A Kurdish wedding is not an event you attend for two hours and go home. Traditionally, Kurdish weddings lasted three days, with different ceremonies and gatherings filling each day. The contemporary diaspora version is typically compressed into a single evening, but the scale and the spirit remain: these are large, loud, joyful occasions that the whole community participates in.

Music is the backbone of a Kurdish wedding. A live band with zurna and daf — or increasingly a DJ playing a mix of Kurdish folk music and contemporary pop — keeps the dance floor occupied for hours. The halay, the traditional Kurdish line dance, is the wedding dance: men and women in a chain, moving together in a pattern of steps that most Kurdish people have known since childhood. The chain grows and shrinks throughout the night as people join, take a break, and rejoin.

The food at a Kurdish wedding is serious. Elaborate rice dishes, roasted lamb, fresh salads, and sweets are served to hundreds of guests, often prepared by the women of the family over the days before the event. The wedding is a public demonstration of the family’s generosity, and the quality and quantity of the food reflects on the hosts in a way that the couple cannot entirely escape.