Su Dongpo held a wedding for his niece and had to borrow money from his colleagues and friends because he had no money. He finally borrowed 200 copper coins. Su Zhe married a daughter. In order to make a dowry for his little daughter, he sold the land he bought in his early years and got 9400 yuan, all of which were dowry for his little daughter. This is just his little daughter's dowry. He also has four eldest daughters. Su Shi once teased him. He has five daughters and is heavily in debt. A minister in the Southern Song Dynasty gave birth to a daughter. A friend wrote a letter to congratulate him, but he was very sad. He wrote back that there were five daughters at home and thieves would not look after the house.
And Song Shenzong himself, his dowry to the most beloved princess is as much as 700,000. First of all, Guan and Guan are both units of copper coins, and a bundle is equal to 1000 identical copper coins, which is one or two pieces of silver. According to the price of the song dynasty, one or two pieces of silver is equivalent to 800~ 1000 yuan now. In other words, Song Shenzong will invest 702,000 yuan at a time to marry his daughter. Of course, this is a strong marriage. According to most of the time, it costs an average of 12000 yuan to marry a prince in Song Dynasty, including bride price and wedding ceremony, while the average cost of a princess is 102000 yuan, ten times that of a prince.
The strong wind of marriage in the Song Dynasty was really top-down, advocating huge expenses, and poor families even dared not raise their daughters. As for the popularity of thick marriage, it is actually because people in the Song Dynasty thought that their daughters needed a generous dowry. At that time, women had personal property rights. When the bride gets married, the dowry is her personal property, not the same property between husband and wife. It is unkind and illegal for the husband's family to care about his daughter-in-law's dowry. However, in some areas, such as Fuzhou, dowry can't make women feel better, and even the custom of marrying a daughter-in-law for money has been developed. The richer the dowry, the more brazen the husband's family is.