“What will we start with?” May Badawy asks her fiancé Amr Gamal about the priorities for furnishing their future flat, during their conversation with Zawia3. Things seem different from before: May and Amr decided to prepare everything for their home away from the pressures of family, relatives and society.
Amr, a young man in his late twenties, does not imagine that his wedding day with May will come after the home has become complete: a bedroom, a living room set, appliances and air conditioners. The calculations are harsher: every time the two of them added an item to the furnishing list, new prices appeared, and that is where the cutting began.
Data from the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) show that the number of marriage contracts in Egypt fell by 2.5% in 2024, to about 936,700 contracts, compared with 961,200 contracts in 2023. These figures alone are not enough to determine the reasons for the decline in the number of marriages or to measure the impact of high prices on them.
Price inflation over recent years has also changed the cost of living and of founding families considerably, as average annual inflation, according to World Bank data, stood at about 5% in 2020 and 5.2% in 2021, before rising to 13.9% in 2022, then jumping to 33.9% in 2023, the highest during the period mentioned, before falling to 28.3% in 2024 and 14.1% in 2025. A decline in the inflation rate means a slowdown in price increases, not a return of prices to their previous levels.
Mahmoud El-Hawary and Aya Mohamed, engaged and about to marry, are living this equation while preparing to set up their home. With the rising prices of housing, furniture, appliances and gold, the furnishing lists that seemed normal years ago can no longer be carried out with the same ease, and the agreement between the two sides has become more closely tied to what can actually be afforded.
Mahmoud says that what he was thinking of buying about 5 years ago is not necessarily what he needs today: instead of furnishing the home with several rooms and complete furniture, he believes the start can be limited to the basics, with some needs coming later.
“Instead of buying a bedroom, a children’s room, living room furniture and a salon, I can make do with the bedroom and the salon, which I will use at the moment,” Mahmoud tells Zawia3.
Aya interjects from another angle, noting that the idea of postponement has become an option open to families, but Mahmoud believes it is no longer just an option: “It is no longer a choice; it has become an imposition.”
“It is no longer a choice; it has become an imposition.”
Mahmoud El-Hawary, on postponing some of the marriage furnishings.
In Aya’s experience, the change does not concern only the number of pieces of furniture, but what the two consider “necessary” in the first place. Aya places a set of appliances in the category of luxuries that can be done without, such as the microwave, the air fryer, the dishwasher and air conditioning, while she considers the refrigerator, the washing machine, the cooker and the water heater basics that are hard to drop, as she tells Zawia3.
Even within the list of household goods, Aya sees that the choice has become one between buying a larger number of lower quality or a smaller number of better quality. Her aim is no longer for the home to look complete at any price, so much as for things to be usable and to last.
“We’ll Push Through Life Together”
The families of Rahma El-Sayed and Mohamed Abdel Moneim realise the size of the burden falling on young people about to marry, with the rising cost of housing and furnishing. This is what made the two families give up some of their demands to make it easier to complete the marriage, which is not necessarily a relinquishing of a right or a responsibility.
Rahma notes that the reality of high prices is not tied to one party rather than the other, adding that the working young woman has become more aware of income levels and the cost of the flat, the furniture and the furnishings. “She will not make the matter more difficult; the idea of marriage has become difficult at present, and a young woman will not decide to add other burdens to what is already difficult,” Rahma says.
It seems that inflation not only resets the calculations of the two parties in the relationship, but pushes them and their families to renegotiate what can be postponed and what must be provided from the start.
Hassan Abdel Fattah, who recently married, tells Zawia3 that rising prices affect both parties in the relationship, and he believes that women’s contribution to setting up the home has become larger, because of the economic pressure that forces an increase in the contribution of the woman and her family to ease the cost of the start in order to complete the marriage.
“Limited-income families resort to instalments and gradual purchasing, even if this leads to paying higher prices and taking on cheques, trust receipts and debts that last years after marriage, and some families may resort to borrowing from lending companies at high interest,” Hassan says.
Searching for the Cheapest, Even If the Difference Is EGP 1,000
Mahmoud El-Hawary says that rising prices push people to search for price differences, even if they are only EGP 1,000, and to move to more distant areas or shops to get furniture or appliances at a lower price.
In the past, as Mahmoud explains, buying the bedroom from the nearest place at an acceptable price was enough, but with rising prices, searching for alternatives has become part of the furnishing process itself.
