Salah Hassan Baban - Sulaymaniyah
Two brides in the Kurdistan region of Iraq celebrated their wedding in a way that is out of the ordinary and far from what was the usual practice of parties where a lot of exchange and extravagance.
Riazan Othman, the bride, has been dreaming since her childhood, and she is still a university student, that Fares Ahlam is a book seller, and after years, she will achieve what she wants in connection with Hosin Mahmoud.
The couple, Hossein Mahmoud, 30, and his fiancée Rizyan, 25, famously declared their marriage by holding a modest wedding ceremony in the presence of friends and relatives, away from the noise of music and the halls.
During the ceremony, the newlyweds distributed books to the invitees, in a move aimed, as they said, to educate the community and encourage reading in a society that the groom described as "the poor in reading."
On this, the groom said, "We decided to break traditions in marriage and celebration in a different way by distributing books to invitees to encourage reading culture between young people and other groups."
The groom owns a library that sells books in central Sulaimaniyah (northern Iraq), and this encouraged the bride to link with it despite its steep roots from the Rwandans district of the Erbil governorate, different from their customs from Sulaimaniyah.
| The couple, during their wedding ceremony, distributed books to the guests (Al-Jazeera) |
Distribution of books
The idea of marriage came in this unconventional way from their love for reading and reading books.
Not only did the newlyweds distribute the books, they released dozens of birds from cages and planted dozens of trees, believing in spreading the culture of protecting animals and preserving the environment.
"By launching birds and planting trees, we wanted to deliver our human message to society that respects and does not violate animal rights," the bride says.
| The bride and groom release the birds from the captivity (Al-Jazeera) |
She added that through her wedding ceremony she wanted to deliver a message to young people that it is necessary to stay away from extravagance in weddings that exhaust the groom and his family.
Regarding the position of the newlyweds families about the way to celebrate, Rizyan clarified that the two families were surprised at the beginning and rejected the method, adding that persistence from her and her groom after clarifying their position convinced the two families the strange way to celebrate.
The bridegroom pointed out that the cooperation of the bride’s family with him reached its limit through the abdication of the bride’s father on the full rights of the girl in gold.