The hit UK documentary series My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding has come to this side of the Atlantic, currently showing on TLC. The series offers a rare glimpse into the traditionally secretive Irish traveller community. Despite the show title, Irish travelers are not related to the Romani people. Misnomer or not, I found the series a compelling watch. How can it not with colorful dresses like these:

In one of the episodes, an extravagant electric wedding dress was custom made for a non-traveller girl marrying her traveller boyfriend. The dress featured tons of LED lights and animatronic butterflies (video here). It weights about 20 stones and the dressmaker attended the wedding with a fire extinguisher in tow "just in case" (video here).

The Guardian's TV critic said it well: "On one level this was a sensitive look at a complex and in some ways contradictory society; on another level it was just about really big dresses. One cannot overstate how big, or how overblown, or how provocative some of these outfits were. [...] But this wasn't about making fun of bad taste; we were way past questions of taste. We were in the realms of engineering."

Engineering indeed.

Source: Channel 4 | Guardian | Daily Mail
TV schedule: TLC