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10th Mar 2016

Not All Brides Are Looking Forward To Their Wedding Day

Trine Jensen-Burke

We love oh-ing and awe-ing over gorgeous wedding snaps here at HerFamily HQ.

The dresses, the decor, the blooms, we are all over all that loveliness.

But when we were sent images of this particular wedding, we couldn’t help getting chills down our spines – for all the wrong reasons.

Because in this wedding, blushing bride, Lilly, is just 11 years old – while her husband, John, is 35.

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The pair were wed in a beautiful ceremony filled with roses, ribbons and tears.

Lilly took the day off school so that the couple could make use of the mid-week discount at their wedding venue – not that disrupting her studies really matters as Lilly won’t be going back to school this September. She’ll be far too busy keeping house and rearing children.

On the day of the wedding, while John beamed proudly at his new bride, Lilly waved goodbye to her family, her education and her childhood.

Feeling a little sick right now? Yeah. Us too.

But while this particular “wedding” was part of a campaign by UNICEF in a bid to put focus on – and try to end – the practice of child marriage, for millions of  girls and young women around the world, this is their reality.

Their wedding day is not the best day of lives.

Instead, it is a day that marks the end of their childhood. It puts them at risk of rape, violence, abuse and exploitation.

It is, in fact, the end of their freedom.

According to UNICEF, there are more than 700 million women alive today who were married as children, more than a third before their 15th birthday. And the practice is not going anywhere, as this year alone, 5 million girls will be married before they turn 18.

“The world has awakened to the damage child marriage causes to individual girls, to their future children, and to their societies,” UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake said in a statement.

“This new global programme will help drive action to reach the girls at greatest risk – and help more girls and young women realize their right to dictate their own destinies. This is critical now because if current trends continue, the number of girls and women married as children will reach nearly 1 billion by 2030 – 1 billion childhoods lost, 1 billion futures blighted.”

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If this wedding story upset you as much as it did us, you can find out more about the campaign and how we all can help here.