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FAR from being “nakaka-proud,” Hayden Kho’s and Vicky Belo’s uber-extravagant wedding was, in English, nauseating and, in Tagalog, “nakakadiri” (in Cebuano “luod”). It was a decadent display of wealth that had no possible deeper purpose other than to indulge in the most intoxicating feeling of celebrity their money could buy. Somebody claimed on Facebook that the couple spent simply an atrocious amount to spend for a wedding. Still there would have been nothing wrong with it if they did not come from the Philippines, a country that everybody knows teems with millions of poor people to the sad tune of thirty percent of the population.

Maybe they did not intend this but the message that came across was they felt more affinity with first world celebrities than with poor Filipinos in the third world. Personally I feel nothing but shame in the sure knowledge that more sensitive people of wealthy countries are laughing at this jarring display of opulence and pitying Filipinos for having such a self-indulgent rich couple in our midst.

The only mitigating factor, if you can call it that, is neither one of them is a politician. They spent much more for their wedding than those of Senators Migz Zubiri and Tito Sotto but at least they spent what we can presume was hard-earned money and not the people’s.

Because we can reasonably presume they earned their money honorably we have to give them the right to spend it any way they want and for all we care.

We can’t even tell them, without being self-righteous, that they should spend some of it to alleviate the plight of the poor amongst us who live on P200 a day from selling candies, newspapers, water and until recently cigarettes in the streets.

But we definitely stand on solid ethical ground if we ask them not to flaunt their wealth, like some politicians before them, on Filipinos whose poverty is due to their not getting living wages (not even the legal minimum) for their work for rich professionals, high government officials, rich landowners and rich businessmen.

We definitely can ask our rich countrymen that if they cannot help poor Filipinos by sharing more, they should at least have the sensibility not to flaunt their wealth for no other purpose than to pump more hot air on their already over-inflated egos.