COLOMBO, SRI LANKA – Boutiques, a co-op store and a tea kiosk line the main street in Bope-Udagama, a village in the Colombo district in southwestern Sri Lanka. Inside one boutique, Salon Ramani, women are busy making a bouquet of flowers.
With a brightly painted sign featuring the picture of a bride over its door, Salon Ramani is the village bridal shop. A one-stop shop, Salon Ramani provides bridal attire, floral arrangements, catering and the wedding cake for local weddings at an affordable cost.
“Chithra’s wedding is this afternoon, and we are very busy,” says Ramani Dayaratne, the shop owner, while putting the finishing touches on a saree.
Dayaratne, a mother of two children in primary school, says she started the bridal shop to support her family. She says she had to become the primary breadwinner after her husband was paralyzed in an accident and no relatives could help.
“After my marriage, my mother went to a hermitage,” she says. “I had no one to turn to for help. I had to somehow feed my family.”
And in the process, she has helped empower other women as well.
Dayaratne’s father used to be president of the village chapter of the Thrift and Credit Cooperative Societies, known here as Sanasa, Sri Lanka’s national microfinance cooperative network, and her mother was president of its women’s committee. I am the vice president of the Colombo District Sanasa Union and have been president of the union’s Central Women’s Committee since 1985.
With the help of the district-level women’s committee, Dayaratne says she recruited a beautician and a culinary expert. With their help, they trained 10 young women who were educated but unemployed in beauty culture, cake making, dressmaking, embroidery, jewelry making and bouquet arranging. Armed with her new trainees, Dayaratne started the shop.
The boutique aims to offer affordable wedding services, which are expensive in Sri Lanka. At the same time, it supplies educated girls in the village with jobs, which are scarce. The women working at the boutique say they are grateful to the Sanasa society for providing them microloans so they could start their enterprises, earn a living and support their families.
The Sri Lanka labor force has become more educated and the unemployment rate has been halved during the past decade, according to a 2010 World Bank report. But many young people say it’s still hard to find secure jobs, thanks to decades of civil unrest here, according to the report.
Amidst the insecurity here, Sri Lankans must also find ways to afford weddings.
“A perfect wedding is the dream of a bride,” Dayaratne says. “All brides love to look their best on the most important day of their lives. Even in a village it is so.”
But, as in many parts of the world, weddings are expensive in Sri Lanka.
“But it is so expensive to hold a wedding ceremony today in Sri Lanka,” she says. “The bridal dress, makeup on her face, flowers, cakes, food costs over two lakhs of rupees [$1,830 USD].”
So she says Salon Ramani helps to defray the cost.
“Our services are very reasonable,” she says. “We perform the full ceremony for less than one lakh of rupees [$915 USD].”
Nalini Silva, a recent bride, says this is substantially cheaper than what her wedding cost. She says she paid 50,000 rupees, $460 USD, for her bridal saree and jacket; 75,000 rupees, $685 USD, to get part of the jewelry made; 35,000 rupees, $320 USD, for the fresh flower bouquets; and 235,000 rupees, $2,150 USD, for the ceremony and catering.
Somasiri Danapala, president of the village Sanasa society, says some girls at Salon Ramani work on the sarees for the wedding.
“There are six girls trained in hand embroidery who work the sarees in gold, silver and multicolored thread and sequins,” Danapala says.
She says they sell the sarees to brides for low prices at the bridal shop as well as in exclusive shops in the suburbs of Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital.
Siriya Manel, the cake expert here, runs Salon Ramani’s catering service. She says she gained her expertise at the district Sanasa union. Assisted by young boys and girls in the village, she provides traditional rice and curry dishes, as well as pastries for dessert – and, of course, the wedding cake.
“Wedding cake is wedding cake anywhere in the world,” Manel says. “There is no substitute.”
Salon Ramani also offers traditional jewelry worn by brides in Sri Lanka, which also tends to be expensive.
“I got the village silversmith to make the traditional seven necklaces, earrings and head ornaments embedded with red and white stones and got them gold-washed,” says Loku Menike, who makes jewelry for Salon Ramani.
Four women make fresh and artificial flower arrangements in the shop.
“I like working with artificial flowers,” says one of the women, Hema Kumari.
Another employee, Muthu Menike, who is not related to Loku Menike, joins the conversation.
“Yes, but the scent and the beauty of fresh flowers cannot be equaled, and the brides prefer them,” she says.
Dayaratne says that in addition to providing affordable wedding services, Salon Ramani also aims to provide jobs for girls in the village.
“The girls in our village are educated but cannot find jobs,” Dayaratne says.
Menike, the jewelry maker, says proudly that she has already repaid the loan given to her by the Sanasa society to start her venture.
“The Sanasa society gave me a loan of 10,000 rupees [$90 USD] for this purpose,” she says. “I have already repaid the loan out of [my] earrings from [selling] this set of jewelry.”
Menike, the flower arranger, says she grows roses and anthuriums on her father’s plot of land. The Sanasa society helps her to get the fertilizer and agrochemicals needed for her floriculture.
“I supply roses to two shops in the city,” she says.
She says she lost her husband during the nearly 30-year war in the northern part of the country between the government and a rebel group that ended in 2009. She says that arranging flowers has enabled her to support her daughters.
“I am able to educate my two daughters in a good school in the city with my earnings,” she says.
Dayaratne also expresses her gratitude to Danapala.
“I have to thank my mother for her farsightedness and the District Sanasa Union for providing us with guidance to develop our skills and make a living for our families while staying at home,” Dayaratne says to Danapala.
The women say that, otherwise, they’d have to venture into the city daily for jobs, which would take about two hours. Dayaratne says that the Sanasa society also acquired a van that enables the salon to transport its goods to the city and neighboring markets.
“Can you remember what a sleep[y] little village this was 10 years ago?” she asks Danapala. “Today, our children attend a good school in the city.”
Other Sanasa societies across Sri Lanka are also promoting self-employment opportunities for women. Hair dressing, bridal dresses and beauty culture are the most popular.
Dayaratne says that she wants to continue to be involved in these activities to help women find jobs.
“I want to provide more skills training for them, not only for ceremonial weddings, but also in handicrafts and other skills so that they could be self-employed, work at home and look after their families,” she says enthusiastically.
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