translation.

When the loud fanfare dies down, couples often come down from the sugar high they were on and seem to realise that the wedding and marriage are not the same thing. Not everyone takes that realization well. But we welcome the baby steps, as we snatch weddings and marriages back from the jaws of extravagant parties and meaningless unions.

malita@observer.ug