My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding Channel 4

[sailorsgal]

Anyone watching.

Doesn't 'Irish traveller' mean of Irish descent though? They can have English accents and still be Irish travellers.

I would like a whole series on travellers to be made. I'd like to know the differences between the Roma and Irish travellers, and how much overlap there is between the two.

But they have a very distinct accent which to me sounds very Irish but my Irish friend said it wasn't. Just interested really, wondering if its some sort of Romany accent which to me sounds Irish but an Irish person would know it isn't.

A lot of the kids at DD's school are traveller children and they're all very polite.

I would like to see a programme about the gypsy and traveller children who have received a full education and gone on to skilled jobs and university,might shut up a lot of the biased tabloid press.

Romany gypsy,s do have a distinct accent,they also have their own language,changing words in their every day speech.

Gypsies have just set up a temporary "village" on the field across from the unit where I work today. Today we watched from our office as a young boy (no more than 10 years old) wearing his Mums pink slippers proceeded to walk onto the car park brandishing a bog roll. He pulled his trolleys down and curled one off, wiped his arse and chucked the bog roll on the floor and trundled off back to his caravan. Charming folk

I found this fascinating (although it was unashamedly catering to rubberneckers like me, and there was no attempt to look at the underlying cultures) and horrifying - the image of a really young woman, totally immobilised by her wedding dress, is going to stay with me for a long time. They couldn't walk, they couldn't fit down the aisles, they couldn't even sit up to the table, or dance with their partners.

I know it's cultural, but is it ok to have such restrictive attitudes towards young women? I felt pretty sorry for the brides. And the grooms, come to that...

I'd also like to see some decent, non-car-crash tv looking at Roma life, without resorting to cliches, and maybe I'd be able to reconsider my reactions, which after all, aren't based on very balanced data.

To be fair, nervous young women dolled up to the nines aren't a sight reserved for Romany weddings.
Most cultures, including "our" western one, until recently, involves a virgin in a lot of lace & jewelery.

The Roma and Irish Travellers are two distinct ethnic groups, with different language, culture etc. Roma live all over Europe, and I think you only really find Irish Travellers in the UK, Ireland and North America.

MamaGoblin - I don't think it's a case of ok or not... it's a very patriarchal culture, as a feminist I don't agree with that.

Hmm. So many thoughts on this I don't know where to start, so my thoughts might seem a bit disjointed, but here goes:

I was transixed by every a second of it, and will probably watch it again. All of the dresses were without question, utterly frightful, especially the dayglo lime and blue bridesmaids. Shocking. Absolutely no excuse for it whatsover. Right, got that off my chest, now:

Joan. She looked like an angel and her husband looked like, well, a potato. I'm scared for her - she looked like a rabbit in the headlights. I'm not sure she hasn't just settled for him because she was being left on the shelf. Perhaps as settled travellers (her parents barely seemed like travellers at all) she has found herself trapped between two worlds, not unlike many British Asian girls expected to go into an arranged marriage. Except that she didn't appear to want to fight it, she just seemed a bit unworldly and confused. I am amazed that for such a stunningly pretty girl she has managed to live and work in mainstream society yet never had a boyfriend before her husband. That must have taken some doing.

Sammy-Jo was ace and so was her mum.

The partying clothes: So much flesh! I think the reason they all dress like that is that overtly sexy clothing will get the boys all rampant, but the boys know they can't touch until they are engaged and then married. As snagging a husband at the first available opportunity seems to be the most important thing, then the more you dangle your wares in front of the boys the quicker you get sorted out in the husband department. It's the oldest, most fundamental story in the book really - a full-on primeval courting ritual.

Had to laugh at the two girls enthusing over the peach-satin-burlesque-dancer-corset- with-mini-puffball-skirt-attachment and then debating over whether it was suitable to wear to a horse fair though!

Oh, could talk about this all week, really!

Bubbles - has your husband 'married out' by marrying you, then? And when you say your DD is being encouraged to study law, who by? Has she always been in regular mainstream school?

