LAHORE: It is not common for a wedding ceremony to get cancelled in Pakistan, especially after finalising each and every detail meticulously. However, the recent protests in the city badly disturbed wedding ceremonies, and both the hosts and the guests were affected by them.
Hosts were not prepared to answer some uncomfortable questions from certain guests, as nobody had a clue that a wedding could be delayed on the same day when everybody was ready for celebrations.
Cancelling or delaying a wedding is never a happy time for any couple and their families, but the ongoing situation in the country forced them to do so. A large number of wedding functions from Friday to Sunday were disturbed due to the blockage of the traffic.
“Nobody in the whole family was imagining this sort of serious traffic jam situation,” said Umer Ahmed, a groom who was having a tough time answering his guests the reason behind the uncomfortable situation.
“We had spent months finalising the minute-by-minute timeline of our wedding day. We looked into every local festival, sporting event, holiday, even the sale dramas of different brands. We tried to prepare for as many different factors as possible. But none of us was expecting this horrific traffic block on almost all the major routes of the city—and that too on our big day,” said a couple who left the comfortable decor of a wedding car and managed to get back home on a motorcycle.
The management of banquet halls usually arranged two functions in one day, and, according to their strategy, they had to prepare the hall for the next function right after the culmination of the first function, which was only four hours.
A moment of happiness got turned into sadness for a bride named Raiyna Majeed as her barat coming from Vehari got stuck in traffic for about five hours on Grand Trunk Road.
She told Pakistan Today that she waited till the very last moment when the banquet hall management turned off the lights and had to ask her parents to vacate the hall, as the timing for the function was over.
She said, “We were not mentally prepared to deal with such damage on the cancellation of the wedding day.”
Aqsa Saher, a guest attending a friend’s wedding, said, “The journey which would have normally taken me less than 30 minutes, took around 90 minutes. On top of that, I had to traverse through small roads and streets, which were already very crowded.”
When weddings are called off whose wallet hurts the most? A research conducted by wedding planners and consultants revealed that the bride’s parents and groom’s parents divert money towards the cost of a wedding at around 58 per cent and 42 per cent of the time, respectively. However, the bride and groom have the most cash to lose.
The emotional trauma of cancelling a wedding always outweighs its financial repercussions, as there are still lots of tasks that need to be taken care of and fast. One of such tasks is the collection of ‘salami’ (gift money for groom and bride from guests).
Moreover, due to the situation, photographers who usually took an active part in wedding functions, were also worried that they might not get paid due to the cancellation of the weddings.
The service providers were also not agreeing to refund the money, as they had already arranged their services for the function which were decided upon at the time of the booking.