Last month, in Yemen’s largest mass wedding to date, 1,600 couples tied the knot. The grooms filled a sports hall in the capital, each dressed in traditional flowing robes, with black and green scarves wrapped around their heads and holding long, curved golden swords.
In Yemen, weddings are a single-sex affair and the brides had their own separate parties at home. The couples were to meet later that night, many for the first time.
The event was organized by the Orphans Charitable Organization and sponsored by Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, a brother of the Saudi sovereign.
“All the grooms are orphans,” organizer Abdul Rajeh explained. “Orphans have a really hard time getting married as they don’t have the financial support of a father to help them with the dowry.”
The festivities included a morning of dancing, poetry and short comedic plays and the front few rows of seats were filled with Saudi dignitaries with a sea of the grooms’ black and green headscarves behind them. Even leading Yemeni Islamic scholar Sheikh Abdul Majeed al-Zindani attended, a man the U.S. has labelled a “specifically designated global terrorist.”
Source: Al Jazeera, November 17
Eric Koch’s book, The Weimar Triangle, is available at Indigo-Chapters and in your local bookstore. 
Terrorism begins at home.
Marriage: A celebration of Hope over Experience…. I think Samuel Johnson said that.
It was, I think, a *second* marriage that Johnson said represented a triumph of hope over experience. The men getting married in Yemen can go up to four, without having to divorce anyone. Who knows what a fourth marriage represents?