Our feature outlining different families’ wedding expenses elicited a deluge of feedback. A sampling of letters and some more expense breakdowns

Bride Wants, Bride Gets

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t times, I feel like a tourist in an alternate universe trying to comprehend the mentality of my kallah friends. I’m often baffled. It’s as if overnight, these girls become entitled.

Many kallahs feel that their new title is a synonym with “I deserve.” They’ve reached a milestone and feel like they need to receive. A lot. Shortly after one of my friends got engaged, she changed her screen saver to a poster that read, “Bride wants bride gets.”

I know other kallahs with her attitude, too.

I can only imagine that ever since they were little, these girls dreamed of the day when they would become a kallah. In the beginning, it’s white, puffy dresses on Purim; then they advance to sketches in their high school notebooks.

When the time comes, many kallahs want to live out their dreams, and the spending goes overboard. These girls may be fulfilling their dreams, but they are ruining those who have brought them into this world.

A friend of mine was getting married mid-February. Her wedding was approaching and everything was set. Except for one small problem. She felt she needed a brand-new summer outfit to add to her new wardrobe. She needed it now — while she could still charge it to Tatty’s credit card.

Oh, did I say one small problem? There was a bigger one than that. The night before, her parents’ mortgage had been paid for by a generous man when they were threatened with eviction.

Bride wants, bride gets. It’s the attitude, but it’s also sadly the reality.

No one is at fault; it’s the pressure of the community at large. What these girls need is awareness. They need to be made cognizant of how the expenses add up, the reality of their parents’ wallets, the vulnerability of their father’s heart, what really counts in life, and the shortsightedness of it all.

—L.M.F.

At All Costs?

Adults Who Never Grow Up

I want to applaud Esty Heller for her recent serial Yardsticks and her follow-up article about wedding expenses. Maybe it’s because I’m young and naïve, or because I’m still single. Or maybe it’s because I have no children to marry off yet and can’t understand the escalation of emotions during that time. Whatever the reason, I simply cannot fathom why a kallah purchased $9,000 worth of clothing or $7,000 worth of sheitels… How in the world can she fit all that clothing into her closet?

Were none of the interviewees in this article embarrassed by the fact they spent more than my yearly salary on a single night? Were none of them embarrassed about having fallen to self-created peer pressure? Were none of them a little ashamed of having no self-image or self-confidence?

I was absolutely horrified and utterly shocked to see that fully grown adults, with families of their own, have no more confidence than a sixth grader, that they never overcame the battles they faced as children and adolescents.

When one does not work on themselves when young, the conflict grows and develops along with their life. So if in fifth grade, they coveted a hair bow that their friend had, in tenth grade, it will be the phone that their friend has, and at 40, it‘s the wedding that their friend made. To prove to themselves that they fit in, that they made it, that they are “normal.” They’re living vicariously through their children.

It’s their life, not mine. But what if I marry a son of such a person? What will my husband’s emotional world look like? Will he have confidence? Will he have emotional baggage as a result of such an upbringing? Will he want such a life for our children?

While such children are not abused or neglected and they are baruch Hashem not scarred from childhood, I’m sure there are emotional repercussions of having parents who have not yet found a strong place inside themselves. And I don’t want to marry such a person.

My reason for writing is to ask you a question about shidduchim. When checking out the prospective boy and his family, can I ask how much they spent on their past weddings?

—Name Withheld

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