greed leads to mere emptiness. of the life and it will have no contentment ever, if a wedding is based on greedy motives.
first of all expecting and giving extravagantly unnecessarily is WRONG.
& the reality is that even after so much gift giving, family of the females may never know just how rotten, ingrate, mean, immoral, and deceitful miserable person will take the shape of a son in law from hell.
but on the other hand, there are men and women who marry on the basis of honesty and care for each other and not what who has to give to whome in terms of monetary and material gains.
may Allah swt bless marriages of people with clean hearted spouses who are not greedy and mean. amen.
I think its fine if the parents of the bride wanna give their daughter dowry and stuff or not. Its not something the guys family should interfer as such. But lately I have noticed tht especially the middleclass and upper class of Pakistani people demand on giving their daughters loads of stuff for the wedding just to show off. And I think its a sad "tradition", because this increase the pressure on the family which might seem rich/middle class but really doesnt have enough money to all this show off.
From a personal experience. My brother was married in pak and the brides family and us are from same social status. We live in Europe. To be honest since my bro got married (almost 5 yrs ago) non of us have gonne back to Pak. My SIL went to Pak twice during this period and both times she lived at her parents home, since we have absolutely no family in pak. She would be all alone. Now when she got married, my mum told her father tht there is no need for dowry and stuff. My mum had just furnitured our entire bungalow, and beside we didnt have real any space to put her stuff in. But still her father bought her EVERY damn thing in dowry and its all locked up in 2 rooms and catching dust. What a aaste of money IMO. Because my the time my brother builds a bungalow in Pak, her dowry furniture will be outdated and she will go out and buy something new of course. Her father should have spend those money on the wedding of some poor girl/their housemaid or anything. This was really the most shocking waste of money I saw there. Its so sad that we as muslims in Pakistan are doing stuff which are literally wrong in Islam just to show off. It pisses me off. I have told my parents I dont want dowry. But I guess no one will ever listen me :( feel helpless