What are wedding customs and cultural practices in Afghan wedding?
What are similarities in Pak and Afghan weddings?
Dulhan does not always need to be a girl.
Ok ok joking 
Re: Afghan Wedding and their customs
One main difference between Pakistani and Afghan weddings is the engagement. In Afghan weddings, the engagement is almost as large as the wedding itself and involves all of the things you would need for a wedding, such as an elaborate dress, cake, flowers, and invitations. Engagements can have as many guests as a wedding. Usually both sides contribute to the cost of the engagement party but if the gentleman is more traditional, he covers the entire cost himself. Our engagement party was held at a country home in Yorkshire over a weekend and had about 300 or so guests as we had guests coming in from abroad (most of my family lives in Denmark) and my husband has a large family. How large or formal the engagement party varies though and depends on the prospective couple. At the engagement, the bride is presented with gifts (mainly jewellery) from family and close family friends. It’s usually at this point that she receives the engagement ring. However, as my husband had already given me the engagement ring when he proposed (and this was long before the engagement party), he presented me with a jewellery set, which I later wore on our wedding day.
The Nikah is also performed at the engagement party. The reasoning behind this is that, with the Nikah, the couple can freely interact with each other during the engagement period and the time leading up to the actual wedding. However, this can sometimes result in a bit of a problem. As the Nikah makes you husband and wife before God, you would have to obtain a legal/ religious divorce if the engagement is broken off. For this reason, people are beginning to wait and perform the Nikah on the actual day of the wedding reception. We had the Nikah performed at our engagement party as we were getting married in a rather short period of time anyway. The period between the engagement and actual wedding varies and can be short as a week or as long as a number of months depending on the couple.
Another key difference is wedding attire. The bride wears a green gown (this is usually traditional attire but can be western gown as well) with a green shawl for the Nikah and a white wedding gown for the wedding reception. As our Nikah was performed at our engagement party, I wore two different gowns: a deep green traditional outfit with gold and cream accents for the actual Nikah ceremony and a green western gown for the latter evening part of the engagement party. For the wedding, I wore a white wedding gown with lace detailing.
Re: Afghan Wedding and their customs
My SIL is afghani..so we did whole mix wedding. They did their things in mehndi and wedding day..and we did ours. People absolutely loved it!
Re: Afghan Wedding and their customs
No Mehndi… No songs
Tell us more…
Re: Afghan Wedding and their customs
There is a mehndi. It’s quite similar to a Pakistani mehndi in terms of henna, songs, dancing, food, and the like. There are minor differences in terms of the type of songs and food though.
Re: Afghan Wedding and their customs
There is a mehndi. It's quite similar to a Pakistani mehndi in terms of henna, songs, dancing, food, and the like. There are minor differences in terms of the type of songs and food though.
Do you guys have dowry culture too?
Re: Afghan Wedding and their customs
^Back home, there is a dowry culture unfortunately. However, this is not as common with people living abroad.
Another issue back home is the cost associated with weddings. In recent years, the cost of weddings has increased quite a bit and has gotten rather out of hand. As, traditionally, it is the groom who must cover all of the costs associated with the wedding (as in the groom himself, not his family), many men are finding it difficult to get married (as they cannot afford the wedding costs) and are delaying marriage.
Re: Afghan Wedding and their customs
Is 'Walwar' custom also followed in Afghanistan?
Re: Afghan Wedding and their customs
^Unfortunately, walwar is still followed in Afghanistan, particularly in the more tribal areas. It is practiced almost exclusively among Pashtuns. The amount of walwar varies and is determined by various factors, such as the “reputation” (read: virginity), beauty, education, and social class or economic standard of the woman. The amount typically asked for a woman who has never been married is usually twice or even thrice as much as that of a woman who was previously married and is now divorced or widowed. The amount of walwar asked is also higher when the man is already married. The prevalent view is that higher the price, the more “honourable” it is.
Certain areas, such as Wardak and Paktia, are known for staunchly practicing (asking for and taking) walwar. In these areas, the “price” (as crass as this sounds) is known to be especially high, ranging from £9000 to as high as £60000 in some cases. Consequently, men must sometimes work abroad for 10 to 15 years in order to be able to afford the cost of walwar and are in their 40s by the time they get married.
