Tag Archives: groom

BACHELOR PARTY PRANK

Nationality: American
Age: 52
Occupation: Sales representative and finisher for wood-flooring company
Residence: Vail, CO
Performance Date: April 18, 2021
Primary Language: English

MAIN PIECE:

Informant: They chained a bowling ball to my leg… With a––with a, like chain. And I just kept telling them they had to remember not to push me in the pool that night… And they put me in a 12-year-old’s Superman costume. Like literally stuffed me into it, and everything was so far up my freaking crotch. So I was walking around the streets of Vegas in this Superman costume with a bowling ball chained to my leg. Like a ten- or twelve-pounder… Wasn’t like a kid’s ball.

INFORMANT’S RELATIONSHIP TO THE PIECE:

Informant: It’s what’s expected, you know…? Especially with my friends, there’s always that… I think it boils down to just playfulness? Like close through playfulness, you know. Giving each other a hard time, teasing each other, playing a prank on each other. Um… ‘Cause we know that we can. We’re so close that we can do it to each other without it, you know, offending anybody or, you know, somebody taking it the wrong way, or, you know… I think it symbolizes… At least in my group of friends, like you know… You know that when…  You’re stuffed into a Superman costume that you’re part of the crew. You know? And everybody’s having a good time at your expense, and everyone––and you’re okay with that. Cause it’s… It’s going to be somebody else’s turn at some point. 

REFLECTION:

Bachelor parties are a transitional period where a man is neither married nor single. He is on the threshold of becoming a husband. Bachelor parties often involve pranks at the groom’s expense, as practical jokes mark initiations into new identities. In International Folkloristics: Classic Contributions by the Founders of Folklore, Géza Róheim writes that there is a “tendency to punish the main actor of the drama,” with the groomsmen and bridesmaids “abreacting their Oedipal revolt in humorous, permissible form, against the new ‘father’-to-be” (273). Across cultures, the groom is clowned at the hands of the young people involved in the wedding party; he is being teased before entering his new, serious role as a man (which in some societies or families may entail becoming a patriarch, father, breadwinner, and head of the household).

In this specific case, pranks also showcase a closeness amongst the friends involved. The informant is part of a playful group of people who reveal their trust in one another through pranks. Being involved in the pranks demonstrates that you are part of the “in-group”––that you have earned their trust, and that you trust them––that they know you will respond to the prank in a certain manner (by finding it amusing and not upsetting). By pranking the informant, the men are not only marking the groom’s transition from bachelor to husband, but celebrating him as one of their own––he is still considered a part of the group, despite transitioning into a new identity. 

ANNOTATION:

Source cited above:

Róheim, Géza. “Wedding Ceremonies in European Folklore.” International Folkloristics: Classic Contributions by the Founders of Folklore, by Alan Dundes, Rowman & Littlefield, 1999, pp. 243–274.

Ghanaian wedding tradition

Nationality: Ghanaian
Age: 60
Occupation: Nurse
Residence: Hackensack, NJ
Performance Date: 04/22/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Twi

BACKGROUND: My informant, CE, was born in Ghana and immigrated to the US about two decades ago. The following piece is a tradition within Ghanaian culture, something commonly performed at weddings.

CONTEXT: This piece is from a conversation I had with my mom about Ghanaian traditions.

CE: You already know this one but… during a wedding the man, the uh, the groom is supposed to pick the bride out of a line of other covered ladies. He’s supposed to choose the right one [his wife] to prove that he loves her.

Me: I remember from [redacted]’s wedding but have you ever seen something where the groom picks the wrong bride?

CE: They always tell the groom before which one is his bride. So if he chooses wrong he’s in big trouble!

THOUGHTS: The thought of this being a tradition seems pretty horrific to me. I’ve been to quite a few Ghanaian weddings and each time I still clench in fear when the groom has to find his bride. I used to wonder why it was necessary to go through this extra stress, but after learning more about how pranks and shenanigans like this were common in weddings all over the world, it started to become clear that these jokes were not exclusive to Africa. In Germany, for example, it is common for the bride to be “kidnapped” as a wedding day joke.

A Polish Wedding Joke

Nationality: American, Polish ancestry
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Reno, Nevada
Performance Date: 3/24/19
Primary Language: English

Main Piece

QJ: “Can it be a dirty joke?”

Collector: “Yes.”

