Affluenza Style Weddings

 While every man and woman has the right to marry a partner of choice as enshrined in every community and national marriageable rights as agreed upon, wedding ceremonies have become unceremonious mainly because of the financial constraints attached. 

In the Somali occupied counties of Kenya and even deep inside the nation in places like Eastleigh that is home to a great Somali population, parents of the bride to be demand insurmountable financial resources to be misappropriated so that eventually the married couple plunge into unanticipated marriageable breakups. 

Not knowing the financial resources of the husband or the bridegroom that could serve as the future upkeep and conservation of the newly established household is a recipe for disaster. The absence of financial management and parental responsibilities, gullible and stone-hearted near or close relatives who serve as advisors, and the lack of comprises between the bridegroom and bride families' lugubrious exaggerations, are profoundly some of the factors that finally propel unanticipated family breakups.

On the material wedding day, the amount of money spent on the gormandizing guests by the hosts, is disastrously irreligious, unethical, immoral and outrightly ravenous. As if imitating the "Affluenza Lifestyle", food that could be enough for 10 guests is served to 4 men who appear not in need of food.

In the majority Somali region of Ethiopia, stringent measures have been effectuated by the ulama and the regulations seem to be flourishing. The regulations set by the ulama has been universally accepted such that many struggling  lovers are now able to fund their weddings in remarkable ways that suit their chosen ways and means

Slaughtering animals beyond the bridegroom's financial capabilities, spending lots of money on housewares, hiring numerous taxis for the wedding periods just to blow their horns as a form of social attraction even though the blaring noise from the honking is disturbance to everyone around.

 In a wedding conducted in a European country, the bride requested a helicopter to be hired to deliver her to the ceremony arena. The husband to be accepted her request. The helicopter flew upwards to a higher elevation that suited the bride's needs. After a while, it landed on top of a storey building. Leaving the pilot alone, the two took the elevator that brought them to the ground floor where  guests had gathered to welcome them with open hands. A wedding of that nature is considered traumatically contumacious and absolutely spendthrift because of it's effects on the future the newly wedded couples.

While there are limits to wedding expenditures, Kenya Somalis require to emulate their fellow Somalis of Ethiopia. When compared, Somalis of Ethiopia have grasped the exhortations of their religious scholars while those of Kenya are still entombed in the old stone age philosophical foundations of the past.

Always depending on religious scholars to answer questions related to marriages and other social lifestyles like how to live harmoniously, must be abandoned altogether because, all answers to those questions are either in the Qur'an or Hadith.