This is neither a dream nor a scene from an opera. It is a wedding. Somewhere in Vojvodina, in the second half of the twentieth century.
The groom stands as straight as a signpost, wearing the expression of a man who has been woken up and married in quick succession, and is still working out the order of events. The bride is solemnity itself: flowers on her head, and beads enough to rig out three carts and one elderly tree.
Love, they say, is blind. In this instance it is also extremely well dressed, extremely heavy, and requires a steady gait.
This great scene of human destiny is now kept in the ethnographic department of the Museum of Vojvodina in Novi Sad—as proof that marriage is a serious business, particularly when you have to carry it on your head.
