You might think I’m really late with this wish, but believe me I am not! In Romania we celebrate Valentine’s Day as an imported event from overseas, but we also have a traditional holiday for love on the 24th of February called DRAGOBETE. Well, I use this special occasion to show you some moments of a Guatemalan wedding witnessed here in Antigua. The bride and groom seemed genuinely nervous for the day.

My favourite part was when the bridesmaides gathered around the couple to take a picture together. All of them wore the Mayan traditional clothes.

Let me explain, the Mayan people still make up a majority of the population in Guatemala and their fabulously coloured traditional clothing can be seen throughout the country. Guatemala might be small, but it hosts a huge diversity of textiles within the Mayan community. Each region and its people have their own stories and put them into differently coloured patterns and styles in their blouses and skirts. The blouses are usually called a huipil or güipil. They are woven by hand and sometimes it takes up to 6 months of work to accomplish these beauties. The corte is a wrap-around skirt that consists of a piece of cloth that makes a tube into which the woman steps. Excess material is wrapped around the body, folded at the waist and then tied with a faja (belt).

I particularly like the hair wraps or cinta. It is said that it is the best revealer of the town origin of a Mayan woman. In some villages, the style of how a woman wraps her hair in the cinta can indicate her marital status or whether she has children or is a matriarch. The cinta is the crowning jewel of a woman’s traje or traditional outfit and most often the most precious piece or her wardrobe.

And they lived happily ever after.