IELTS sample essay: people now spend a lot of money on their wedding

Nowadays, people are spending increasingly large amounts of money on their marriage parties.  Many people feel large and expensive weddings cause problems for the bride and groom.  Do you agree?  Use personal examples in your response.

This question was asked on an IELTS writing test held in Dubai on March 2012. It is taken from www.ieltsielts.com

Lavish wedding parties are the norm in many parts of the world. For example, in India parents don’t mind spending large amounts of their hard earned money on their children’s wedding. In fact, Indian parents start planning and saving for their daughter’s wedding from the day she is born.

In the Middle East, where arranged marriages are common, the cost of wedding is borne by the entire family. In the west, where arranged marriages are uncommon, the bride and the groom bear the cost of wedding. In any case, insane amounts of money are being spent on weddings. Expensive weddings cause problems not only for the bride and the groom but also for their families. Does that mean every marrying couple should opt for simple wedding ceremonies? Well, let’s see.

There is no denying the fact that a wedding is an occasion to celebrate. After all, it happens just once in a lifetime. The problem arises when people opt for weddings that they cannot afford. Spending borrowed money on a wedding is definitely not a wise idea. It will unnecessarily put a financial burden of the new couple even before they start their life together. Worse still, in India where dowry is a huge social problem many parents don’t prefer having a girl child because they cannot afford to pay huge amounts of dowry.  In worst cases, it even leads to female infanticide. Parents abort a girl child even before she is born because they don’t want to spend millions of money on her wedding when she grows up.

After analyzing the situation, it is not hard to see that lavish weddings do more harm than good. While marrying couples should be allowed to choose the kind of wedding they should have, they should be under no compulsion to throw lavish parties that they cannot afford.