Bulgaria Bride Market

Weddings are often thought of as celebrations of happy new lives and the unison of families. In Malaysia, weddings are glorified as such fantastic events and signify the choice of two people who found each and fell in love. However, arranged marriages still exist in Malaysia, though it is not the norm by which the younger generation are turning to find love, in order to get married. Love marriages is still the norm in Malaysia but we often forget how different weddings – and marriage in general – are thousands of miles away from where we happen to live.

“Young Virgins for Sale,” documentary by VICE on YouTube, July last year, provides an intimate look into this topic. The documentary follows 25-year-old Pepa and her 19-year-old sister, Rosi getting ready to be be sold off to male suitors at the bride market in the town of Stara Zagora. They are the Kalaidzhi, Orthodox Christian gypsies, in which every spring on the first Saturday after the start of the orthodox Easter fast - the Day of Saint Todor, or Horse Easter. The town of Stara Zagora in central Bulgaria hosts a controversial bride market where young virgins are paraded in front of suitors who bid on them. Considering, in Bulgaria, the Kalaidzhi are ranked as some of the poorest clan, they were predominantly skilled coppersmiths and lived in the rural areas where they fixed copper pots for a living. Nowadays, demand for their trade has since dwindled, and they face the challenge of economic hardships. Thus, they seek unions based on marriages that are financially advantageous.

The bride market held in a big parking lot. The potential brides are provocatively dressed, donning gobs of mascara and wearing flashy jewellery, towering heels and mini-skirts. Surrounding them in the car boot-like sale event are young men whose family hope to find them a wife at a good cost. It starts, like a high school dance with amid blaring gypsy pop, groups of boys and girls in separate clumps, occasionally shaking hands and checking each other out - while mothers and fathers stay discreetly in the background, negotiations are churning quietly behind the scenes as families weigh their financial compatibility along with the merits of the prospective bride.

Love is not exactly for sale here, price is said to be several thousand levs/euros and it is determined purely based on aesthetics– how nice her clothes are, and how pretty she is. A normal price bride is about $300 (RM 1,000) and it can go up to however the price can go much higher if the bride is really beautiful. The idealised concept of beauty is fair skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. Because of this, there is a proliferation of cosmetics many girls use to try to appear to have whiter skin. Along with, how it is crucial that Kalaidzhi girls remain virgins to be able to get the best prices, “If the girl is not a virgin when you sell her, they will call us whores, sluts and disgraceful women,” Vera, mother of Pepa and Rosi said.

Most of the girls at the bride market are between the ages of 13 and 20. Often times, girls are removed from school as soon as they get their first period since the roles for women tend to predominantly revolve around taking care of the home and the family. according to academic Alexey Pamporov who has studied the Roma for two decades (Campbell, 2019). Only 10% of Bulgarian Roma women have secondary education, and 1 in 5 women are illiterate. Pepa and Rosi admit that they would have preferred to get an education and follow their dreams of becoming a banker and a hairdresser, respectively. But as they had no qualifications and the Kalaidzhi tradition dictates that they are married, they were resigned to their fate (J.S. von Dacre, 2019).

Some people say the bride market is not really a market. It is more of a festival, gathering of the Kalaidzhi, so that the young ones can find spouses. As Kalaidzhis don’t marry outside the group. Also, boys and girls aren’t allowed to date without adults around. Apart from this bridal fairs, boys and girls only have contact in Internet chats. So this festival is one of the few chances they have to meet potential mates and you can look at paying for the bride as an equivalent of dowry. However, imagine telling your son ‘Come on son let's go to the market to see how much money we can get for your sisters?’ These girls are brought up not to discover who they are and their ambitions, but instead to obey and serve their future husbands.

The bridal market tradition is quite an old one, spanning several generations. Most younger Kalaidzhis more or less agree that this tradition, like others, will disappear soon, along with the older generation. They’re having fewer children, connecting to the wider world through the Internet and cell phones and mixing more with outsiders. But the end of the traditions, the older generation fears, will mean the end of the Kalaidzhis themselves as the community thinks the traditions are essential for Kalaidzhi to survive.