Editor,

Reference is made to the letter, "Lavish weddings are a waste of resources” (The New Times, June 1).

It is a real scandal that people who have usually very little assets accumulated can be comfortable (nay, more than that, anxious) to spend a fortune to blow it on an extremely expensive function that is beyond their means. 

If you can’t afford it comfortably from your own pockets, then please avoid these kinds of uselessly expensive weddings. You should especially avoid begging or permanently putting yourself, your spouse and your future family-in-the-making into hock for years to come.

Personally, I would feel more readily disposed to contributing to a down payment for your future family home or to household equipment than to a huge pretentious wedding that adds little to ensuring that you are beginning your married lives on the best of foundations.

If anything, you have probably already weakened your marriage by giving your spouse a completely false impression of your material means. What such ostentatious weddings do is to ensure you start on high, and go downhill including an assured rapid breakup/divorce down the way.

Such conspicuous consumption of money people do not have is a serious misallocation of resources that could be better applied to productive investment. It can also easily lead to all manner of undesirable behaviours, including corruption, as some weaker individuals feel pressured to spend what they don’t have on their weddings or to contribute to those of other members of their very large circles of friends and relatives.

Policy-makers really need to confront this issue head-on. It has become a serious social burden and scourge.

Mwene Kalinda