QJ: “A lot of the jokes I grew up with are kind of dirty…most Polish ones are…I think one that my grandfather would say asks what is long and hard that a Polish bride gets on her wedding night?”

Collector: “What?”

QJ: “A new last name.”

Analysis

This joke seems to be fairly popular among Polish people, and I have heard it beyond my informant. In fact, I have heard it outside of the realm of Polish culture, and have seen different ethnic backgrounds attached to it. It seems that many prideful Slavic people make light of their often long and hard to pronounce last names through jokes like these. Given my informant’s background for the joke and explaining that he heard ones like these growing up, I would also assume that his culture and family have more of an openness to tell dirty jokes in front of younger audience. Generally, it would seem that older people have more of a relaxed ability to tell jokes that otherwise would not seem appropriate. This joke also implies a patriarchal society, where a woman would receive something from her husband in any interpretation of the joke, but no jokes suggest the woman giving the man anything.

 

Ethiopian Wedding Traditions

Nationality: American/Ethiopian
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Washington D.C
Performance Date: 3/26/18
Primary Language: English

Context & Analysis

The subject and I exchanged stories of our family’s traditions while sitting in a class discussion. She mentioned that she and her family were from Ethiopia, so I asked her if she knew of any unique Ethiopian traditions that westerners might not be familiar with. She provided me with an overview of traditional Ethiopian weddings gathered from the ones she and her family attend on a (mostly) yearly basis. She emphasized how many of the ritualistic parts of the wedding preparation are altered or substituted depending on each family’s preferences or personal ties to the country. The transcription is a little disjointed at times because the subject attempted to recount a variety of wedding traditions encapsulated in the ceremony. It was quite interesting to hear a younger woman’s take on these traditional ceremonies.

Main Piece

“So…for Ethiopian weddings…it’s like a, um, a couple days long process—actually it can take up to a month usually. I have 8 aunts on my mom’s side so—and I’ve been alive and I’ve missed three weddings—so every single summer someone is getting married. So like the whole summer we go back to Ethiopia or we travel back to where they are and so actually…there’s a process you do when you have your weddings. So first there’s the, uh, bride’s family celebration and they wash the bride’s feet in honey and milk and, um, they do all her makeup and beauty and stuff and they’ll like play this game there where the groom tries to break in [to the room the bride is in] and they’ll be like “No you can’t be in there!” [laughs], and that’s pretty cool. And these things are mostly ritualistic, like you’re not actually pouring milk on the bride’s feet but some people do. I’ve been to a couple of weddings where people have, um, and that is traditionally the night before the wedding. And the day of the wedding it’s—with my family it’s a lot of pictures and posing. I know with traditions they have the husband—the groom—has to kill a bull, or like a goat, and they cook it for dinner, like the wedding dinner. Like in most American ideas of [a traditional Ethiopian] wedding this happens but it’s like miming, which is like kind of a new tradition, um, but yea. There’s a huge selection of Ethiopian foods and a huge section of raw meat, that’s a thing that people eat a lot, and afterward you have a big dinner the day after which is the bride and groom’s first big party together, hosting like their friends and family. And it’s basically everyone goes over during the day—it’s not like a nighttime celebration—um, and then after that (I cannot remember the name of it). It’s just the bride and groom’s parents and they serve them dinner for the first time, like as a couple, um, in their own house. There’s a lot of ritual of, like, respecting your elders and stuff.”

Rajasthani Wedding Games for the Groom

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: dancer
Residence: Las Vegas, NV
Performance Date: December 18, 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Marwari, Marathi, Hindi

1. The first time the son-in-law comes to his mother-in-law’s house,  the women in her family fill his mouth with sweets, and he can’t refuse.

2. The Son-in-law will also have to pick out his new wife from amongst all the women in her family (and servants). They will all cover their faces with their veils and group together. The new husband must recognize his bride by her hands and figure; if he picks her out, he gets to spend the night at her side. Otherwise, he has to sleep outside under the stars.

Just like for the bride, the marriage period is a liminal period of transition that needs to be eased. Teh groom is now responsible for his wife and is joining a new family.Unlike the bride’s experience though, the groom is not being tested like the bride for his courage, strength, intelligence, etc. This is probably a carry over form the dowry tradition, back in old days (and to this day in villages and conservative communities) the bride’s family would pay the groom’s family to marry their daughter. Thus, the groom’s family would put her to the test to make sure she was “worth the money” so to speak. Now, the dowry system is uncommon, but the practice of testing the new wife remains.