A Painted Bride: The Centuries-Old Wedding Traditions Of A Kosovar Village

Local women help the bride, Sellma Demirovic, to get dressed in traditional clothes for a typical wedding in Donje Ljubinje, a predominantly ethnic Bosniak village of some 3,000 residents located in the Shar Mountains on the border between Kosovo and North Macedonia. 

Demirovic has her face painted by Aziza Sefitagic, 73. ​Although the tradition has existed for generations, it is now on the verge of extinction.

Women from Donje Ljubinje dance ahead of the traditional wedding ceremony.

Sefitagic begins the process of painting the bride's face to ensure that the wedding is not marred by any bad luck. ​She is one of the last people in the village who knows how to apply these intricate decorations and younger generations appear to have little interest in learning it. 

Three golden circles symbolize the cycles of life, the red circles are for fertility, while the red and blue dots should ensure that the bride has a healthy and happy family.

Women from the village dress the bride up for her big day.

A man from the village prepares food for the wedding feast.

Before she leaves her house ahead of the ceremony, a cone is placed on the bride's head and this is used to hang a red veil over her face.

The veiled bride leads a procession on horseback through the village to the ceremony. 

Local women in traditional dress dance in the streets of the village as part of the festivities.

Demirovic's face will remain veiled until the ceremony. 

Onlookers greet the bridal procession. 

The exquisitely detailed decoration of the bride's face is finally unveiled during the wedding vows.

Demirovic and her bridegroom, Fejad Karadollami (second from left), dance with guests during their wedding celebrations.

Guests sits down to enjoy an outdoor wedding feast.

Donje Ljubinje's economic prospects are bleak and -- given that nearly two-thirds of its residents currently have to seek a living elsewhere in Europe -- the village's centuries-old wedding customs are now in danger of dying out. Elaborate traditional weddings like Demirovic's are becoming a rarity and her ornate facial decorations could soon become a thing of the past.