Postponing the future: War and inflation redraw marriage terms in Iran

Postponing the future: War and inflation redraw marriage terms in Iran Iran’s cost of living crisis is affecting the dreams and everyday life choices of young Iranians. Subhan Dashti had already picked a date for his wedding. He and his fiancee, Nadia Sabzi, together since 2016, had settled on Nowruz 1405, the Iranian New Year, which falls on March 20 to 21. They had already started buying items for their future home, but then last year, prices started to climb. Political and social unrest followed, and then the United States and Israel launched a war on Iran on February 28. Dashti’s family fled Tehran for the north of the country, and preparations for their wedding stalled. When the fighting paused, the families returned to Tehran and the couple tried to resume their plans. But a television Dashti had budgeted at 70 million tomans ($302) now cost closer to 100 million tomans ($432). Despite earning about 100 million tomans a month ($432) – well above average for an Iranian worker – he concluded that marrying immediately no longer made sense. Recommended Stories list of 4 items- list 1 of 4Iranians rally in biggest show of defiance against US since war began - list 2 of 4Iran stages show of force during mobilisation campaign in Tehran - list 3 of 4Iran says conditions to re-engage in talks, end war sent to US via Qatar - list 4 of 4What are Iran’s latest conditions to end its war with the US? “We decided to postpone the wedding for at least a few more months,” Dashti, 35, said. The minimum wage for an Iranian worker is about 16 million tomans per month, which is less than $68 at current open market rates, while the average monthly wage for workers is around 25 million tomans, or roughly $105. For Sabzi, 34, the maths are only part of the fear. She has made peace with a smaller ceremony – a simpler dress, a modest hall. What she cannot make peace with is safety. A US strike in early September hit a house in Kuhestak, in southern Iran’s Sirik County, where a wedding celebration was taking place; Iranian authorities said several people were killed and dozens wounded, including women and children. “For the past two weeks, I have been asking Subhan at night: what if the war starts again when we are getting married?” Sabzi said. Their stalled wedding is one small sign of a larger crisis in Iran for young people. Across Iran, war, sanctions, inflation and shortages are shaping young couples’ marriage decisions amid a shifting focus on wedding costs, what a household requires and how far into the future anyone dares to plan. Simin Nouri, a bridal makeup artist in Tehranpars, said that during the summer’s peak wedding season, her salon once saw two or three brides a day. Now it sees only two or three a week. Prices are now even higher, she said. In Tehran, a regular bridal package costs about 70 million tomans ($302), while a VIP package can reach 150 million tomans ($648). In lower-income parts of the city, prices are usually around 50 million tomans ($216). Clients have not abandoned services entirely – they downgrade them. They skip skincare and hair extensions, and book only makeup and hairstyling for the wedding night itself. “They still want to do these things,” she said, “but they go for the less expensive option.” She noted that two of her own friends postponed their weddings outright. One declined Nouri’s offer of free makeup paid later. “Because the makeup was never the real obstacle – the wedding itself was,” she said. Newlyweds – and a bill that keeps growing Pejman and Sanaz, who met studying electronic engineering and asked that their surnames and university be withheld, married in July just after last year’s 12-day war. Their rent tells the story: a deposit and monthly rent that totalled roughly 34 million tomans ($144) a year ago now cost about 58 million tomans ($246) – a 71 percent rise for the same Tehran apartment. That includes a jump from a 300 million-toman ($1,296) deposit and 25 million tomans ($106) monthly rent, plus 1.5 to 2 million tomans ($6–$8) in building charges, to a demand from a new landlord of a 400 million-toman ($1,728) deposit and 46 million tomans a month ($198). Pejman, 30, earns 56 million tomans a month ($242); the new rent alone would consume about 82 percent of it. “Last year, just to cover the costs of starting our life together, we had to sell 13 grams of my wife’s gold,” he said. That gold is now far more expensive to replace: 18-carat gold has risen from roughly 6.48 million tomans a gram ($28) in June 2025 to more than 23 million tomans ($99) by mid-September 2026. A mid-range Tehran wedding for about 100 guests – hall, bridal services, clothing, photography, music and modest gold – now runs close to 1.1 billion tomans ($4,752), versus roughly 480 million tomans ($2,074) before the 2025 war, though costs vary by neighbourhood and provider. Economist Amir Hossein Mohaddes separates the crisis into two problems: the cost of starting a household and the cost of sustaining one. “A couple can make the wedding smaller. They can remove parts of the ceremony. But they cannot remove housing,” Mohaddes said. He argues the more serious damage is unpredictability itself – couples cannot plan a few months ahead due to rapidly rising prices. He warns that even a ceasefire or a full halt of the war would not reverse this trend: a refrigerator that has doubled in price does not fall back on its own. Landlords who increase rents rarely lower them again. For Abbas Derafshi, 30, a bank employee who had been planning to marry his fiancee, Parastoo, even a state-backed marriage loan has not been enough to bridge that widening gap. Under President Ebrahim Raisi’s government, Derafshi said, bank employees had been instructed to work closely with young couples applying for marriage loans, processing applications with minimal guarantees – often requiring just one guarantor. The 2023 rules set the standard loan at 180 million tomans per person ($778), or 360 million tomans for a couple ($1,555). Derafshi calculated that the combined loan was worth more than $7,000, with a 10-year repayment period and a 4 percent service fee. The standard loan has since risen to 300 million tomans per person ($1,296), or 600 million tomans for a couple ($2,592). A couple receiving the full amount would now face monthly repayments of roughly 5.5 million tomans ($24), Derafshi said, about 2.2 million tomans ($9.50) more each month than a couple borrowing the standard amount in 2023. Despite the loan’s nominal value rising, Derafshi calculated its real purchasing power has fallen roughly 64 percent in dollar terms since 2023. “When I applied for the loan under the [President Masoud] Pezeshkian government, even though I work at a bank myself, I faced so many obstacles – from branch assignment and credit checks to guarantor requirements and additional documents – that I eventually gave up,” he said. His account reflects his own experience rather than the conditions set with every Iranian bank for every young person, he notes. But for him the result was concrete: with housing and wedding costs continuing to rise, he and Parastoo no longer enjoy the financial conditions to begin married life as planned. “The plans we had for starting our life together have basically been put on hold until further notice,” Derafshi said. What the numbers mean Political science professor Jalil Dara, who also studies social and future-oriented trends, explained that prolonged inflation and uncertainty are “contributing to anxiety, lower optimism and delayed family formation among young Iranians”. That is alongside a countervailing rise in national solidarity that coexists uneasily with the economic strain. But Iran’s economic difficulties did not begin with the current war. “Years of sanctions, chronic inflation, currency depreciation, weak investment and domestic policy failures had already made marriage and housing harder for young people,” he said. “The war worked as an accelerating shock, not the sole cause. Even an end to hostilities would not automatically reverse the damage.” For household purchasing power to recover, Mohaddes said, Iran would need more than peace. What is essential for ending the cost of living crisis is currency stability, real wage growth, productive employment, stronger investment and lower economic uncertainty. “That is why the consequences of war can outlast the sound of explosions,” he concluded. Facing costs they can no longer absorb, Pejman and Sanaz are now considering leaving Iran to study abroad. “We both love Iran. We would like to return after finishing our doctorates and work for our country,” Sanaz said. “Hope the situation would be better by then”. This article was published in collaboration with Egab, a platform that empowers journalists from across the Global South to publish stories in international media outlets.