Stress for Bride & Family Related to Dowry!
In today’s times, one calls oneself from an open-minded & educated family. Yet, when it comes to marriage, in most of the families’ dowry exists! People now do not demand dowry. However, terms like “we want only your daughter, you can give your daughter whatever you wish to…”. Gradually, request for furniture, welcome gifts for guests which can be gold, cash etc come into the picture.
In all of this, the bride goes through a lot of stress due to these random demands that come up especially after the official engagement. The bride’s family is initially very happy to find a family who does not believe in taking or giving dowry. But now, the demands have put the bride and her family under tremendous pressure by making random demands.
In order to keep up with the demands, below are some pointers a bride’s family goes through:
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Wedding Budget:
Every family based on their economic status decides an ‘x’ amount that they can afford and spend for their daughter’s wedding. However, perfect the parents think that they want to make their daughter’s wedding day special, these demands take the budget higher than expected and somewhere the parents have to make a choice between fulfilling the grooms family’s demand or to meet what daughters expectation for the wedding day. This could simply mean calling lesser friends and family to attend the wedding and saving that amount to meet the demands.
2. Family with Two Or More Daughters:
For some parents, who have two or more daughters, throughout their lives live a very mediocre lifestyle. They compromise on all their desires only to try and save every penny for their daughters’ weddings. This also includes meeting the demands from the groom’s family. The parents of a two or more girl child live under stress and a compromising life throughout their lives.
3. Incur Debt:
Some parents in order to meet the demand from the groom’s side, they go ahead and incur debts by pledging their home or selling their most precious asset. This leaves the parents without any strong monetary backing or asset support for their old age.
4. Demands Post Marriage:
Some of these dowry demands start not at the time of the marriage however after marriage, pressuring the bride to ask her parents to buy them a car, give cash, celebrate the baby shower when the bride is pregnant, ask them to celebrate the child’s naming ceremony, etc. This not only creates stress on the bride but also on her parents. In Hinduism, there are certain festivals like Holi, Diwali etc, where the grooms family wants the brides family to give them cash, lots of sweets and stuff. If Bride’s Family asks them about the rituals, the groom family, instead of saying, “You have already given us your sweet daughter, we don’t want anything at all”, they say politely, “You can do as per your rituals”. This shows how greedy are some families. Such greedy people due to some reason or the other find a polite way to ask for dowry.
5. Demand for Baby Boy:
In India where Goddess is prayed to and considered the form of power ‘shakti’, yet families dread to have a girl child not because they do not like girls and cannot raise a good daughter with all the values, but because they are not sure what kind of family she would be possibly wed into and how she would be treated there. There are various rituals and functions held on a grand scale if a baby boy is born & the same is left behind in case of a baby girl. The bride, post marriage, starts getting sarcastic wishes from grooms family & relatives, to quickly deliver a baby boy, as if they consider the bride as an ATM machine who deliver boys! This lands her up in a mental blockage which creates difficulty for her in even conceiving and ends up with stress throughout the pregnancy which further causes both mother & baby’s health.
6. Love Marriage:
In a relationship, the moment a couple decides to get married, they arrange a meet-up for the families. They decide to take their relationship further. But, certain things that primarily come up is their status, caste, and religion. Considering all these are met or accepted specially in case of inter-caste love marriages, the demands tend to crop up by way of saying “In our caste the girls side have to consider this expense” and while in the bride’s family that marriage expense is rightfully the grooms family who need to provide for, this again creates stress on the bride and her family.
Groom’s family usually believes in taking things from bride’s family & don’t give them back the equal things. On the other hand, there do exist some beautiful souls in the groom’s family. Such people don’t let the bride’s family spend a single penny, and does everything on their own.
If a groom’s family is demanding, it is the utmost responsibility of the bride to take a stand for it. She should be independent, brave & strong enough to tackle such situations in one way or the other.
Conclusion:
Marriages are best when kept simple and with a deep understanding that the relationship between the bride & groom along with both the families (in Indian Society) is more important than the show-off, demand for materialistic things, which should be avoided also that day should not be given so much importance to go off ones budget whereby a family has to bear the consequences (being in debt) for the rest of their lives.
Be Happy, Be Peppy! 🙂
Article Credits: Aarti Dalal | Mumbai | India
Editor: LivePeppy
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