Aya Mohamed says that some young women accept marrying with second-hand furniture, while others refuse that, and she does not see herself ready to start her life with second-hand furniture or appliances. Rahma El-Sayed, meanwhile, says that second-hand does not automatically become an alternative to new, but it enters the circle of options that prices have imposed on the man or woman about to marry.
May Badawy believes that limited budgets have forced men and women about to marry to abandon the pattern of separate purchasing, and to sit together to determine their needs according to the financial capacity of both parties. Amr Gamal adds that rising prices have pushed families to exclude luxuries that for years remained an essential part of furnishing the home, foremost among them the “nish” china cabinet, to reduce the amount of furnishings, and to limit appliances to what meets the need, such as buying one washing machine and one refrigerator instead of duplicating them.
Slowing Inflation Does Not Bring Back Yesterday’s Budget
The movement of prices explains part of the distance between what Amr and May planned and what they can buy, but the inflation rate needs a precise reading. Moving from a large annual increase to a smaller one means that prices are rising at a slower pace, not that they have fallen by the same percentage. Hence, someone about to marry may read news of inflation slowing, then find that his shopping list is still higher than his savings. There is no arithmetical contradiction between the two: one measures the speed of change, and the other relates to the price level at which the increases have accumulated.
Likewise, the general increase in consumer prices does not mean that every appliance or piece of furniture has risen by the same percentage. The index combines multiple groups with different weights, while the home-furnishing budget consists of specific goods that a person buys at a particular time and place. That is why an old budget cannot be multiplied by the inflation rate alone to produce a definite cost for a new marriage. The comparison requires the same specifications and the date of purchase, in addition to distinguishing between the cash price and the final cost when paying in instalments.
Nor does the percentage decline in marriage contracts alone reveal the number of those who postponed marriage because of high prices. It compares the contracts registered in two years, and does not track every young man or woman who decided to wait, nor does it separate out their motives. Data on age, income, work and housing, along with studies that follow households over time, may help explain the shifts, but a causal link does not come from placing the inflation rate next to the marriage rate. As for the interviews here, they reveal the decisions and experiences of those who gave them, without claiming that they are a representative sample of all Egyptians.
These limits give the stories their meaning instead of diminishing their importance. What Mahmoud and Aya describe is a tangible effect on a list of things they choose, and on when they buy them and their quality, not a statistical estimate of the behaviour of all families. Price pressures may be similar while the response differs: one family reduces the number of pieces, another postpones an entire room, and a third refuses second-hand despite the high cost of new. This difference is present within the interviews themselves, and it prevents a single model being presented as a social prescription that high prices have imposed on everyone.
The Flat and the Job Come Before the Appliance List
A research reading published by the Economic Research Forum in 2017 places housing at the heart of the transition to marriage, and discusses how the availability of rentals affected its timing in Egypt. Based on 2012 data, it presents an initial housing cost equivalent to about two years of the groom’s wages and representing 28% of the marriage budget. This is a historical comparison, not a pricing of a flat today or a fixed ratio that applies to the families the report interviewed.
The comparison redirects attention to the difference between doing without an appliance and securing a place to live. Deleting an item from the list reduces an amount required at the start, but it does not by itself answer the bigger question relating to housing and the cost of continuing to live in it. In May and Amr’s conversation, the furnishings are tied in the first place to a future flat being prepared for; in the accounts of the other participants, the cost of setting up the home appears as a package of obligations, not as a single purchase that can be settled simply by choosing a cheaper shop.
Another paper by Ragui Assaad and Caroline Krafft, published in 2017, examines the relationship between work and the timing of marriage in Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia. It concludes that the quality of the job, not merely its existence, matters for men, taking into account job security, income and the ability to save. The results concern the study’s data and period; they do not establish the work situations of the participants in this report, about whom no detailed information was collected that would allow such a comparison.
This is consistent with the need to separate having a sum of money to buy a piece of furniture from the ability to bear the expenses of a home after marriage. The first is a balance spent once, and the second is a continuous flow of expenses and income. A family paying for part of the furnishings does not mean that it can cover later obligations indefinitely. Hence, the negotiations Rahma recounts over reducing demands appear linked to the start date and the limits of family support, not to defining a unified list of what every couple should acquire.
In a research brief issued in December 2024, the Economic Research Forum documents a decline in the median real hourly wage between 2018 and 2023, and points to more than half of households relying on a single source of income in the years it studied. The real wage means its purchasing power after accounting for prices, not the nominal amount the worker receives. This is background for understanding the pressures on saving, not a direct measurement of the marriage budget in 2026.
