What a toi really costs
I added up eleven weddings in Talas and the villages. The hall is not the expensive part.
Zholdosh A. · 14 Nov 2021 · Issue 62 min read
Families tell me the wedding hall is the big cost. In the eleven budgets I collected it was on average less than a fifth. The real money goes on meat, on the gifts both families exchange, on the clothes, and on the second and third smaller feasts that nobody counts as "the wedding" but everybody attends.
The gifts are the interesting part, because they are not really spending: they are a savings scheme that runs over generations. What you give at your neighbour's son's toi comes back, more or less, at your daughter's. The problem starts when a family stops being invited and keeps giving.
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