NEW DELHI: Rabbia Banu was increasingly in despair as her daughter’s wedding neared and they still had no money to buy a bridal dress. It was early December, two weeks before the nuptials, that help came through an unexpected route: from a charity shop run by a taxi driver to help impoverished families like hers. 
The Indian wedding is an occasion often marked joyful and colorful days-long celebrations. But to many families it also comes as with enormous social and financial pressure that not all are able to meet. 
A bridal dress may cost as little as $40 or as much as tens of thousands of dollars, if not more. But even the cheapest ones may be too expensive for lower-class families, often forcing them into debt they will struggle to repay for years. 
The bride’s family usually bears the brunt of wedding costs. Earning their livelihood as daily wage workers in Mettupalayam, a village in southern Tamil Nadu state, Banu and her husband knew they could not afford even the most basic wedding expense such as bridal attire.
“Me and my husband, who works as a waiter in a restaurant in the village manage to earn not more than 200 bucks ($3) every day,” Banu told Arab News. “Buying a bridal dress was beyond our reach.” 
But on Dec. 13, she happily married off her daughter in a wedding gown on which she had not spent a rupee. It came from Malappuram district in neighboring Kerala state, from taxi driver Nasar Tootha who runs a charity initiative to ease the burden on those who cannot bear it. 
“Within three days I got the bridal dress without paying any money and without paying any transportation charges,” Banu said.

Her family is one of some 300 across India who have benefited from what Tootha calls his wedding “dress bank.” 
The 38-year-old father of four said the idea to start the initiative, which is based on donations, came to him two years ago. 
“I met many families who were struggling to afford a bridal dress for their daughters, and I thought of helping them,” he told Arab News. 
Through social media, he started asking wealthier families to contribute to the cause after their weddings. 
“We don’t use bridal dresses even once after a wedding ceremony is over, and they remain unused the whole life. I requested people to donate them.” 
At a shop he rents in Thootha village, where he lives, Tootha now has 600 gowns and says donors now reach out to him themselves to support the dress bank. The dresses are usually transported by ordinary people or bus drivers whose routes go through the destinations where the brides live. They are returned the same way. 
“Local people support me and they appreciate my charity work, and I also find pleasure in doing this,” he said, as it makes him happy to “bring smiles on the faces of new brides.”