A rise in the competition of showy wedding ceremonies in the United Kingdom is causing marriages for Bangladeshi couples living there to fall apart. Couples are increasingly leaning towards ceremonies that cost thousands of pounds, which is often borrowed. As a result, their married life starts off with debt that takes years to clear off.
More often than not, Bangladeshi couples do not register in the British Marriage Register as the families and couples themselves opt for religious ceremonies. Hence there is no definite statistics on exactly how many marriages are falling to shambles. But communities living their claim that most of the times, the debt incurred to finance the wedding leads to domestic fights which end in divorce.
Moreover, families no longer take it upon themselves to make the wedding arrangements personally as was the norm with Bangladeshi families not many years ago. Nowadays they lean towards event management companies that take up all the responsibilities of throwing fairy tale weddings for steep prices but the marriages itself do not get the happy endings.
The event management companies and caterers have revealed that Bangladeshi families in UK spend an average of £ 30,000. Families have been known to spend as much as £ 300,000 in total for wedding ceremonies. They said that often people don’t argue about the prices and event management companies offer packages that include everything from wedding furniture to honeymoons and wedding videos.
An expatriate wishing to remain anonymous said that even middle-class families these days opt for showy weddings due to the societal pressure. He added that Bangladeshis are increasingly mimicking the grand wedding styles of India, Pakistan and the Middle East and only couples on their second and third marriages go for budget weddings.
“Nowadays Bangladeshi communities abroad spend an average of £ 30,000 on a wedding. They are constantly in a competition to outdo one another in unnecessary expenses,” Faisal Rahman, General Secretary, Borolekha Foundation in Britain told Bangla Tribune.
Talking about expensive weddings, he related a personal experience of attending a Bangladeshi wedding that cost over £ 100,000 but didn’t last two months.
Meanwhile, KM Abu Taher Chowdhury, a Bangladeshi expatriate living in the UK related the story of a wedding that cost £ 30,000 but didn’t last through the night of the nuptials.
Chowdhury said that ninety percent of the domestic fights are due to money.
A man living in East London related his personal experience of spending 60,000 for his wedding, half of which was loaned against his credit card. While he still continues to pay-off the loan, his marriage lasted a total of three days.
He agreed that the financial strain creates by these loans often lead to misunderstandings between couples which consequently end in divorce.
A London-based Barrister Shubhashish Rai revealed that for Bangladeshi communities the divorce rate for Hindus and Muslims were the same.
Community leaders and social workers believe that awareness must be spread to put a stop to this competition of unnecessary expenses of the weddings for the collective well being of a marriage.