You Won't Regret Spending Less — You'll Regret the EMI

A family sits in the living room with a notebook. The date is fixed, the hall is shortlisted, and someone is doing quick maths out loud. Then an uncle says the sentence that changes everything:

And just like that, the notebook is closed. The budget doubles. Nobody argues, because nobody wants to be the person who caused a lifetime of regret.

I want to sit with that sentence for a while, because it quietly decides the finances of thousands of Indian families every wedding season.

What exactly are we afraid of regretting?

Ask the question plainly and the answer gets uncomfortable.

Will you regret that the neighbours didn't praise your arrangements? That your cousin's wedding looked "better"? That the Facebook album didn't get enough likes?

That is the regret being sold to you. It is a regret about other people's opinions on one weekend of your life.

Here is what I have come to believe: you won't regret spending less. You'll regret paying five years of EMI for one weekend of validation.

Notice the difference in timelines. The praise lasts about three days. The loan lasts until your child's school admission, or longer.

Devika's ₹7 lakh lesson

Devika, 32, from Nagpur, had a simple dream. A peaceful wedding with close friends. Not a small wedding because money was short — a small wedding because that is what she actually wanted.

Her parents said something that is very hard to answer:

Read that again. The pressure wasn't from society. It came from inside the family — and it came dressed as love. That is what makes it so difficult to refuse. Nobody in that room was being unkind. Everyone was trying to be fair.

So despite her protests, the family took a ₹7 lakh loan to match her sister's event.

• Designer lehenga: ₹1.2 lakh
• Wedding venue: ₹3.5 lakh
• Guests: 600
• Memories: half remembered
• EMI: still going

Devika's own words stay with me:

She is not complaining about the decorations. She is telling you what the loan actually took. Not just money — peace. The quiet in the house. The freedom to say yes to an opportunity or no to overtime. The ability to handle a medical bill without a phone call to a relative.

One line from her story deserves highlighting: 600 guests, half remembered. We feed hundreds of people, forget what was served, and remember the repayment schedule for years.

Marriage is not a financial plan

There is a second belief hiding behind the first one. It is the idea that once the wedding happens, life will sort itself out. Ho jayega, shaadi ke baad sab set ho jaata hai.

Let me say the harsh part kindly: getting married does not guarantee emotional stability. It does not guarantee financial growth. It does not guarantee retirement planning, personal maturity, or a joint understanding of money.

Marriage is a relationship, not a retirement plan. It can be a beautiful foundation for all of the above, but only if the two people build it deliberately.

And most couples don't. Most enter marriage with:

• No discussion on shared finances
• No clarity on who handles what
• No emergency plan for job loss or illness

They enter with romance. And reality slaps them within a year — usually in the form of a hospital bill, a lost job, or a fight about a purchase that was never really about the purchase.

The irony is painful. Families will spend months negotiating the menu and the venue, and not one evening discussing how the couple will handle money together for the next forty years.

Practical steps you can actually take

If a wedding is coming up in your family — yours or your child's — here is how to keep the celebration and drop the damage.

1. Write one number before you write one plan. Decide the total amount the family can spend from savings, without borrowing. That number is the wedding budget. Everything else — guests, venue, outfits — is designed to fit inside it, not the other way around.
2. Refuse the fairness trap with a better kind of fairness. If a sibling's wedding was grand, the honest comparison is not the expense, it is the outcome. You can offer to match what was spent, but in a different form: "We can put the same amount towards your home down payment or your savings." Many people will choose the second. Ask.
3. Put the loan into monthly language. A ₹7 lakh loan does not feel like anything on paper. "Roughly ₹15,000 every month for the next five years" feels like something. Say the EMI out loud in the family meeting, along with what else that money could have done — a SIP, school fees, a parent's medical cover.
4. Cut the guest list, not the joy. Guests are the biggest multiplier in an Indian wedding. Every extra 100 people adds food, seating, hospitality and travel. Half of them will not remember what they ate. The people who matter will remember that they were there.
5. Have the three money conversations before the wedding date. Sit with your partner and answer: what comes into this house every month and what goes out; who will handle which payments and decisions; and what we do if one of us loses a job or falls ill for three months. Write the answers down. This one evening is worth more than the decor budget.
6. Protect an emergency fund from the wedding fund. Whatever happens, do not empty the family's emergency savings for the function. The celebration ends on Sunday. Emergencies do not check your calendar.
7. Give someone permission to say enough. Appoint one calm person in the family whose job is to ask, before every new expense: is this for us, or for an audience?

The real wedding

I'll leave you with the line I keep returning to in this chapter of The Money Wake-Up Call:

Culture is important. But not at the cost of your future. Love needs support, not sparkle. Security needs savings, not social status. Your marriage deserves emotional intimacy, not financial insanity.

Your next step

Today, take a sheet of paper and write the honest answer to one question: how much of our wedding plan is for us, and how much is for people who will forget the menu by Monday?

Then show that sheet to one person in your family. That conversation is where the loan gets smaller and the peace gets bigger.

Share this

Hitesh Lakhani

Author of The Money Wake-Up Call, The Energy Wake-Up Call and The Relationship Wake-Up Call. He writes about the decisions people actually face — money, energy, relationships and business — without the jargon.

Read the book