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Airdate: Big Fat Gypsy Weddings

Hit UK series Big Fat Gypsy Weddings begins on LifeStyle You next week.

After screening the one-hour special, My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, LifeStyle You will air the series, Big Fat Gypsy Weddings, which picks up where the special left off.

The show has been a big hit in the UK where it was even nominated for a BAFTA audience award, alongside The Only Way Is Essex  Downton Abbey, and Sherlock.

Ancient traditions meet modern fashions in an ostentatious culture clash in the world of 21st-century gypsy and traveller weddings. Gaining rare access to this fascinating and often misunderstood community, the series uses the prism of the weddings to reveal a culture where brides compete to have the biggest dress but having children out of wedlock is still taboo and divorce is unheard of. Considered ‘on the shelf’ at 20, many girls in gypsy and traveller communities get married soon after their 16th birthday with the support of their family.

The weddings are visual spectacles: girls parade into church in enormous dresses that sometimes weigh more than the bride herself. Although the women look sexually provocative there is a tradition of premarital chastity that is increasingly unusual in Britain today.

This is a community that lives alongside but detached from mainstream society. It is a community of contrasts, living by centuries-old religious and cultural traditions but at the same time embracing the gaudier extremes of the celebrity and fashion-obsessed times in which we live.

It premieres 9:30pm Monday 20th June on LifeStyle You.

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