Tomorrow one of my close friend will have his "Bersanding" ceremony after having done his Solemnisation or "Akad Nikah" yesterday. Since he is a close friend of mine, I did manage to hear all the things that he did prior to his wedding day in terms of the preparation and all. I guess he had done his homework to insure he will have a grand day tomorrow.I'm sure organizing a big event such as this is not an easy task but I can't give furthur comment on this as when I got hitched a couple of years ago, I only had my "Nikah" ceremony which was held at SOAS Mosque. I'm sure my experience was not that bad as to compare with what my friend has endure for the past few months. I never had the stress of thinking of what "hantaran" need to be purchase, the number of guest that needs to be invited, what kind of souvenirs to give, how many wedding "tent" need to be set up and much-much more. Me and the missus use to say how fortunate other people are, to have a nice huge wedding but after a while we realised that we were actually far better off for not having all those as to compare to the stress and hassle of having one.
On top of the preparation, one thing that is also important to think of is the amount of money that is going to be spent for the whole thing. The question here is how much is the average amount need to be allocated? I believe no matter how simple you plan to have your wedding you still have to fork out thousand of dollars. Most of my friends agreed that if it is not because of their parents request of having a grand wedding day, they will definitely opted for the "Nikah" ceremony only as they think they can use the extra money for other things.
Anyway, I'm not against all this, if you have the money why not, however the future of our culture and heritage does not look good. If the majority of the newly weds think that their big wedding is just a formality to satisfy their elders, than I will not be surprised that they will not object to the decision of their future sons or daughters having a small but nice and meaningful wedding.