Shopping

Wedding Sales

Is there special discounts for people who shop for weddings? Something like a end-of-season sale or a stock-clearance sale? With five weddings to my witness (all my cousins mysteriously decided to get married in quick annual succession), I can safely vouch that an immense load of things (necessary and not) are bought. Also, the bride-to-be's favorite part of her wedding is the shopping.

In a Big Fat Bengali wedding, you will end up shopping for some really random but obvious stuff. The respective families buy an absolute array of items for each other. Cosmetics. Clothes. Underwear (!) Toiletries. Wrist watches. Crockery. Travel bags to fit all of that in.

Honestly, the shopping really isn't half as exciting as they claim. Take for example, shopping for clothes for the bride and groom and both the families. One for the mother-in-law. One for the father-in-law. One for the auntie who is the father-in-law's sister. One for the auntie who is the mother-in-law's sister. One for the uncle who is the father-in-law's brother and another who is the mother-in-law's brother. And you're in a real soup if there happen to be multiple brothers and sisters. 

I'm not even going into the picking and choosing. Let's just say, I've spent more than enough fruitless ventures into innumerable malls, shops and kiosks to know better.

Yet I fail to grasp this strange obsession of brides-to-be with shopping. You'd think they have taken the "shop till you drop" motto too seriously. Countless hours of bickering, hankering, sweating, walking and a good few blisters later, the smiles of glee on the shoppers' faces can easily compare with the smile of a fat kid about to jump into a huge slice of mud pie cake. Well, at least there have been other (worse) times I've lost my faith on humanity.