Honestly, I don’t have any particularly strong moral condemnation of things like bride price, a wedding house, or a wedding car.
They’re more like products of an era—of a certain stage of social development.
But once any custom shifts from “mutual consent” to “if you don’t give, you can’t get married,” and from expressing sincerity to an asset game between two families, in the end, the people who often truly bear the costs are still the young couples who are preparing to live together.
Japan has gone through similar changes too.
During Japan’s period of rapid economic growth and the bubble economy era, getting married was also very concerned with show and spectacle. Expenses such as the wedding, dowry, gifts, housing, and home appliances were all far from cheap, and families’ requirements for marriage conditions were far more complicated than they are now.
But after the bubble burst, Japan entered a long period of low growth. Young people’s expectations for income, their consumption values, and their views on marriage all changed.
Many things that people used to think “should be part of getting married” were gradually repriced by reality.
Nowadays, it’s rare to hear Japanese parents treat “you must first have a house, a car, and how much money as gifts” as strict, non-negotiable hurdles for their children’s marriage.
If you have the means, you do a little more. If your ability is average, you keep it simpler.
If you can’t buy a house, you rent. If you don’t need a car, you don’t buy one. And wedding budgets are kept within one’s means.
Compared with two families setting requirements for each other, it’s more about the young couple’s own income, jobs, and life plans—and whether they can actually live well after getting married.
That’s really the fairly natural state of marriage that comes about as a society gradually matures.
$BTC $ETH
#美国续请失业金人数降至177.9万
They’re more like products of an era—of a certain stage of social development.
But once any custom shifts from “mutual consent” to “if you don’t give, you can’t get married,” and from expressing sincerity to an asset game between two families, in the end, the people who often truly bear the costs are still the young couples who are preparing to live together.
Japan has gone through similar changes too.
During Japan’s period of rapid economic growth and the bubble economy era, getting married was also very concerned with show and spectacle. Expenses such as the wedding, dowry, gifts, housing, and home appliances were all far from cheap, and families’ requirements for marriage conditions were far more complicated than they are now.
But after the bubble burst, Japan entered a long period of low growth. Young people’s expectations for income, their consumption values, and their views on marriage all changed.
Many things that people used to think “should be part of getting married” were gradually repriced by reality.
Nowadays, it’s rare to hear Japanese parents treat “you must first have a house, a car, and how much money as gifts” as strict, non-negotiable hurdles for their children’s marriage.
If you have the means, you do a little more. If your ability is average, you keep it simpler.
If you can’t buy a house, you rent. If you don’t need a car, you don’t buy one. And wedding budgets are kept within one’s means.
Compared with two families setting requirements for each other, it’s more about the young couple’s own income, jobs, and life plans—and whether they can actually live well after getting married.
That’s really the fairly natural state of marriage that comes about as a society gradually matures.
$BTC $ETH
#美国续请失业金人数降至177.9万