How do weddings of Bulgarian Muslim highlanders take place?

This strange photo shows the wedding of Fatma Ulanova and Jamal Sirakov from the village of Rybnovo. The residents of this Bulgarian mountain village, who belong to the Islamic Pomak ethnic group, are famous for their unique wedding ceremonies, which take place exclusively in winter.

Pomak girls get married according to the centuries-old traditions of their village: with their eyes closed, their faces painted with paints and sparkles, in a bright outfit and with a wreath of paper flowers on their heads. Local weddings are so important to the villagers that even men who work abroad come to watch the ceremony.

For people from Rybnovo, their religion is much more important than their nationality. And they identify themselves not so much with some ethnic group, but with representatives of their religion. The village has ten priests and two temples for 3,500 inhabitants.

The family of the future bride saves a dowry from the day the girl is born. Most of the dowry consists of hand-knitted items, patchwork quilts, books, socks and carpets. On the morning before the wedding, family members set up a wooden platform 50 meters long and 3 meters high and hang the dowry on it.

Almost all the village residents come to see this exhibition; on wedding days, small courtyards turn into a kind of showroom.

The bride and groom then perform a traditional dance in the central square, joined by most of the young villagers.

But the most important part of the ceremony—painting the bride’s face—takes place on the second day after the wedding. The young woman's relatives cover her face with a thick layer of white paint and decorate it with multi-colored sparkles. The bride puts a long red veil on her head. No one drinks alcohol at a wedding, and sex before marriage is taboo.

The groom, the bride's mother and her grandmother lead the bride, dressed in a bright corset and baggy pants, to the waiting guests. The bride is forbidden to open her eyes until the priest blesses the young couple. It is difficult to say exactly when this tradition appeared. The villagers face greater hardships than most Muslims in Bulgaria.

Villagers make their living from farming, but low incomes in the EU's poorest country force men to seek work in larger cities in Bulgaria or in Western Europe, not least to earn money for a wedding. Men from the settlement rarely marry anyone other than the inhabitants of Rybnovo.