Goomba > wrote:

>gloria.p wrote:

>> But the whole discussion started about families who COULDN'T afford it
>> and went into major debt (house remortgage) to pull it off. Your first
>> paragraph dealt with that well. "Afford" is the operant word but not
>> the only one. Culture/ethnicity, sense of obligation, and the family's
>> concept of what a wedding should be also are really important.

>Okay, if one can't afford it (anything!)it shouldn't be done as if they
>can. Yet I get annoyed by people who also pen that any large,
>extravagant wedding is wrong when in fact it doesn't have to be.
>Pot luck receptions are inherently wrong, IMO, because they're not
>functions where you're sharing your good fortune with friends and
>others. It is instead asking them to host *you* because you can't or
>won't do it.

I can view a big wedding as a gift to one's friends in the
manner of a Northwestern potlatch, a sharing of one's fortune.
It does not necessarily mean going into hock, and/or pursuing some
crass self-centered effort to show off. But it can sometimes
mean these things.


Steve