Weddings?

My Mom is a genius, and now the story:

Over the holidays I was blessed with my family coming in and spending time with me. We had good food, good conversations, and good discussions too. One of our many discussions started to revolve around the policies being implemented (or at least the politics that keep talking about implementing policies) in Lakewood on weddings, how much money to spend on them, and the like.
In the midst of the conversation one young man chimed in on how he feels the rules for wedding are fine and if they were to be instituted it would be good for the overall community. My mom comes back with “sure it’s a good idea, but it’s been tried you know, communism. I’ve lived it. It doesn’t work”. That is when I just looked around and saw the awe on everyone’s faces. I LOVE MY MOM. GENIUS!

This morning driving to work (got to love the one hour commute) on the radio station 105.9 FM the morning announcer was talking about how shocked he was at the price of weddings. One of his co workers has just gotten married and the prices are astronomical compared to when he got married 4 years ago. Now, this is what I’m talking about!!! Good conversation!

The fact that weddings cost a lot of money is not a surprise. Yet, they cost a lot of money no matter who you are or what you believe. Weddings are expensive! Yes, because we are frum Jews and need kosher food it costs more. Though, on closer thought there are lots of areas where we can save a lot more than someone that is not keeping kosher, or Jewish, or not frum. For example there is what is known as a dress gamach. Literally a wedding dress costing thousands of dollars can cost you the price of dry cleaning it $250. Flowers, there is a gemach for center pieces, the only thing you have to do is give them back in the same condition you got them. Wow, there is thousands of dollars saved. I understand that these may not be ideal but they are ideas on how to save money.
It seems that in any organized activity clubs, sports, organized religion…when you get many people involved it sort of turns into high school but for grown ups. It’s who drives the best cars, who lives in the biggest houses, etc. Then you get people who are crying the whole time that its not fair and that ‘something’ should be done to make it fair. So, you get principals of the ‘community’ walking around implementing rules that should never be implemented.
Whatever happened to people knowing their limits? What happened to people trying through hard work, dedication and perseverance to get to where they want to go? It seems that now instead of working hard to get somewhere you want to be, you can just sit back, accumulate lots of debt and cry really hard about it, get a group of people to cry with you and then bam it’s changed for how you want it.
I think people are used to societal hand outs…thank you to the government. For example in the United States of America, Barak Obama who is running for the position of president wants to implement new reforms that give people tax breaks. He wants to give ‘stimulus packages’ to those who are not even paying taxes as to encourage them to spend and grow. This is a great example of not helping the people but truly hurting them. Like the Roman’s did in their time when you help people not work and give them money for game you will pay for it later, as the Romans found out when their Empire fell.
Do I think by putting in specific rules how to and how not to make a wedding will help? Absolutely it will NOT. Do I think that eventually if good leadership is not placed the “empire” will fall, absolutely it WILL.

Currently the world is lacking leadership. We have nobody that will stand up to the people and take action, take responsibility and lead by their word. I suppose that is why we pray for Moshiach.
I think once you start telling people how, and where they can spend their hard earned money you will run into bigger problems then the tuition crisis, wedding crisis, shidduch crisis. There will be many people who will become un-happy and will take themselves and their money and will leave to a place that does not dictate to them. Why should everyone have the same rules? That is not how it was thousands of years ago. Why should everyone be made to live the same lifestyle? If we are so keen on copying shtetyl life, well that was not how it was in the Shtetyl’s either.