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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

  • The method is unique to the village of Ribnovo and is a tradition going back centuries
  • Highlight of the ceremony, the painting of the bride's face, comes at the end of the second day.
  • In a private rite open only to female in-laws, her face is covered in thick, chalky white paint and decorated
  • The bride is not permitted to open her eyes wide until a Muslim priest blesses the young couple

Here comes the bride: Fatme Inus, her face painted white and decorated with sequins, emerges to present herself to villagers

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 yesterday at the end of the a two-day wedding celebration in in Ribnovo, Bulgaria

Fatme Inus married her groom at the end of the a two-day wedding celebration in in Ribnovo, Bulgaria

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.