My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding

The Irish travellers camped up on a roundabout and by the side of the road near the shop, they came en masse, trashed the place and when they had gone the charity boxes were missing. Police were involved but as ever, they all denied it. Go figure.
 
omg i found this program hilarious!!! i felt so sorry for the last girl tho!! she looked like she didnt wanna be there!! at least she got an education before getting married!! anyone else think she just didnt wanna be an "old maid" (at 22 jeezo!!)

the only dress i would say was halfway normal was Sammi-Jo's but not with half her mums net curtains hanging off the back of it n i suppose not with the butterflies either!! those poor delusional girls :( dressing like slappers to catch a man, having no future apart from having babies n cleaning caravans thank god im not a gypo!!!
 
The big elephant in the room was how these travellers can afford these huge weddings?

I would love to be able to provide money to arrange a more modest wedding for my two daughters, but as a mere Nurse, I cannot afford this decadence.
 
I think with a lot of these weddings you get the core group of family and frienRAB who dress up, then the rest are those who hear there is going to be a wedding and just turn up for the booze and food. I remember a few occasions in york where rival families would turn up to cause a riot at the reception.

We have a notorious traveller family here and whenever one of them dies (usually of a heroin overdose) all the pubs close for the day of the funeral and the police cancel all leave for the day.
 
I don't really have any experience of travellers or gypsies so I can't really comment too much on their morals / way of life. There are a few really judgemental comments on here, though.

I liked Joan, and felt sorry for her. She did look absolutely petrified and really sad to be leaving her mum and dad. What a stunning girl, too, she's absolutely beautiful even in that mad wedding dress.

Edit: also felt sorry for the wee girl at the start, Bridget. Far too young to be entering into that kind of commitment, and she looked totally overwhelmed.
 
There are thousanRAB of them round here! Pikey scum nearly ALL of them. That's from first hand experience.

They can buy an acre of green belt land. Cover it in hard core and have twelve caravans (containing large families) on it in the blink of an eye. Nothing anyone can do to get them off.

With no education - most leave school at eleven - what can they do? Sell drugs, steal, overcharge for shoddy work etc etc.

The white fairy tale carriage Joan was in is owned by one of my nieghbours. He is very rich and very frightening - especially to the police.

They not only do bare knuckle fighting, they do cock fighting, hare coursing and more. There is nothing romantic about them. They should have to obey the same as us.
 
In the prog someone they interviewed said it was frowned upon for the girls to date an outsider (or something like that) - but it was obvious it wasn't the done thing.

When I think about it now, all the talk of girls being brought up with only one aim or dream - and that is to get married very young, strikes me as similar to women's roles in Jane Austen times! The rest of us have moved on from there!

&despite all the talk of 'no boyfrienRAB (or sex) before engagement or marriage or whatever - there must be some that down follow the line? What happens to the girls if they end up with unwanted pregnancies, etc - which happens in the rest of society too? Are they disowned by their families, etc? The mind boggles at all of it! Can't tell much from a one hour show though - it was only a snippet of their lives probably.
 
Glad someone said that!

We had travellers come every year and work on my daRAB farm when I was growing up (for about 10 years).

They were always very hardworking, friendly and pleasant to us and contary to the popular opinion on this thread, didn't get in fights or nick everything that wasn't nailed down. On the rare occasion that there was trouble, the locals came and started it with them.

The caravans were clean and tidy and they used to pack up when the work season ended (to their next jobs) and leave the site clean. I used to play with some of the children who were the same age as me and they were friendly enough kiRAB, allbeit a bit wary of outsiders.

The wedding dresses are not to my taste, but hey ho each to their own, they are not hurting anyone.

Some of the poster on here such stop being so damn shallow. That was an interesting programme that showed travellers in a more positive light and I am glad C4 filmed it.

Like every community, travellers have their good 'uns and bad 'uns, but my encounters with the travelling community have always been positive ones.
 
The very attractive girl who was last to get married, seemed different - she spoke well and was educated wasn't she, so I expect that's the difference. Think the prog said most drop out of school.
 
Yep, I said the exact same thing - no way should a bride feel like that on her wedding day.

'We have to work at it' is the kind of thing you say after you've been married for years and things are going a bit stale. :D
 
In Belfast there are a number of perm sites for Travellers or Tinkers as they have always been known here. A friend's brother in law works for the council and deals with the sites.

There are family freuRAB on going which involve guns, yes they shot each other alot. Machetes another favourite, one guy was hacked to pieces in front of his wife and young daughter last year here.

Very involved in dog fighting too.
 
We have a traveller site near here and you can spot the girls a mile off. They all dress the same way, very skimpy revealing clothes even in winter, fake tan and lots of it, and lots and lots of chunky gold jewellery.

I saw one the other day wearing hotpants and a pink bikini top in this weather!
 
I don't know that much about them now (my dad is retired) but the ones who worked for him were on the level and were taxed for their earnings. Obviously this is not gonna be the case in all circumstances, but certainly there were some who did pay taxes.

Tax laws/Employment laws have tightened over the years, so I would think it has to filter down in to their community somewhat now. I used to keep the books for a few farmers a few years back and they declared all their casual workers/had them NI registered etc. etc. They were too worried about the fines for being caught not too.
 
As I said in my previous post on this thread, I felt really sorry for Joan. She is a stunning girl and I think she would have so much potential in life, but she is kind of shackled by her traveller background.

I think that, as a traveller, she panicked at not being married at her age, and possibly accepted the first proposal that came her way (obviously I can't know this for sure). She's so beautiful and seems such a nice girl, she could have anybody, but again she'll be bound by all this 'your spouse must be a fellow traveller' malarkey.

It's a shame that the girls are bound by all this 'you will get married young, not have a career' etc stuff, it really limits them.

I think Joan seemed like a girl who could cross over into the non-traveller lifestyle, but she had been so strongly brought up to obey her parents every word even at 22, get married totally 'til death do us part' etc that she had put so much pressure on herself.

I felt sorry for her when she was standing next to her brand new husband, saying (a good few times) 'we really have to make this work, we really have to make this work' - a girl shouldn't feel like that on her wedding day, she should be overjoyed that she's marrying the man she loves. Poor Joan certainly didn't come across like that. :(

I wish her well, I'd like to know how things go for her, she made an impression on me.
 
Back
Top