Open-air bride market of Bulgaria where teenage girls find their suitable matches

#BrideMarket #Bulgaria #StaraZagora #coppersmiths Welcome to the open-air bride market of Stara Zagora in Bulgaria where young Roma women are paraded before potential suitors and where poor families get a chance to arrange financially beneficial marriages for their children. This has been reported in dailymail.co.uk dated 28 February 2015.
The potential brides are provocatively dressed, they don gobs of mascara and wear flashy jewelry, towering heels and mini-skirts to attract future husbands who form the band of prospective grooms. The intention of the groom’s families are to find a wife at a good cost.
The families who assemble in Stara Zagora belong to a community of about 18,000 Roma known as Kalaidzhi – they are traditionally coppersmiths and are among the most poverty-stricken people in a deeply impoverished region.
The objective of the bride-market is to forge mutually beneficial unions so that they can weather the economic downturn of Bulgaria.
This unique 'bride market' is held four times annually on various religious holidays during the spring and summer and provides a chance for the Roma's nomadic tinkers to meet, catch up on gossip an, simultaneously, play matchmaker for their growing up offspring.
On this occasion, the boys and girls dance side-by-side on the cars and get the rare opportunity to mix with the opposite sex – normally, youths are very seldom to mingle with the opposite sex.