Gyspy's

 “My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding” was a short series on TLC that showed the lives of present Gypsies living in Liverpool England. The main focus of the show was the gypsy’s weddings obviously. What made me interested in watching this show was the life style of the gypsies and how different it is compared to my own life.

A gypsy wedding is very different than what we are used to going to. The soon to be brides look forward to this day since they were little so the bigger everything is the better, especially when it comes to the dress. The brides dress is often so heavy with layers of fabric and beading that it leaves marks on their skin. The dress is also hard to walk in since it is so huge and you can see on the show that the girls have trouble getting down the aisle and sitting down.  I often wonder why they would endure all this pain to feel beautiful but you soon realize that this is one of the only days that the spot light is on them.

An average lifestyle of a Gypsy girl goes like this: you take care of your younger brothers and sisters (they often have big families) and you clean the house. The girls usually leave school around the age of 14 to help their moms at home taking care of the household. Starting around the age of 16 gypsy girls get married sometimes only meeting their husband to be a couple of times before the wedding.  After marriage a gypsy wife’s life revolves around cleaning the camper they live in and having children. They are not allowed to have an outside job. On one episode the fiancé bought a camper as a gift to his wife but wouldn’t allow it to be shown on T.V. because his future wife had not cleaned it yet. He could not do it because that was woman’s work. The girl’s lives are confined to making the husband happy.

I always feel bad for these girls because it never really seems that they enjoy their life from what I experienced on T.V. They look forward to their wedding their whole life but seem very sad on the actual day of the wedding.  The gypsy girls live with their parents until they are married rarely going out alone and very few hold a job before they are married. They never experience life on their own. For me, I think it would be very difficult living like this seeing all these things that women can do now and realizing you can’t experience it because of the life style you live in.