Shameless Weddings

I got an interesting e-mail a few weeks ago, rebuking me for being a bad Muslim because my family have big weddings and for wasting money when people are suffering across the world. Basically, saying I have no shame and should set a better example.

I haven't got around to replying yet...but where do I even start.

I could get angry and be nasty about it, but there are two good things worth pointing out:

1.     This person at least had the guts and made the effort to say what they think.

2.     I am quite shameless and proud of it – shameless in asking for help, offering help, sticking my nose in when I see something wrong, in asking questions.  It has taken a lifetime to get this way and I am grateful and relieved. Oh, and shameless when it comes to having fun, I love halal fun and can't apologise for this.

Other than this...ouch, you accept when you share your stories that you will be criticised, challenged and maybe even trolled. But perhaps readers forget that what they are seeing is not the whole story. This is not from my attempts to sanitise my life, but usually to maintain someone's privacy or to avoid backbiting or upsetting someone.

To set out my personal belief: I don’t agree with lavish, overly extravagant weddings that land people in debt, encourage one-upmanship or mean that people are doing things that are haram or disliked by Allah (SWT). I think these things strip away the blessings from your life and marriage and put unfair pressure on others to do the same.

Saying that, when I had my wedding, I wasn’t of the same mind and had over 1000 people, mostly family/clan (my families doing, not mine, I didn’t know who most of them were).  So I understand where young people are coming from, when they want a special day.

Most of the weddings you see on the blog are either family affairs or friends weddings we are attending as guests.  For family weddings, all of these have been at a fraction of the budget for a typical wedding, most of the events, décor and even some of the food for the pre-wedding events has been done by hand, at home or by all of us pitching in.  We sisters are good at that - collaborating to make the most of our resources and benefit the most people we can.

At pretty much every wedding in the family, my husband specially and I have tried to encourage the wedding to be segregated and to avoid music.  We can advise and encourage but not force others to live by our values.  At one family members wedding there was a mini war of attrition all day between my husband who kept trying to switch the music off and my brother who kept switching it on for the various family and bridal entrances.  As I say – you can advise, you cannot force.

Where we are guests at other people's weddings, we don’t have control over what goes on, but I love food and people and good company, so I usually enjoy a good wedding.  If I'm being invited, who I am I to turn my nose up?

Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) said: “I heard the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) say: ‘The rights of a Muslim over his fellow Muslim are five: returning greetings, visiting the sick, attending funerals, accepting invitations, and saying Yarhamuk Allaah (may Allaah have mercy on you) when he sneezes.’” (Saheeh al-Bukhaari (1164) and Saheeh Muslim (4022))

I also love weddings because I love hanging out with (most of) my extended family, I can't invite them all over because they don’t seem to be able to sit in the same room together, but they seem to be able to behave at weddings (just about, and again not all). 

Certainly, at family weddings, the family often use it as an excuse to make up with people who are not talking to each other, to invite those who are not speaking to us.  An occasion and a way to heal wounds and maintain kinship ties

Other than that, I can only say that I pray that when it comes to my on children's weddings that I have been able to convince them over the years of the benefits of simplicity.  They might listen and take this route, but again they may not.  And the sunnah is simple but doesn't mean it cannot be generous, the nikah of the Prophet (sallallaho Alaihi wasallam) and his companions (radi allahu anhum) varied from the very simple, to feeding greater numbers of people with different types of food.

The person who e-mailed me did share something I thought was useful, which I wanted to share here to inspire us:

An account of the wedding of the most beloved daughter of our Prophet RasoolAllah (sallallaho Alaihi wasallam) Fatimah (radhiallah anha):

The venue: Masjid Nabawi

The occasion: The marraige of the most beloved daughter of the world Fatimah bint Muhammad (Sallallaho Alaihi wasallam).

The guests: A few of the Sahaba (companions of the Prophet Sallalaho Alaihi wasallam) Radhiallah anh.

The Groom: Ali bin Abi Talib (RadhiAllah unh) who came alone, no procession, no fanfare.

The Time: A short Khutba (sermon) of a few minutes by RasoolAllah ( Sallallaho Alaihi wassalam) and the exchange of vows (the nikah).

The Meal: A handful of dried dates.

The bride is then taken to the groom's house by her father RasoolAllah (Sallallaho Alaihi wasallam), who departs after supplicating to Allah for granting Barakah in this union.

My Cousin's Wedding: The Walima

My cousin’s Walima was a nice, easy-going affair. It was much closer to home than the wedding and the stress of the wedding was over by this point. 

It was a case of coming home from work, getting dressed and turning up to the venue to hang out and eat.  I ignored the people who had been rude to me at the wedding and it made for a much more enjoyable evening, spent taking bad selfies with my other half and joking around with the kids.

The bride looked so pretty, you could see her dress sparkling away under the lights.

