TEHRAN – Sima Alipour, a 26-year-old girl, is called Iran’s mother of brides. A couple of years ago, she felt totally lost in the pitch blackness and decided to die, but a sparkle of hope enlightened her life so that she has helped so far hundreds of financially-struggling couples to start married life.

Four years ago, she lost her fiancé to cancer after 5 months of engagement, grieving the loss of a man whose dream was making his script into a film, made her move away from her city to turn their screenplay into a film in the capital.

After several months of trying, failure struck her and made her give up.  

Coping with the loss of spouse and failure led to a whirlwind of knots, questions, and self-doubt until she got so mired down in it that she became certain to end her life.       

Abandoning all hope, the young girl poured many pills into her hand to swallow, but a dream of being a bride flashed through her mind like a film running at high speed, and suddenly she felt rather hopeful to help few girls fulfill their dream of being a bride.

A day later, she started looking for all those working in the field of wedding services and those looking forward to helping couples in need, so it was the day she could make it and gradually found her friends accompanying her in this way.

Now Sima is the “mother of Iran’s brides” and has so far provided 530 brides with home appliances and helped them hold wedding ceremonies.

As an integral part of the Iranian marriage tradition, the bride’s family provides the couple with furniture and home appliances, which is called Jahiziyeh, several days before the wedding.

First, she was helping youth with disabilities who could not afford marriage ceremony or home appliances, after a while, she targeted all the financially-struggling couples and help them start their married life.

Holding a big wedding party for 200 couples, for 26-year-old Sima, the youngest benefactor of the wedding ceremonies, was the beginning of a path for making many happy.

Over 110 young volunteers are working with Iran Team, offering all kinds of services to the vulnerable groups of people, with a total of 500 benefactors.

“How I felt about her was neither like a daughter’s feelings for her mother nor like a friend's feelings for her friend. I felt like I was meeting an angel. I felt that she was an angel who came down from heaven to do something for young people like us that looked impossible even to ourselves.

That’s indescribable that a human enters into such a laborious endeavor without any expectations, and only for young people like me to achieve our dreams. It was very strange for me to see her not sleeping for consecutive nights because of us,” Faezeh Zamiri, a 25-year-old bride said about Sima.

“Tonight I felt like you were a doctor for five times, and wore that white medical gown in front of my eyes, my dream of you becoming a doctor finally fulfilled,” Sima’s father said during the wedding party held for 200 couples.

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