Berlin, Germany - Berlin's working-class district of Neukoelln has a reputation for street gangs, underperforming schools and, more recently, galleries, trendy bars and clubs that are beginning to rival neighbouring marquee district Kreuzberg.
Without doubt, the area has many sides to it, although most Berliners are unaware of the fact that Neukoelln is also home to a cluster of bridal boutiques, situated around the district's main shopping street, Karl Marx Strasse.
While other parts of Neukoelln are enjoying a renaissance, Karl Marx Strasse still has its rough edges with sex shops and pawnbrokers in plentiful supply.
Strangely enough, the run-down environment hasn't stopped the emergence of a bridal hub encompassing around 20 shops that attracts mostly Turkish Muslims but also others from as far way as Scandinavia.
Evening wear can be purchased from as little as 50 euros (67 dollars), wedding dresses come in at around 500 euros. The businesses are run by women, which for wedding boutiques makes sense as the assistant also helps with the bridal fitting.
Unlike most Europeans, Turkish immigrants tend to avoid summer weddings as many relatives have returned home for the holidays in the Bosporus. Instead, April is high season. "This is the month when we have a lot of weddings," explains Fazilet Karatas of Sissy boutique.
While German women prefer tightly-fitting dresses, their Muslim counterparts look for extravagance and glitz - the more, the better. Pearls aren't as popular as they once were as they conjure up images of tears.
Karatas reveals that one of Sissy's most popular designs for the engagement party is a white organza lace corsage dress.
Red is the preferred colour for hen nights, the ceremony held one day before the wedding and attended by women only.
The family, including the groom, sometimes comes with the bride-to-be for the fitting, a situation that requires strong nerves from the shop assistants.
But things have certainly got easier. A Lebanese mother explains in one boutique how times have changed. Before, the girls would be married off by their parents against their will. Today, it's the other way around, the children make sure they get their way, she says.
"The women who marry are really happy," says Dunia Elzein, who works as a sales assistant in the La Majeste boutique, which presents in its dreamy prospectus images of brides dressed in white and floating on clouds.
A few metres further down the road, Svetla Dimitrova works in her studio preparing photos for her customers, including a heavily pregnant Greek woman in white and an Arab woman wearing a conventional headscarf.
Dimitrova admits she won't get rich from her business on the Karl Marx Strasse but she is happy.
Weddings are often big affairs with one tailor laughing as she reminisces about a customer who said "it will do for 300 people" when purchasing her engagement party dress.
A Turkish "Dugun" wedding celebration can involve inviting up to 700 guests, meaning couples have to save long and hard if the groom's father is not in a position to cover the cost, as is the tradition. Normally, the couple receive money or gold jewellery.
Berlin isn't the only place that is benefiting from a boom in the business of marriage.
Many couples also travel to Duisburg's Marxloh district in the west of the country to shop while Cologne's Dugun TV station even offers live coverage of weddings so that relatives at home who can't make the journey can enjoy the celebrations via satellite.
That's not all. "Evet - yes, I do" is the name of a recent exhibition in Mannheim and Dortmund which presented German and Turkish bridal fashion since 1800.
Venues regularly advertise for wedding parties while balloons to decorate the hall or a belly dancer can be booked by simply lifting the phone.