An Uzbek bride is bound to burst into tears. That’s why Daruna cries bitterly as she kisses her mother goodbye. But carefully, so as not to smudge her make-up. She sobs as she hugs her sister, then her brother, and finally buries her face in her father’s arms.
I was invited to an Uzbek wedding by accident. I simply happened to be in the right place at the right time, in an inconspicuous chaikhana, whose owner, a Kazakh woman, was completely sleepy after yesterday’s first day of the wedding. According to the tradition it lasts for at least three days.
– Do you want to join me for the second day?
– Can I?
– Sure. Feel invited.
A moment later we enter the yard, where a concert is in full swing. Mostly men are sitting at the tables and on the couches, eating wedding plov – the flagship Uzbek dish. The women have locked themselves in the house. They are enjoying tea with cookies and talking, probably about the joys of being married.
Daura's dowry
„You have to see Daura’s dowry,” says the bride’s sister. „Once, from a young age, the girl would put various gifts in a sunduk, or a chest, which later on would she take with her to her future husband’s house as a dowry. There was no way that what Daura had collected in one sunduk would fit. Along the wall of the room stood a huge mountain of various things covered with suzani fabrics.
Not that bad
At some point, Daura enters the room. She cries. And every tear is recorded by cameras aimed at her.
„She cries because that’s what tradition dictates. In the old days, a girl was often married off to a boy from such a distant land that after leaving home, she would never see her parents again,” explains the bride’s sister.
Daura follows the path of tradition if it comes to the behawior. She hugs everyone as if it was the last time she saw them. Her father, her brother, her sister. Even though the girl is in an exceptionally comfortable situation. She met her husband a year earlier at her sister’s wedding. He was the groom’s brother. They fall in love so after a year – here she is! New bride in the family. So she moves to the house where her sister is already settled. And quite nearby. In a neighboring village.
This does not change the fact that tradition must be followed. Daura cries! She cries with bitter tears when they cover her with a veil and lead her out of the house to the car. Behind her, basket by basket, the neighbors and cousins dismantle the the dowry hill and one by one disappear into the depths of the coach. Thus, the party slowly moves to the groom’s house. To party for the next two days.