Bangladays: the wedding day

I knew that in Bangladesh weddings were traditionally arranged male relatives of both families… I was in a village, in the countryside of Bangladesh, as a guest of a Bengali friend of mine. One morning he invites me to a meeting between his family and another family in order to arrange his cousin’s wedding.

This is the story of that day: a long day during which the bride sees her future husband (a lifelong partner) for the first time in her life on my camera’s display. A day of union that they live completely separated: they spend all the time during the wedding ceremonies only with their same sex relatives.

At the end of the day the bride must leave her family (and the place were she spent all her life until then) in order to join her new house and family: people and places that she has never seen before in her life.

That’s the way it went: that’s the day she got married in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh, August 2011.