The Libyan Wedding

Libya is a large country, so there are many differences in traditional weddings, but there are some similarities too.

The Libyan wedding is long. It almost takes 7 days, but regarding the preparation of food and clothes, it may take months! There is traditional jewellery made of gold and silver. Also there are special traditional customs for the bride, groom and guests. 

For the bride there are special customs for each day of the wedding like rosy badla, badla segara, badla kebra and jlowa.

The wedding in Tripoli takes 7 days. It starts on Tuesday morning when women from the bride's family and groom's family invite neighbours and relatives to the wedding. After that, the party continues every night in both the bride's house and the groom's house with special songs.

The families gather in order to make sweets and food (such as kusks and bazzen) for the guests. There is a special day for children called rabeea when children eat sweets and wear the traditional customs (like the bride and groom).

On Wednesday night (called najjma), some women from the groom's family go to the bride's house to celebrate and bring the bride clothes, jewellery and gifts. Henna is also applied to the bride.

On Thursday the bride wears a special dress (nowadays the bride wears a white wedding dress), and women from the groom's family take the bride in a special carriage to the groom's house to complete the part there. On Friday the bride wears jlowa and there is a party in the groom's house. After one week they celebrate again.

Nowadays most weddings in Tripoli are shorter - two or three days - because the long traditional wedding has become too expensive.

Written by: Ruida

(Above) A traditional Libyan wedding