When Social Expectations Turn into Debt
The relationship between marriage requirements and social pressure did not begin with the latest wave of prices. Sherif Mohamed Awad, in a study published in 2016, examined the economics of marriage in a village in Damietta Governorate, using questionnaires and interviews. He addressed the expansion of the requirements of the engagement, the home, the trousseau and the wedding party, and its effect in delaying the start among the study community. This finding documents a local experience, and does not justify describing the whole countryside as uniform or fixed in its attitudes towards marriage furnishings.
This recalls the difference between the need for a commodity and the meaning its presence acquires in front of others. In Amr’s account, the “nish” is no longer a necessity, and in Aya’s ranking the dishwasher does not come at the level of the refrigerator. As for May and Amr’s decision to furnish the home away from the pressures of relatives, it reveals that the discussion is not only about prices, but about who sets the standard for a complete home. When the two agree to postpone some things, they redefine this standard according to what they can afford.
In Fathia El-Sayed El-Houty’s study on women debtors, the researcher examined 24 selected cases in Mansoura prison, and linked family responsibilities, fragile resources, and paths of indebtedness and criminal conviction. The study brings back a dimension present in the original material: furnishing one’s children may be understood as a family duty that exceeds financial capacity. But it does not provide a national percentage of women debtors because of marriage, and does not allow the fate of every family that resorts to instalments to be predicted.
Here, Hassan Abdel Fattah’s description of gradual purchasing becomes more than a detail about the method of payment. Instalments shift part of the burden of purchase to coming months or years, and may increase the total amount due, depending on the terms of the agreement. The interview does not include financing contracts or a calculation from which specific interest or obligations could be estimated; therefore it is not right to turn his account into an average figure for couples’ indebtedness. What it documents is his awareness that completing the furnishings may come accompanied by a debt that continues after the wedding.
Hayah Foundation, in its description of its programme for women debtors, explains that it combines paying off debts, economic assistance and support for furnishing daughters’ trousseaux. The programme page does not represent a recent count of the number of cases in Egypt, but it shows that support may target both the effects of indebtedness and the cause of the need. On the other hand, the size of the actual benefit from any programme, and its conditions, remain a matter that needs independent data before it is considered a solution covering all affected families.
Giving Up a Piece Does Not Remove the Budget Pressure
The difference between Aya’s and Rahma’s positions on second-hand goods shows that the cheaper alternative is not an automatic decision. The trade-off may relate to quality, the expected lifespan of the item and personal acceptance, not to the displayed price alone. The report did not carry out a survey of market prices or an inspection of second-hand appliances, so it does not offer guaranteed savings or a recommendation to buy a particular type. What the testimonies allow is to document the widening circle of alternatives that those about to marry consider, including alternatives they do not in the end agree to choose.
On a broader level, a study by the Economic Research Forum issued in December 2024 points to a rise in the proportion of households that reported exposure to shocks from 16% in the 2018 survey to 49% in the 2023 survey, with reducing consumption present among the coping mechanisms. These are results about households in general and about shocks as defined by the study, not the proportion of those who postponed marriage or reduced its furnishings. Their usefulness here is to place the pressures of the start within a broader environment of fragile budgets.
Between saving and gradual purchasing, the difference in family resources remains a factor that cannot be ignored when comparing experiences. The agreement to reduce demands that Rahma describes allowed an understanding between the two families, but it does not tell us what would have happened to a family that lacks the ability to provide the basics in the first place. Similarly, the search for an EGP 1,000 difference that Mahmoud recounts shows how sensitive his budget is to small differences, without meaning that comparing shops alone can bridge a large gap between income and the cost of housing and furnishing.
These stories converge on rearranging the start, and differ in the limits of possible concession. Some participants accept one room fewer, some postpone an appliance, and some refuse second-hand and reduce the number of items instead. The sharing that May and Rahma talk about is not merely a division of a bill; it is a negotiation over what will be bought in the first place, what can wait, and what each family bears. Thus, completing the home remains a gradual path in these testimonies, while the standard of being able to start life remains more important than completing a list that others have agreed on by custom.
In the accounts of these young people, the difficulty of marriage extends beyond buying the engagement jewellery: the flat, the furniture and the rest of the costs of founding a family. The high cost of housing and furnishing may push some of those about to marry to postpone the start until their financial capacity improves. Here the question changes, according to Mahmoud El-Hawary, from: “What will we buy?” to: “Can we start at all?”
