Photos from a Bride Market where Poor Teenage Girls are Matched up with Future Husbands

Photos have emerged of a Bulgarian ‘bride market’ where scores of
young Roma women are paraded before potential suitors and their poor
families given the chance to arrange financially beneficial marriages
for their children.

The potential brides, who are among the most poverty-stricken people
in their deeply impoverished region, are usually provocatively dressed,
donning gobs of mascara, wearing flashy jewellery, towering heels and
mini-skirts. And surrounding them in the car boot-like sale event are
young men
whose family hope to find them a wife at a good cost.
See more photos below.

According to DailyMail, the ‘bride market’ holds four times a year.
The event’s reputation as a ‘bridal market’ goes back generations. The
cost of a bride is between 5,000 and 10,000 lev (£2,200 to £4,300) . But
prices are said to still rise for a ‘very beautiful’ young woman with
many suitors.