Tag archive for ‘Prince’s wedding’
62 Year Old Saudi Prince Pays $50 million for 25 Year Old Bride!
Reprinted from Punch
May 1, 2018
Saudi prince, Sultan Bin Salman, has allegedly paid the sum of $50m (about N18bn) as bride price for his new wife, a 25-year-old woman.
It was gathered that the bride, who is believed to be a national of United Arab Emirates, received numerous gifts for her elaborate wedding, aside from the $50m bride price.
No fewer than 30 large boxes were offloaded from a white luxurious bus to be presented to the bride’s family.
A chariot filled with gifts for the bride and her family was also seen at the venue of the wedding.
Stories about the elaborate wedding, which took place at the Four Seasons Hotel in Kuwait at Burj Alshaya, have gone viral on the internet, with many reactions trailing it.
A Twitter user, Amal Abdul @amalabdul, shared the details of the wedding on her handle. She tweeted:
“Sultan bin Salman Saudi prince 68 years old married a 25yr old girl. Her dowry was 50M dollars, the convoy had about 20-30 white range rovers, a lot of diamonds as gift and this was her in the wedding gown.”
Amal posted this photo, showing the bride in a wedding dress apparently large enough to make tents for 50 refugees:
Sultan Salman Abdulaziz al-Saud was born in 1956 in Riyadh, so he was actually 62 at the time of the wedding, not 68. He was the first Saudi, Arab or Muslim to travel into space, which he did in 1985 aboard NASA’s space shuttle Discovery. His father has been king of Saudi Arabia since 2015.
Here is a video of the wedding:
My Reaction
I’m honestly sick of reading about Saudi princes buying 300 million dollar homes, a $450 million painting, a half billion dollar yacht. Meanwhile Muslims are dying in refugee camps, starving in Yemen (due to bombing by the Saudis themselves), suffering in Palestine… It’s wretched and disgusting.
It doesn’t bother me that the “groom” is 62 and the bride is 25. I don’t care that this is a cynical arrangement in which he gets a sexy young wife and she gets a filthy rich old geezer. They both know what they’re getting. They’re adults and can make their own choices.
What bothers me is the way the wealth and resources of the Ummah are being squandered. These Saudi royals did not do anything to earn this money with their own hands. They happened to be sitting on top of immense oil fields. Almost overnight they went from being simple Bedouins to the richest people in the world.
This resource is a gift to them from Allah. In fact it is a gift to all Muslims. It is their duty to use it to help all suffering people. Furthermore they should be using this wealth to ensure a future for their own nation after the oil runs out. It should be used to educate the populace to a high level, and to develop industries and technologies that will enable Saudi Arabia to become a world leader.
Instead the money is being wasted on frivolous things, and is being spent to fund wars that harm innocents.
I can understand the impulse to say, “Oh, but it’s so romantic, like a fairytale.” But I don’t agree. All the fairy tales I know are about the brave prince rescuing the damsel in distress.Not about a prince wasting all the kingdom’s wealth on diamonds, chariots and Range Rovers.
So? What do you think?
– Wael Abdelgawad, Zawaj.com Editor