Sunday Times 2
The cost of love
From chocolates to roses and all things red, you can’t miss the fact that Valentine Day is next week, February 14 to be precise. Romance is blaring off the radios, shops are promoting their packages and discounts for the season luring passers-by with glittering hearts and red décor.
If you’re looking for the usual gifts of cards, roses, jewellery and chocolates, you might want to brace yourself, for prices have risen, Valentine’s Day being hit by the cost of living, like all else.
Kandos chocolate heartsrange from Rs.25 to Rs.400
Valentine’s Day cards are more quite glamorous. “Uthum Pathum” the popular gift store offers a large variety and have introduced many novel items like music boxes, wall hangers and plaques, and photo albums with prices ranging from Rs. 900 to Rs. 4,500. You can pick framed certificates of love declaring your love for your sweetheart for Rs.900. Handmade cards seem to be affordable and more artistic than the printed ones and will cost from Rs.500 to a staggering Rs.1900 for a large three page pop up card.Another most common way of declaring one’s love is with flowers; from a single rose to a huge bouquet of flowers, this has always been known to be a ‘lady-winner’. “Uthum Pathum” offers fresh roses on the 14th for around Rs.390 a flower. There are artificial roses as well for those who want more lasting tokens and these are relatively cheaper from Rs. 180 to a Rs.230. “Sterling Flowers” in Colombo 3 offers a single rose for Rs. 350, and a bouquet of 10 roses will cost you Rs.2, 700.
Jewellery is always the easy way to a girl’s heart and there are offers aplenty from the leading stores, “Stone n’ String” offers a price reduction of up to Rs. 300 in their rings collection and Mallika Hemachandra has put out three collections for this Valentine season named the “Eternity Collection”, “Diamond Solitaire” and “Smart Executive Collection”. Prices vary: from Rs.1, 000 up to about Rs. 40, 000 and can be paid in monthly instalments too with zero interest.
Let’s not forget the chocolates! Sweet Buds, in Colombo 4 have innovative Chocolate bouquet collections and there are still more new designs coming the way of the romantic sweet tooth. Their ‘Choco Teddy Heart’ bouquet, a large heart shaped bouquet with chocolate and teddies, is priced at Rs. 4, 200 and their smallest chocolate bouquet of 7 chocolates is priced at Rs.1, 800. They also offer a soft toy bouquet- a large bouquet made of small cute teddies and this is priced at Rs. 4, 500.
Sterling Flowers" offers a single rose for Rs. 350, and a bouquet of 10 roses for Rs. 2, 700
The “Kandos” showroom in Colombo 07 offers heart shaped chocolates with a range of prices from Rs.25 to Rs.400, Chocolate Teddies, Gift packs with Chocolate and Soft Toys.
The ‘Cool Planet’ chain promotes Valentines by taking pictures of the couples who visit them during the season and uploading these photos on Facebook to offer special gifts for the couples who get the most number of comments. The ‘Nils’ clothing store at Nugegoda has organized interactive games for lovers who drop in at their shop during February 5th to 14th. They offer special gifts for the best love quotes posted on their Facebook page and hold a ‘free of charge wrapping centre’ during the season. This is ‘Valentine’s fashion’ in a nut-shell.
But how much do people believe in showing their love on Valentine’s Day? The answers were a lot less exciting. Many said the perfect celebration for them would be spending time with their loved one, not necessarily at a five-star hotel with dinner with a big price tag but rather with a home cooked meal and a movie.
Many men said they buy expensive gifts because they know it is expected of them and also because they are subtly forced to buy expensive gifts (the bigger the better) and express love in a more dramatic fashion at least on Valentine’s Day.
A glamorous Valentine's Day card can cost upto Rs. 1,900. Pix by Mangala Weerasekera and M.A. Pushpa Kumara
“Girls would rather have their man spend the whole day with them rather than get an expensive gift but of course an exception is chocolate, because we love chocolate,” said 21-year-old Natasha Soysa.
A cute teddy bear boquet will set you back Rs. 4,500
“Celebrating Valentine’s Day is a competition to fill social gaps, an artificially created concept to maintain social status, a marketing trap to tempt the vulnerable young generation,” said 46-year-old Feruza Zainudeen.
“It’s the best day for lovers and the worst day for the ones who got dumped,” laughed school boy, Kusagra Aminda, 19, perhaps representing the “vulnerable young generation” as Feruza stated.
Nathasha Shavoni, 21, who does not expect any Valentine gifts from her fiancé “does not want to waste her money on such silly things.” “Saint Valentine would never have wished for such a rush on his remembrance day” she laughs.
And of course there are exceptional couples who know the genuine meaning of Amore and believe that one does not need to have one specific day to celebrate a feeling such as love. “The best gift a girl or boy could give is love and care at any moment in life. To support each other in both good times and bad times and mostly to be there for each other is what’s important. A true promise like this on Valentine’s Day would be the best and the most loving gift ever,” said Anslem Arnolda, 20.
The choice is yours!