Weddings are something that is very important in every culture. It is what unites family, creating bonds, and it is what ensures stability. Girls mostly fantasize about their wedding day when they are little kids and boys usually prefer to evade the thought of it. In the western culture you are allowed to chose your partner but in other cultures such as the ones in the Middle Eastern, marriages are arranged by the parents without the consent of their sons or daughters. Even more radical is the idea of marriage between family members. We can see that as an atrocity, something really outrageous that should not even exist, but that is how it has been done in their culture for hundreds of years.
In western culture marriage is something simple; it is the unity of two happy couples and possibly two happy families. When two persons marry they are full of hopes and dreams, thinking about how happy they are going to be, how many children they would have, how would they be, where would they travel to. It is a happy picture that many people take for granted, many do not realize how lucky they are that they are given that liberty and that it is in them to choose the right person.
In cultures from the Middle Eastern, marriage for a woman can be dreadful. It is a day where she weds a person that she may not love, a person who may be a family member or any person who is close to the family. It is a day when she looses all freedom, if she ever had some, and is enclosed in this jail which was predetermined even before she reached puberty. Why do they do that? we may question, how is it fair for them? Those are questions that forms in my head whenever I put myself in their positions. I cannot imagine the pain and dreadfulness they may feel. But then again they are raised that way since they are little children, who knows if they even question the practice. In my opinion even if you grew up in an environment that dictates the practice, a smart person should be able to come out of that shell and think differently, question everything and not always believe that your parents are 100% right, because like them, they are humans and they are prone to make mistakes sooner or later.