I loved it, although not sure about the girls casual clothes they bought for Appleby

I would love a follow up, my heart went out to Joan she said they had their problems but they just have to get on with it or something, just something you don't expect someone to say on their wedding day

wonder would she be able to cope moving to Ireland she seemed really close to her family

This was not typical of the Romany gypsy family that I know and married into.Theae were Irish gypsys and I have no knowledge of that community.
My husband or his brothers were not encouraged to marry gypsy girls,my pil,s were happy to see them happy with their own choice of partner.
All my my dc,s have been through or are currently at mainstream school,I have one ds completed an apprenticeship,another in further ed,dd is at a grammar school,we could not be further removed from the families featured tonight.
This is why I get so upset when I see generalised hurtful comments against the gypsy and traveller community,yes there are bad uns but so are there in the settled community.
Some of us are bringing up their children to seize opportunities and make the most of their lives.

sorry that should read our children.

Haven't seen it yet, did they talk about the grabbing ceremony?

Gypsys and Irish Travellers are not at all the same thing. The programme was using the terms as if they were interchangeable, they are not and never have been.
They speak different languages, they have different cultures and lifestyles, different problems.

No, they never!! which was a shame. There was so much more they could have gone into. That designer must be raking it in!! I like their values. Thought all the girls were gorgeous but, I would like to know, are the boys allowed to put it about? whilst the girls remain innocent?

I know it was a doc about weddings and the culture of young marriage specifically, and not about the truths and untruths in the stereotypes of gypsy and traveller culture, but so many programmes in this voyeuristic vein only observe one side of the story rather than probing/challenging different sides of an argument, or aspects that don't quite add up/ring true. It's too easy to come away with rose-tinted view of things if your only experience of gypsies and travellers is a programme about unworldly virgins dressed like Disney Princesses who've overdone the St. Tropez. Of course I appreciate Bubbles's point, but I think her family is very much a minority example.

The venue for Sammy-Jo's reception pulling out at short notice was pounced on as being a racist decision. Yet in the next scene the narrator said that this was a common problem as their weddings and get-togethers had a reputation for descending into violence. And they do have a reputation for being rather feudal, with a penchant for bare knuckle boxing - no point denying it. The poster living near Appleby said that all the pubs and shops board up for the duration of the fair. Are we sure this is just about racism and unfounded fears? Any venue that has had repeated experience of violence/crime will do what they have to, to protect their staff and their premises. No-one turns away business without good reason. It is shame that people cannot deabte these things openly and sensibly without accusations of racism being thrown around.

Also very interesting that it was taboo to discuss how much the wedding dresses cost. The dress makers said 'they'd kill me if I told you'. Not sure that was a mere figure of speech! Cash under the mattress anyone?

Just a quick question, I sky plussed this, is it suitable to watch with DD's playing train tracks/lego in the room? DD1 is a parrot so I really just need no swearing.....

Jack I don't remember any swearing but didn't watch the whole thing. Some of the accents were fairly impenetrable so if there was some I may have missed it!

There was a couple of F words and one C word, but frankly the accents were so thick a child would have to have a Phd in linguistics to notice!

Also interesting that they kept harping on about how religious they were, yet one of the elders said that most people don't bother turning up to the chapel, they just go to the party afterwards! So perhaps not deeply religious then, rather, deeply superstitious/traditional - which is not quite the same thing. Also the man who said he was afraid of no-one but God 'earned his living' if you can call it that by unregulated bare-knuckle fighting. How does that go down with the Inland Revenue then?

BTW, for people wondering whether the term Gypsy was offensive - No. It is a generic term, like Nomad, for any tribe or race of nomadic/travelling people. Irish Traveller is one type of gypsy, Roma (or Romany) is another. I think the term Roma is largely reserved for the eastern European gypsies who descended from India, via Iran I think, whilst Romany people are the western European 'spin-off' descendents of the Roma. Am I right, Bubbles?

I only caught the last 20 minutes or so.

Bless Joan. What a lovely girl she seems. And how scared. Me and DP cried when she was dancing with her parents after the wedding. Really hope her life works out. You can't help feel apprehensive for her however.

Wish I had seen the rest of the programme. It doesn't seem to the the hatchet job that I expected it to be.