WUNRN
BULGARIA VILLAGE OF RIBNOVO - TRADITIONAL MUSLIM MARRIAGE - CULTURE & COSTUME
Painting the bride's face white and decorating it with sequins and coloured paint is called 'gelena' in Bulgarian
Here comes the bride: Fatme
Inus, her face painted white and decorated with sequins, emerges to present
herself to villagers
Fatme Inus married her groom
at the end of the a two-day wedding celebration in in
By Jill Reilly -
1/13/14
With her eyes tightly shut and her face covered with paint, sequins and paper flowers, Bulgarian bride Fatme Inus followed centuries of tradition in her village when she married her groom.The practice of painting the bride's face white and decorating it with sequins and coloured paint is called 'gelena' in Bulgarian and is unique to Fatme's home, the remote town of Ribnovo.
Ribnovo, set on a snowy mountainside in southwest Bulgaria, has kept its traditional winter marriage ceremony alive despite decades of Communist persecution, followed by poverty that forced many men to seek work abroad.