Lavish Weddings

Growing Expenses of Weddings among the Tigrinya Speaking People in Highland Eritrea

Abstract

In Eritrea, among the Tigrinya speaking people lavish weddings have become a fashion. The families spend a relatively large sum of money on the wedding ceremony as well as the dowry. The present article seeks to understand the social background of this seemingly popular practice in Eritrea.
Starting with the significance of marriage in former decades, the author raises some possible explanations for the growing expenses of a wedding. Marriages have become independent from traditional social structures, such as land tenure, lineage system, local political interests, and this came to be reflected in the wedding ceremony.
Similarities between weddings in present day Eritrea and weddings in rural Hungary in the 1980’s have been drawn and the conclusion is made that there are certain changes originating in the transformation of the economy that lead to the growing expenditures of weddings and the disappearance of rituals. Related to this, in urban Eritrea the rising costs of dowry is seen as a reflection of the unstable economic and social situation as a result of losing connection with and economic base where land, marriage and social status were interlinked and was dominated by elders, the shumagelle.