The prevalence of this disgusting and hideously un-Islamic practice is nonexistent among people living abroad (I have never heard of anyone abroad practicing this) and thankfully, is decreasing back home. Unfortunately though, I think it will be quite a while before this practice dies out. One of the primary reasons for this is the importance placed on reputation. If a family does not ask for walwar for their daughter, people assume that there is something “wrong” with the woman (ie. she’s not a virgin, is divorced, etc.) and this often leads some families to ask for walwar, even if they oppose the practice in principle. Another issue is that the practice is viewed as providing security for women as when walwar is taken for a woman, she is never divorced her by husband (as divorcing her would mean losing the money he paid in walwar).
Re: Afghan Wedding and their customs
But price received as walwar is not given to bride in any case. so it seems that woman is a loser in walvar in any case.
Re: Afghan Wedding and their customs
^It's given to the bride's family, never to the bride herself. What is even more tragic is that in some cases, families use this as a means to become well off.
Re: Afghan Wedding and their customs
There are reports that due to thsi walwar custom, human trafficking is at its high in areas, where it is followed.
www.netpak.org/wp-content/uploads/…/Final-Bride-Price-Report-.doc
As many as 77 % (135) respondents identified the age groups of the trafficked girls below 20. The accumulated average age calculated based on civil society opinion is 18. Of the trafficked women, at least four belonged to as low as less than 10 years of age, while there was a case of above 51 years as well. Young girls are in greater demand. One reason for this high demand is that they are easily manageable and can be productive for a longer period.
Table 3: Marriage Purpose
[TABLE=“class: cms_table, width: 389, align: center”]
Group
Data
Sex
23
Labor
26
Both
117
Others
7
No Reply
2
** Total**
**175 **
Once trafficked in the garb of marriage, there are endless sufferings for women ranging from sexual exploitation to eternal labor. They are maltreated by the in-laws, who treat them as commodities they have purchased to render various services. The ill-treatment at the hands of the in-laws is a routine. Some of the woes of the trafficked women pointed out by the civil society respondents are as under:
- A majority of the girls sold into marriage or returning back are either re-sold or live under pathetic conditions at the parents’ house or are booked under the false cases of the Zina Ordinance.
- The husband family first tries to pressurize the parents of the girls into returning the girls and most often the girls are returned as the parents do not have the resources to give back the money taken from the groom’s family.
- T**he status of the girls bought under marriage is that of a paid commodity or service provider rather than a legitimate marriage partner. They usually serve as farm laborers and a free sex partner.
** - There is no respect for the trafficked women and the in-laws behaviour with such girls is insulting, leading, invariably to the girls being mentally disturbed facing acute psychological problems.
- The majority of the people are of the opinion that marriages arranged with people from Punjab are not successful. From 70 to 80 per cent of the known cases of those who have returned home end up with a divorce.
- Another opinion was that such marriages are not real marriages in the normal sense but a way to procure cheap labor. Girls return and cases are lodged at the police stations by the purchasers.
The reasons why girls from NWFP become victims of trafficking business are several. The primary causes that lure them into the trap are poverty of the girls’ family, ignorance of the parents and their exploitation by those engaged in the business, lack of awareness and education of the people, absence of proper laws to contain the practice and non-implementation of existing laws and statutes (including international covenants) that can help put an end to the practice.
In the light of the responses received during the survey, the top reason cited for the practice was poverty (96), followed by lack of education/awareness (39), traditional practice (16) and others such as lust for money, price-hike, lack of legal framework, etc., as seen in the following table:
Table 4: Reasons for Women Trafficking
[TABLE=“class: cms_table, align: center”]
S No
**Reasons **
**Data **
1
Poverty
96
2
Lack of education/awareness
39
3
Tradition
16
4
Lust for money
13
5
Price-hike
9
6
Lack of laws
8
7
Don’t know
1
**Total **
182
*****The total figure is high because of multiple responses