Counting the cost of getting married, Malay-style

 

Over the Hari Raya holidays, one of my children met a young Malay salesman and asked why he was working over the holidays. The answer was a bit surprising, and rather sad.

The salesman said he’s getting married and needs to earn as much money as possible to pay for the wedding. That’s understandable. Marriage is one of the costliest events in many young people’s lives. The amounts he mentioned were not inconsequential, and it looked like he’d have to spend at least a year’s salary on it, perhaps even more.

Work through as many Hari Raya holidays as he wished, but in all likelihood, he wouldn’t earn enough to pay for the wedding, and may be in debt for a long while after.

The amounts set by his bride’s parents ran into the low five figures, which was high given his likely income. On top of that he’d have to pay for his own side of the wedding – feasts, gifts, clothes etc.

I’ve been to some really fancy Malay weddings, some clearly by families which could afford them. Good for them, especially for those (rather rare ones) who have some good taste to go with the opulence.

I know of people who actually renovated their house to prepare for their child’s wedding. Perhaps they could afford the renovation and the wedding too – again, good for them.

But I think we all know of many people from all sides of Malaysian society for whom a wedding is often a step into debt and penury.

How it used to be

When I was growing up, weddings were usually a kampung-wide celebration, often measured by how many food servings were prepared or how many cows or buffaloes were slaughtered.

Before the wedding, there’d be a meeting where division of labour was agreed upon – who would do the cooking, the serving, the greetings and at the bottom of the kampung social hierarchy, who’d do the washing up.

I was too young to be assigned anything, but I’d always follow the fun crew – those tasked with building the tents where guests were served food.

We didn’t have the convenience of the rented tents of today. We had to go to the hills and cut down bamboo, to build the tents from scratch with coconut fronds and tarps.

Tables, chairs, cooking pots, pans and the hundreds of plates, cups, saucers and cutlery needed would come from the mosque, while the cost of labour would only amount to some pocket money. No cooking gas back then, just firewood from fallen trees around us.

Free entertainment

The occasional well-to-do families would have a band at their weddings, often local kampung Beatles-wannabes with a few electric guitars and a cheap drum set. These would be the grander weddings everybody would try not to miss. You might not have been invited to the wedding itself, but the music shows were open to all.

Weddings didn’t cost too much unless you set out to show off. There certainly were enough who did that, often pawning gold and silver to pay for it, though not that often because not many actually had gold and silver to pawn.

Most people then did “kerja kampung” or kampong jobs, and very few earned enough or were credit-worthy enough to get any loans save for from immediate families, which in most instances weren’t much better off.

Wisdom of my father

Weddings were often one of the few opportunities for our fishing kampung folk to eat meat. Before we had electricity, we had the occasional excitement when the kerosene lamps occasionally set something – perhaps even a tent – on fire.

My father once told me if he wasn’t around to give my sister away, I was to set her dowry at a reasonably high level (because dowry money goes directly to the bride), but not set any amount at all for the “hantaran”, the expenses the groom is supposed to pay the bride’s family.

He said we’re not in the business of selling daughters. If the groom can afford a big wedding, well and good. Otherwise, have one that suits his pocket.

My low-cost wedding

I got married after I’d been working for a few years. Between taking care of myself and also my elderly parents, I managed to put aside some savings. I paid for the ceremony at my own home, and part of the ceremony at my in-laws’ home.

It was a simple wedding, and I bet some nosey neighbours probably thought we should have splurged on a bigger wedding. Perhaps we could have been a bit more grand, but not by much.

Anyway, the nosey neighbours kept their counsel to themselves; to voice such sentiments to my father would be to invite a question about the legitimacy of their birth, and perhaps of their parents’ too. He’d always been a maverick, something he inherited from me.

On being a killjoy

I still have a few photos showing me dressed in an ill-fitting suit from the photographer’s shop, stains and all. Cue the sad music… Or perhaps not – I don’t remember me or anybody else then or now being sad about that.

I’m one of those people who thinks you shouldn’t celebrate too much when you graduate. Certainly, take some joy from it but that’s just the beginning of your real life. There are many years of challenges ahead for which you must gird yourself.

I’m always skittish with beginnings, and this applies to weddings too. The real tests are yet to come, and celebrations are when you’re quite sure you’ve played a good game towards the end of the inning.

Perhaps it’s a good thing for the wedding industry that there aren’t many killjoys like me. Can you imagine how much impact people like me would have on our GDP? But hey, on the other hand, we wouldn’t be clogging up the bankruptcy courts either.

The next generation

There are actually some other killjoys like me – my own kids. The two eldest got married in their thirties, which they arranged, handled and paid for all by themselves.

How much did their weddings cost me? Zero. I paid nothing for their very simple weddings. I’d have helped if asked, but I wasn’t, and was happy the kids felt they wanted to handle everything based on what they could afford, and I was very proud of their independence.

They’ve earned the right to bore their own children about how they got married and paid and handled everything on their own without any help from the stingy grandpa. I’m sure they’ll thank me for that one day.

They’ll have many years of trials and tribulations ahead of them, when money in the bank would be more important than photos and videos of a grand wedding. And they wouldn’t have to work even during Hari Raya holidays to pay for a grand wedding that’ll just run up a huge debt.

Or they could, if they so want to. It’s their life after all, not mine. They, and not anybody else, not even me, get to decide what’s right for them. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.