from LI- I agree that as soon as you find the right one, you should get married. But I think the topic is really pertinent. Society, our Frum society dictates how we spend money.
When people get married, most will absolutely refuse to have minimal weddings and to cut down on expenses. No one wants to feel weird and not the norm when they get married and the slightest deviation from the norm is painful. Ex. not having a sushi station, getting a gold bangle instead of a diamond bracelet…
This is what’s unreasonable. As a wonderful young man once told me, all you need to get married is a minyan. You can even splurge for chinese. If you ignore the societal, one upping that we have fallen into, weddings could be affordable and enjoyable by all. Unfortunately, we can’t do that. It’s too hard to be different and feel like the neb. This we learned from infanthood.
I don’t know anyone who had to collect for their own wedding or someone who got married based on donations, but were the donations needed for a fancy wedding hall, pearl jewelry and a gold watch? Or was the money needed for rent, a refrigerator, pots, and the gemach rental for the gown?
To clarify though, its not just the kids’ fault. Anyone who turns their nose up at the jewelry the neighbor’s kallah got, or sneered how “The Goldsteins just had fruit and cake by the shmorg”, is contributing to the problem.
If you have the money, then by all means go all out. But when everyone feels that they need to get married off like the rich people, you run into this problem.
If we stop looking over our shoulders at what our neighbors are spending and spend what we can afford, there will be much less of a problem of people spending money they don’t have. Of course, that is quite obvious, and yet when will it happen?