Thea's wedding

“Hi! I’m Thea, I’m 12 years old and I am getting married.”

This is how the blog of this Norwegian little girl starts. She writes on the blog all her wedding arrangements from a month before the wedding, that would take place on October, 11^th. Thea will marry Geir, a man 25 years older than her.

The girl writes on her blog that her mother has arranged a wedding with a 37 years old man that Thea barely knows.

At the beginning, the girl seems happy and excited but with some doubts because she doesn’t know any other girl of her age married. Little by little she will write her doubts and fears.

Through Thea’s pictures we can see the process of choosing the wedding dress, the hairstyle and make-up, the church, the cakes, the rings… Moreover, in this blog, the girl is honest with her readers and writes that her mother wants her to have children as soon as possible; how she miss her friends, because she doesn’t have time to be with them due to the wedding, and she fears that she won’t see them again after it; how she has to give up on her dream of being a vet or how she fears the wedding night after looking lingerie on the internet.

This blog become one of the most followed blogs in Norway, reaching half a million daily visits. The case alerted society, which reacted calling the police and social services. Many people made protest in Norway trying to stop the wedding and trying to convince Thea to say no.

The Plan Norge NGO waited until the blog became viral to reveal that it was a campaign to aware people that almost 40.000 girls are force to get marry each day. This campaign had a global repercussion, appearing in many newspaper and social networks worldwide under the hashtag #stoppbryllupet ("stop the wedding").

  

 

(Click on the image to go to the source)

The fake continued, even though it was known that this was a fake wedding, until the wedding date.

The wedding was a big event in which the church was full of people (many of them reader of the blog) supporting the #stoppbryllupet and Thea to say no.

After the words: "Will you take Geir to be your lawfully wedded husband?" Thea said: "No". And she left the church.

The campaign was very successful, if we understand success as the fact that it reached millions of people. It became viral and alerted the population. Everybody got mad because a young girl was going to marry an adult man. On the other hand, we will have to wait to know if it was a really successful campaign. Thousands of girls are forced to get marry everyday and governments seem not to care about it. The day something changes we could say it was successful.

Besides that, it was really smart to make this fake in Norway, as it is considered an advanced and high-level country; it is very shocking that the parents of that girl (and also authorities) could allow that marriage. If the NGO had chosen another country, maybe, it won't have been as viral as it was, and have the relevance and impact it had.

The fact that this Norwegian little girl was going to get marry showed the reality for many other girls in the world. Thea was lucky and she could say No, unfortunately, this does not happen in many onther cases.