A video frame of a Pakistani bride and groom at their wedding reception featuring the bride's rolled out dress train.

Gulf Today Report

Imagine this. You hit your wedding dais wearing a lehenga weighing an estimated whopping 100 kilogrammes and pose with velvety boxes of shimmery jewellery worth around Dhs2 million, all before a crowd of guests who eagerly film the spectacle in awe or horror.

And no, you are not a celebrity.

You are not the protagonist of our story either, who is a Pakistani bride adamant on celebrating her big day with the most ostentatious display of her heavily embroidered wedding dress train, dwarfing the groom in the process.

In all fairness, the circulating pictures and videos deserve no rebuke from onlookers because ‘live and let live,’ right?

Young Pakistanis online beg to differ, however, upon witnessing the vast sea of red engulfing the stage, cascading down the steps in massive ripples.

Suffice to say, social media thinks it is a little too much.

To some it came off as a thoughtless investment: “When people really don't know where to spend their money.”

Most squeezed their time’s worth out of the circulating image on Facebook and Twitter, supplying suggestions for the soon-to-be closeted dress to be used as a “curtain” or a “carpet.”

A screenshot of a tweet commenting on a bride's extravagant dress.

In the popular Twitter meme format of ‘Bomboclaat’ that invites the audience to caption pictures, users mulled over plausible reasons for donning extra fabric: “How to prevent relatives from sitting too close,” “When you don't want any one on stage on your day except you and him,” and one replied with, “I love that no one can sit next to her YASS Queen.”

Amidst creative jokes that compared the bride and the bulky train to “me and my problems,” there was also room for serious discussion.

Another screenshot of a Twitter user reacting to the bride's extravagant dress.

“The youth should stand up against and kill this stupid practice for once and all,” tweeted one vehemently.

Nuptial traditions have forced families to shell out an insurmountable amount of money in recent trying times for most. It appears that a celebratory event can only take the form of excessive display of affluence and a show of ‘we have gone all out for our child.’

Making do with minimal ceremony is not as memorable. We live in a capitalist society that needs to know ‘who did it better?’

But live and let live. It is a momentous day for the bride and groom after all.