Radio Islam and Agencies | 27 October 2016

Posts on Snapchat are transitory and typically last for a brief cycle of 24 hours. Marriages, on the other hand, are enduring, and are meant to last a lifetime.

For one Saudi couple, however, that order was tragically inverted when a posting on the social media platform succeeded in wrecking their marriage barely 2 hours after it was consecrated.

A Saudi groom snapped at his new bride after she allegedly shared footage and photographs from their wedding ceremony via Snapchat, despite a clause in the marriage contract prohibiting her from doing so.

“There was a prenuptial agreement between my sister and her fiancé that she would not use social-media applications such as Snapchat, Instagram or Twitter to post or send her pictures,” the bride’s brother said.

“It was included in the marriage contract and became binding. Regretfully, my sister did not honour the pledge and used Snapchat to share pictures from the wedding ceremony with her female friends, resulting in the shocking decision by the groom to cancel their marriage and call for divorce,” he said, according to Saudi daily Okaz on Monday.

Relatives from both families were bitterly divided over the decision. Some said that it was the logical conclusion since the bride failed to abide by the agreement.

However, other family members said that the mobile picture condition was not fair or at least should not have applied to the wedding ceremony.

In May, a Saudi legal expert warned against the alarmingly growing figures of divorce among newly-weds, with some stating that they affected between 30-50 percent of marriages.

“Misunderstandings, differences in views and the easy approach to marriage without a deep appreciation of the responsibilities that come with it are among the major causes for divorce among young people,” Ahmad Al Maabi said. “Marriages are bound to fail when there are no robust foundations or trust.”

The expert was commenting on news that a Saudi bride was divorced shortly after the marriage ceremony when she ignored her groom and kept chatting with her friends on her mobile.

“Following the marriage ceremony, the groom took his bride to the hotel where they had booked a room,” a relative said. “However, as soon as the bride was in the room, she started using her mobile phone. Her groom tried to get closer with her and become more intimate, but he was shocked when she ignored him, not responding to his words or action. When he asked her about the reasons, she answered she was busy responding to her friends who were congratulating her on her marriage. The groom asked her to delay answering the messages, but she refused and became angry. When he asked her if her friends were more important than he was, the bride answered that they were.”

As the argument between them became more tense, the groom told his bride he was divorcing her and left the hotel.

The relative said that a divorce case was filed and the court referred it to the reconciliation committee to assess if the newly-weds could be reconciled, the relative added.

However, the groom, too hurt in his pride to forgive, refused to withdraw the case and insisted on the divorce.