Essay #4: Obscenity
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Essay #4: Obscenity
Previously, I posted my second essay on bathroom habits a while ago on this blog. That was essay number two, and I understand that you guys might be wondering what happened to essay number three and why I skipped to the fourth one just like that. Well, the third one was actually an edit of an entry I typed before, so I figured there isn't a point to post it here at all. Besides, I wasn't exactly too proud of the end result, despite the approval of the teacher in class. I am going to write this next essay as I blog this, instead of editing it in Words and then pasting it here. So here we go, never mind the mistakes you might spot along the way. This is going to be a rough edit of everything.
In every culture or society, it is almost impossible to detach a person's wedding from the traditional grandeur imposed in the most conventional minds. Money is often part and parcel of this 'grandeur', and therein lies the problem. People like to splurge obscene amount of money on their weddings by focusing on the littlest of details that are more often than not - trivial. This money could have been spent on your dream honeymoon or your new apartment; at least the satisfaction involved is going to be more prolonged than an extravagant wedding.
You can always argue that because weddings are supposed to be an one-time deal, it is reasonable to empty your bank account just to make everybody happy. After all, everybody wants to look pretty on their wedding night, and everybody wants to have their weddings look good on the videos taken by their families and friends. It is also desirable to have the most expensive wedding, especially when you are sitting around a coffee table at forty-nine, comparing with your other middle-aged girl friends - if you are the kind who gets a kick out of cheap thrills like that.
Remember how you dreamed about those fancy honeymoons when you were a child? The way a pair of newly weds would hold each other at the tip of a cruise ship as it sails through the Mediterranean Sea in the middle of nowhere. All of those could come true if you actually kept a close watch on those climbing bills. It is not a tradition to go on a honeymoon after a wedding of course, but it'd be nice to have one anyway. Bring your partner to exotic places, places that not every married couple goes to, normally. If you are going to spend an obscene amount of cash on the wedding itself, whatever that is left is only going to allow a trip for two to Bangkok, Johor or Sentosa - if you are lucky enough. There is nothing wrong with having a honeymoon in those places, but it'd be better if you can tell your friends at the end of the trip that you went to further, more exotic locations like Vienna or even the Maldives.
Imagine yourself in the shoes of the bridegroom as you read this paragraph. The wedding bell still rings in your head, and your last kiss was hours ago, after communion and before the priest. Carrying your wife through the front door of your brand new apartment, you look at her with your dreamy eyes and the smell of the partying that ensued after the lavish ceremony still linger between the folds of her expensive silk gown. Kicking the bedroom door open, you prepare to serenade her body with your hot, wet lips. With that notion in mind you throw your wife onto a bed and prepare for the wild night ahead.
The thing is, the bed that you supposedly threw your wife onto does not actually exist. That is because you have spent so much money on your obscenely lavish wedding that you have nothing left in your bank account to purchase new furniture with. Your wife now moans in agony from the pain of her broken waist bone as she curses your sheer incompetence and stupidity. This marks the perfect beginning of the end.
The question arises as you sit on the cold floor of your empty apartment - what could have been done with all that money if it had not been squandered on a wedding celebration that lasted barely a day? So many newlyweds start out their lives from scratch, and the economic pressure alone is enough to doom the marriage from the very start. Although the above example is quite the hypothetical situation, there are still cases where newly weds live on the verge of poverty after their weddings. You begin to ask yourself if that money could have been used to buy furniture in the first place.
At the end of the day, there is nothing wrong with extravagant weddings as long as you can afford one. However, it shouldn't be considered a norm to splurge your money, the way some people do despite their obvious financial constraint. The next time you throw a party, pick a Sri Lankan crab rather than an Alaskan crab. If Lumpsucker caviar would suffice, forget about the Beluga Caviar. Think about the life after your wedding; think about the honeymoon that means so much more than the ceremony itself. Less is more, even in the case of a wedding. Think about it.
