An Afghan National Army soldier and his fiancé on Saturday held a very simple and inexpensive wedding ceremony in Kabul and instead of spending thousands of dollars on the occasion they took the money and distributed it among the needy.

The groom, Hassan Reza Hazara and his wife, Shahrabano Nawrozi, were engaged for three years, before marrying on Saturday.

According to them everything was done on a small budget and even the musicians performed for free.

The money the couple saved was divided up and put into envelopes and distributed among unemployed people who wait on street corners in the city for odd jobs.

“Expensive weddings force our youths to leave the country (to work and find money) and sometimes they get addicted (to drugs while out of the country). In order to fight this wrong tradition, today we are holding this simple ceremony,” said Hazara.

“I am happy with today’s ceremony. Our families tried to stop us and still some of them are not happy with it, but we will convince them (that it was the right thing to do),” Nawrozi said. 

The groom and bride said they were unable to get all their family members to agree to their choice of a simple ceremony. But after three years, they were finally able to convince some of them.  

“We are happy because today Hazara holds a simple wedding ceremony. At the first I disagreed, but now I am happy,” Zahra, the wife of the groom’s brother said. 

“Today this wedding was really different to other wedding parties. This is the best wedding party that I ever have seen. We should consider it spiritually,” Mohammad Mahdi Zafari, a colleague of Hazara’s said. 

The newly married couple’s family in turn called on their fellow Afghans to stop the tradition of lavish weddings and to not spend so much money on such ceremonies.