West Bank Weddings Losing Some of Their Bling

In this town, where stone-block mansions overlook valleys of olive orchards, the average cost of a wedding had risen to $15,000 in the prosperous years between uprisings. But many of the newer homes remain half-built, evidence of a lifestyle that has become a thing of the past.

A Palestinian wedding is a lavish undertaking of parties, salon visits and a bridal dowry often used as a measure of status. A bride here had come to expect her groom to provide 300 grams of gold, bedroom furniture and a new wardrobe as her dowry, which families came to see as an insurance policy against divorce.

There is also the celebration at the signing of the wedding agreement, which calls for the slaughter of a prized lamb, and a half-dozen bridal trips to the salon before each wedding-related event. Custom also demands that the groom rent a large convoy of taxis to retrieve the bride on the wedding day, which culminates in a feast of more than a dozen slaughtered sheep and an expensive fireworks display.

Yusef Ghanem, 35, a balding bachelor who has received only a fraction of his teacher's pay from the Palestinian government in seven months, said that "even a full salary is not enough for a wedding. One would have had to wait six or seven years to afford the expenses."

Hearing this lament in his mosque from a growing number of men, Jihad Manassrah gathered the leaders of four clans that account for 95 percent of the town's population. He said their initial resistance to change focused on fears that lowering the dowry "threatened the rights of women" by "making the husband think his wife is inexpensive and making it easier for him to divorce."

"We told them that people who have been married in these very expensive weddings have also gotten divorced," Manassrah said. "Money isn't the issue."

After 10 meetings over the summer, an agreement emerged last month that Manassrah is planning to spread across the West Bank. The terms of the deal, roughly translated as "The Decency Document," set limits on even the smallest details of the marriage process.

The dowry was capped at 150 grams of gold and $1,000 worth of clothes and furniture. Kanafi, a Palestinian pastry, would substitute for lamb at the signing of the wedding agreement. There would be one salon visit on the wedding day itself and no taxi convoy. The feast should be small, without fireworks.

"These were maximums, and we prefer if people do even less," Manassrah said.

The agreement bore the stamps and signatures of clan leaders, Islamic foundations, the town's sports clubs, agricultural associations, even the local taxi company likely to lose business as a result. After being asked its opinion, the Bani Naim Women's Charitable Society signed on.

"Too many young guys were leaving here in search of a cheaper wife somewhere else," said Leila Manassrah, 19, a society board member who is studying agriculture at Hebron University.

Her head bundled in a pink scarf without a trace of hair showing, she said the agreement was a sign of the times. Many women, she said, are seeking jobs outside the customary fields of nursing and tailoring to help husbands pay bills rather than amass new ones.

"Anyway," she said with a smile, "if he's a good guy, the dowry is just not important."

When the document was presented to clan leaders, Yusef Manassrah announced that his three unmarried daughters, including Leila and her 27-year-old sister, would be wed under the new rules.

"The men were kissing me," said Manassrah, who displays the agreement in his office. "They were shaking my hand, thanking me."

Since then, there have been 10 weddings in Bani Naim. Of those, eight have adhered to the new spending caps.

Mustafa Humeidat, 55, has been writing the marriage contracts here for two decades and is a strong supporter of the agreement. With a dismissive grimace, he called the bling that accompanied previous weddings "a sign of ignorance."

Humeidat said one family that ignored the rules was from outside the town and did not feel they applied to their daughter. The other, he said, showed that tradition will in some cases be hard to shake.

"The father told me he was going to marry this daughter off the same way he married off his others," said Humeidat, fiddling with a loop of wooden beads. "These people say the dowry, its gold, is the woman's right under the Koran. But when it comes to the dinners, the parties, the salons -- this is not Islam."