Getting married

Getting married

After the pain and hassle of finding someone you love and can live with, you’ll have to suffer the financial headache of getting married. It can be expensive…very expensive.

November 17, 2008 8:27 by kippreport

There are two camps: the first finds their own mate, and the other accepts a mate ‘chosen’ by their parents. For the former, the cost of finding a partner depends entirely on how much he or she spends on dates, presents, holidays etc. And with inflation rising to 12.9 percent in 2008, treating a partner to a dinner or a getaway weekend can be costly.

For the latter, however, the cost is astronomical. Finding a mate is a matter of family and social politics, both of which boil down to money and family history. Are you from the right family? Do you make enough money? Are you well educated? If you answered yes to all three questions, then your parents have paid through the nose to ensure that A) you’re an educated individual with a well-paying job and B) you’re a marketable person. Let’s lay it bare. The average fee to put a kid in a reputable school in Dubai is AED50,000 per annum. Multiply that by 12 years and you get AED600,000. And that’s just a base sum. Consider now the cost of books, clothes, travel, entertainment: roughly AED300,000. Now add the cost of a college education (AUD charges AED29,250 per term. It’s AED234,000 for an undergraduate degree). It’s no surprise, then, that your parents want you to marry someone who fits the bill.

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