This is my older children’s response every time I try to take a picture ☹

Loved Harlequin Sisters flowy pale mint dress, by one of my fave Pakistani designers Threads andMotifs from the fab Zardosi Shop.

My dress was from Shaadi Abaya’s in Green Street, I really enjoyed wearing it:

My mum bought all of the little girls their matching dresses, they looked so sweet, like rowdy pale blue little parakeets:

I really liked the ombre effect of Shutterbug Sisters dress:

Food was good of course:

I enjoyed making friends with the grooms family and look forward to seeing them again in future and I wish the bride and groom a lifetime of contentment and happiness insh’Allah.

My Cousin's Wedding: The Actual Wedding :)

I haven’t blogged in a while between a very slow, dodgy laptop and life being so busy. I find that when I have lots to share and it will take ages, it puts me off from starting.  So, to catch up, rather than long blog posts, I thought would share a few pictures of what has been going on with a few words. Hopefully that will help clear my head to write something more interesting insh’Allah 😊

You can also keep up with everything on my Instagram page, and via my Insta stories – I have a lot of fun capturing things for this, and it feels much easier to engage with sisters in this way.

My cousin’s wedding was just before Eid and we had a lot of fun dressing up, eating good food and catching up with family.  The bride was beautiful – her make up was perfect and I loved that she had a bog smile on her face the whole day and didn’t let anything bother her mash’Allah. 

Interestingly, there was a party in another hall at the same venue for a Pakistani film launch, so some of the actor’s randomly came up for a photoshoot…

My outfit from Malika Boutique, really nice quality and really reasonable.

Got the boys kurtay in the colour scheme of jewel tones.  Of course they insisted on wearing them with their trainers.

Henna on the brides little sister:

All of the guys:

The ladies: my mum, sisters, sister-in-law and daughter. We joked we looked like the Power Puff girls with the red, blue and green.

Lots of nice details and the cakes were a feast for the eyes, I never actually got to taste any!

I thought the wedding favours were a nice touch – pure, local honey and Zamzam water:

Lots of good food:

This fruit tree got demolished – the little ones were making mini fruit kebabs for themselves.

The bride looked like a doll, may Allah SWT keep her always happy, smiling and contented insh’Allah.

Pakistani actors promoting their film Paray Hut Love (Maya Ali and Sheheryar Munawar):

It was mostly a nice wedding, with a lot of good cheer and wishes for the bride and groom.  It says something about their lovely natures that not one person in the room could have wanted anything but the best for them.

I did struggle at this wedding with the bad behaviour of a very small number of people.  I had to keep my mouth firmly shut and my tongue polite, because I don’t believe in causing drama at other people’s weddings.  As my siblings know I can be very fierce and for all of my love and kindness, there is a side of me that will rain down lightning and thunderstorms on your head if you cross a line with me.  So I had to reign that side in and be on my best behaviour despite the rudeness and unkindness of a few others.

Well the wedding is over now, and I don’t have to be nice if I don’t want to 😊

My Cousin's Dua-e-Khair / Henna

For my cousin’s wedding, my aunt invited us to a party for dua (supplication) and naseehah (advice) for the bride. This was something we had not heard of before. In our family, the minute a wedding is announced, we just want to party like a bunch of heathens.

I wore one of my favourite outfits by Gul's Style London (I last wore it five years ago and it hadn’t fit since then):

I matched it with lots of colourful bangles and earrings from N.K Collection – I always find something there to go with whatever outfit I have:

The function was in a marquee at my aunty’ house – she has a lot of friends, so this ended up totally packed. I loved the bright colours and floral theme – there were flowers everywhere.

It was a nice evening, there was recitation of the Quran and the women were encouraged to give their advice to the bride.  It varied from the sensible (to never share your personal matters regarding your husband with your family) to the slightly cringeworthy (say I love you and you are marrying to have children…). You should have seen the brides face for that one.

I offered the following two bits if advice:

Love each other for the sake of Allah (SWT) and he will place blessing in your love

Don’t worry about your rights in the marriage – this is your husbands problem to fulfil and he should worry about them, worry about your husbands rights, these are your concern and job to fulfil.

After more advice and lots of mike hogging and speeches from some of the ladies, we had dinner. There was so much food – both catered and brought by friends. This mojito was pretty good, the poor mojito jar did not fare well though.

The bride looked so pretty mash’Allah

The little girls enjoyed their own party and posed up a storm:

My youngest child, and too many sweets is probably not the best combination. At one point we heard a loud crash outside and I thought oh heck, I hope that’s not one of my kids.  Of course someone came in and told me Baby had broken the mojito jar.

We all got our henna done which was nice, I’m usually too busy on Eid or weddings to get it done properly.  The lady doing it was also super quick.

We finished the evening with cake and Indian sweets and guests started leaving in time for the evening prayer (maghrib)  which was a change from the usual henna parties which finish just before midnight when we get chucked out of the hall.