💬 My brother's wedding cost me 4 lakh and I'm already scared about my daughter's

Younger brother got married in Hyderabad last month. I flew in from Khobar 2 weeks before the first function. Been sending money for it since March and I still wasn't ready for what I saw. 3 functions, 3 different halls. A decor team of 8 people. A stage that took one full day to build. Food for maybe double the people who came. So much of it went in the bin, I couldn't watch. Nobody in the family said anything against it. Not loudly anyway. My father's answer to everything was, people will talk. End of discussion, every single time. I tried to merge the mehendi and the sanchaq into one evening. My aunt looked at me like I'd said something dirty. So I paid my share, smiled for the photos, and did the maths on the flight back. 4 lakh and a bit. That's more than I saved in my first 2 years in Saudi. For 3 evenings. My brother has a decent job but he's started married life with a loan from his office. Great start. And at the wedding itself I swear half the guests were complaining about the same thing at their own family weddings. Everyone complains, and then they go home and start planning the next big one. My daughter is 7. I already think about hers and I really don't want to. Some families in Tolichowki are doing simple nikahs together in the masjid hall now. I respect them a lot for that. But I've seen how relatives talk about those weddings later. Years later, even. Has anyone here managed one small function without a fight at home? How did you handle the elders?

4 lakh for 3 evenings hurts to read. My cousin did one function last year, nikah and dinner, 200 people. Our grandmother was against it till the day itself, then enjoyed it more than anyone there. What worked was my uncle announcing it early, so nobody in the family had time to plan anything bigger. Maybe start talking about your daughter's now, so a small one feels normal by then.

I'll disagree a bit here. For a lot of families the wedding is the one big celebration they'll ever have. My parents saved for years for my sister's and they were happy spending it.

Took a loan for my sister's wedding 2 years back, around 3 lakh, and I'm still paying it from Jeddah. Half of that went on stuff nobody even remembers now. The stage, the lights, the return gifts. If someone had pushed back then, I'd have been the first to support them. Nobody did. Including me. And your father's people will talk line, mine says it word for word.

Ah, everyone says to make weddings simple, but when it's their turn they take everything through the back door, and if you ask them about it they say we didn't demand anything, they gave it out of their own happiness, their daughter got a car... come on, since when does a daughter drive the car herself, now if people like this lecture others about dowry, who's going to follow it, brother... it's a double standard, brother, until everyone stands together and stops this practice, nothing's going to change just by talking, real change will come only when people follow the rule in their own house too.