Henna Night revised: When tradition meets consumerism

The bride-to-be sits in the middle, wearing a red Ottoman kaftan. Her friends dance around her with slow and graceful movements, carrying candles and singing together an old, traditional song about a bride's fear before she leaves her village.

"Don't let them ever give away their daughter to faraway lands/ Don't let them ever look down on the mother's beloved who left her village behind," go the lyrics - and then the refrain: "I miss my mother, my father and my village." There are tears in the eyes of the bride-to-be as her future mother-in-law, equally tearful, approaches her and puts some henna on her hand. Then the older woman puts a gold coin in her new daughter-in-law's hand - a symbol of the in-laws' pledge that they are responsible, morally and financially, for the bride from now on.

Then the music, played by a trendy DJ, starts and as the girls - and older women - dance to the Western pop that has dominated the summer of 2016 in Çeşme, one of Turkey's swankiest holiday resorts. Champagne and wine flows, to be accompanied by a buffet dinner of Aegean delicacies. The evening's organization is totally eclectic, with American-style "New Mrs" or "Bride-to-be" tags in English and Ottoman-style red head covers on the girls; three different generations of women and a "henna man" drawing complicated tattoos on women's hands Indian-style.

Welcome to the reinvention of yet another Anatolian custom in the era of consumerism. The traditional pre-wedding Henna Night, which marks a young girl's entry to womanhood, absorbs the activities of the Anglo-American Hen Night.

The bride, an U.S. educated 25-year-old who is presently working at an international company as a brand manager, opted for a playful mix of the traditional Henna Night and...