Simply stunning: This Nigerian bride looks like royalty with her traditional coral beaded headpiece, necklaces, bracelets and earrings. The beads serve a dual purpose as status symbol and signifier of a new beginning.
Pakistani brides get to indulge in beauty treatments and a henna-painting party with girlfriends and female family members before their weddings. Red is the typical color of wedding dresses, but jewelry and makeup can be all the colors of the rainbow.
Japanese brides wear carefully styled wigs in Shinto weddings. These days, many Japanese couples do an intimate ceremony at a Shinto temple before a Western-style blowout at a Christian church.
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Hat Hair Has Never Looked So Good
This towering white hat is typical of Circassian (aka Adyghe) brides in Northern Caucasus -- but it's not so big that it obscures her insanely gorgeous, flower-strewn fishtail braid.
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Bald Is Beautiful
Brides of the Maasai tribe (spread throughout Kenya and Tanzania) paint their faces and bodies with red ochre pigment. They also rub a bit of butchered animal fat on their shaved heads.
Photo: Philip Lee Harvey
When you imagine a bride getting ready for her wedding day, you probably envision a mother-daughter trip to Kleinfeld to pick out the perfect white gown, or an inspiration board of bridal updos that she tries out weeks in advance. But if you're a bride in West Sumatra, Bulgaria or Morocco, that routine might look a little different -- like an eight-pound-crown, face-paint, tinsel-veil kind of situation. One thing's for sure: Beyond the Western world, bridal beauty has a million definitions. Here are some of the world's most amazing bridal 'dos, makeup and accessories we've ever seen.