Previously, I posted my second essay on bathroom habits a while ago on this blog. That was essay number two, and I understand that you guys might be wondering what happened to essay number three and why I skipped to the fourth one just like that. Well, the third one was actually an edit of an entry I typed before, so I figured there isn't a point to post it here at all. Besides, I wasn't exactly too proud of the end result, despite the approval of the teacher in class. I am going to write this next essay as I blog this, instead of editing it in Words and then pasting it here. So here we go, never mind the mistakes you might spot along the way. This is going to be a rough edit of everything.
*
In every culture or society, it is almost impossible to detach a person's wedding from the traditional grandeur imposed in the most conventional minds. Money is often part and parcel of this 'grandeur', and therein lies the problem. People like to splurge obscene amount of money on their weddings by focusing on the littlest of details that are more often than not - trivial. This money could have been spent on your dream honeymoon or your new apartment; at least the satisfaction involved is going to be more prolonged than an extravagant wedding.
You can always argue that because weddings are supposed to be an one-time deal, it is reasonable to empty your bank account just to make everybody happy. After all, everybody wants to look pretty on their wedding night, and everybody wants to have their weddings look good on the videos taken by their families and friends. It is also desirable to have the most expensive wedding, especially when you are sitting around a coffee table at forty-nine, comparing with your other middle-aged girl friends - if you are the kind who gets a kick out of cheap thrills like that.
Remember how you dreamed about those fancy honeymoons when you were a child? The way a pair of newly weds would hold each other at the tip of a cruise ship as it sails through the Mediterranean Sea in the middle of nowhere. All of those could come true if you actually kept a close watch on those climbing bills. It is not a tradition to go on a honeymoon after a wedding of course, but it'd be nice to have one anyway. Bring your partner to exotic places, places that not every married couple goes to, normally. If you are going to spend an obscene amount of cash on the wedding itself, whatever that is left is only going to allow a trip for two to Bangkok, Johor or Sentosa - if you are lucky enough. There is nothing wrong with having a honeymoon in those places, but it'd be better if you can tell your friends at the end of the trip that you went to further, more exotic locations like Vienna or even the Maldives.
Imagine yourself in the shoes of the bridegroom as you read this paragraph. The wedding bell still rings in your head, and your last kiss was hours ago, after communion and before the priest. Carrying your wife through the front door of your brand new apartment, you look at her with your dreamy eyes and the smell of the partying that ensued after the lavish ceremony still linger between the folds of her expensive silk gown. Kicking the bedroom door open, you prepare to serenade her body with your hot, wet lips. With that notion in mind you throw your wife onto a bed and prepare for the wild night ahead.
The thing is, the bed that you supposedly threw your wife onto does not actually exist. That is because you have spent so much money on your obscenely lavish wedding that you have nothing left in your bank account to purchase new furniture with. Your wife now moans in agony from the pain of her broken waist bone as she curses your sheer incompetence and stupidity. This marks the perfect beginning of the end.
The question arises as you sit on the cold floor of your empty apartment - what could have been done with all that money if it had not been squandered on a wedding celebration that lasted barely a day? So many newlyweds start out their lives from scratch, and the economic pressure alone is enough to doom the marriage from the very start. Although the above example is quite the hypothetical situation, there are still cases where newly weds live on the verge of poverty after their weddings. You begin to ask yourself if that money could have been used to buy furniture in the first place.
At the end of the day, there is nothing wrong with extravagant weddings as long as you can afford one. However, it shouldn't be considered a norm to splurge your money, the way some people do despite their obvious financial constraint. The next time you throw a party, pick a Sri Lankan crab rather than an Alaskan crab. If Lumpsucker caviar would suffice, forget about the Beluga Caviar. Think about the life after your wedding; think about the honeymoon that means so much more than the ceremony itself. Less is more, even in the case of a wedding. Think about it.
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on Sunday, July 22, 2007 at 3:36 PM.
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