Are women to blame for expensive weddings?

Editor,Boys have a reason or two to behave that way [succumbing to expensive weddings]. The majority of girls make everything expensive starting from dating to living together yet they inject too little. Secondly, people used to spend time courting because the wedding was a family event.Nowadays, boys and a few girls toil alone and family members come as invited guests. For me, I don’t care how both will marry as long as they stay together or separate in an ordinary manner.Emmanuel Mulisa, Remera, Kigali, Rwanda***********************************Your statistics are from an American survey and do not at all reflect the Rwandan situation. Here it is the more highly educated who co-habit because: 1) they are acting out the norms that come from the West, which they identify as more “advanced”, and 2) there is the expectation that a more highly educated person in Rwanda will have a more expensive wedding. Together, these create the pressure for the conjugal changes we are seeing in Rwanda.Simfox, Kigali-RwandaReactions to the Society Magazine’s story, “Are expensive weddings leading to increased cohabitation?”, (The New Times, June 28)

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Are women to blame for expensive weddings?