Why creating a wedding corpus has become very different now?

Creating corpus for our children's wedding is not something new for all of us; but as time has progressed, there have resulted in many societal and cultural changes. Thus in such a scenario, the traditional way to estimate fund requirement is no longer effective or useful. The success of the ‘wedding corpus’ depends solely upon its adequacy to conduct the event successfully, and in line with expectations driven by the prevailing culture. Hence, it is clear that the importance of societal and cultural changes creates an undeniable impact on this ‘wedding corpus’. This blog shall discuss the same in detail, which is the social & cultural shift that has occurred with respect to weddings, and how that, in turn, affects our outlook towards the “wedding corpus” estimation.

A note of caution, the changes being enlisted and observed currently are dynamic and hence are subject to change over a period of time. Thus, when it’s the turn of your kids to get married, there may occur many novel cultural changes which would require a re-alignment, especially with regards to financial aspects.

If an attempt is drawn to estimate such a wedding corpus based on the many such emerging social & cultural changes, its probability of being adequate turns higher than usual. Some of such emerging changes are enlisted below-

1. Gender Bias –

Traditionally, the target corpus for a son and a daughter used to be different. 

Marrying a daughter used to be considered expensive and hence the corpus size used to be bigger. However, with the female force getting equality and becoming job-oriented, the gender bias is thinning and hence the corpus needs to be created irrespective of the gender of your kid. Most of the expenditures of either side are amounting to almost equal.

 2. Shift in Expenditure Heads –

Earlier, the dominating expenditure head used to be the "gifts to the groom's family", which is disappearing slowly. Other heads which used to be moderate in past, now have started dominating e.g. wedding/ reception venue expenditure, guests’ management, and expenditure related to host them, expensive clothing, etc.

In case of traditional weddings, involving "gifts to the groom's family" and other associated expenses, used to work on a set pattern. Thus estimating the fund was comparatively easier. But, with the intrusion of these cultural changes, new heads are dictating the wedding expenditure. Therefore, the estimation has become difficult now. The venue costs, lodging/ boarding costs, catering costs, wedding dress costs, etc. are increasing much faster than general inflation. Moreover, the events being seasonal, opportunity cost also adds to those costs. This makes wedding cost estimation, little tricky. 

3. Lump Sum V/s heads specific estimation –

Earlier, we used to project our corpus as Lump Sum values since other heads were not dominating the total expenditure and used to get accommodated in the overall expenditure. But now, many other financial heads have emerged and every individual head needs substantial funds hence the micro-level approach is required to ensure none of the heads suffers for the want of fund. Moreover, each head has its own inflation and opportunity cost component. Thus they can’t be mixed up to determine a lump sum value for projection.

4. Life-style upgrade –

We normally tend to plan our expenditure based on our present life-style. However, we forget that lifestyle up-gradation is a continuous process. It is not limited to individuals but to society, as a whole. We, by virtue of moving up in our career ladder, continue improving our lifestyle. Whereas, over-all uplift of society also continues moving up on overall lifestyle upgrade. This creates a substantial gap by the time our kids gear-up for the wedding. Therefore, the corpus we intend to create must include the additional cost on this account.

5. Marriageable Age –

Earlier, parents used to decide the wedding age for their kids but slowly kids are playing a very decisive role in such decisions. Kids, being job-oriented, want to wait for their marriage till they are settled. This is irrespective of a kid being a boy or a girl.

Early weddings are very rare now and slowly vanishing except in rural areas. Delays continue increasing the overall cost with time and attract social upgrades', as well. This necessitates a need to account for, all such aspects while planning.

Conclusion -

Kid's wedding, a very important liability for parents normally delivered in their 50s when they are at the peak of their career. Whereas, the preparation for this is started in the 30s when parents used to be in growing careers. This gap, in terms of time as well as in terms of social status, is substantial. Attempt to bridge this at the eleventh hour becomes very difficult and might lead to sacrificing retirement and hence must be corrected the moment it is recognized. It's never late than never. However, recognizing the above factors in time and aligning wedding plans appropriately, helps to achieve the event successfully.