Tag Archives: marriage

FAMILY PHOTO

Nationality: Italian-American, Portuguese-American
Age: 55
Occupation: Engineering Professor
Residence: Boston, MA
Performance Date: 3/25/15
Primary Language: English

“It was August and it was my wife’s family reunion up in New Hampshire. We were gonna get married that September, so the wedding was right around the corner. At the time they were really into taking photos of the family together. So we all set up to take a photo, when all of a sudden my wife’s grandmother stopped everyone and said, ‘Okay, so we need to take on with Lenny and then one without.’ So that’s exactly what we did. One month before getting married! After coming up there for years, being the only boy she ever brought around to her family. One with and one without.

So we still will joke about that. Whenever anyone new, like a significant other or whatever, comes to the family, we’ll jokingly say, ‘Okay now one with and one without.'”

ANALYSIS:

Obviously this is just a funny moment that would get passed around in a lot of different families. There is something funny about the old members of the family being able to be so blunt and particular. And so when they repeat the phrase to someone else or tell the story, they are laughing at that moment and how blunt she was.

In a more folklore vein though, it definitely represents a liminal moment for this family. Here they are, at this reunion and this outsider is about to join them in the next month. By the next year he will be officially taking pictures with them. How people manage that liminal moment is different for everyone. Clearly her grandmother cared about the informant, as she took the picture with him in the first place, but she also cared about her family and did not want any hurtful pictures around in case things went sour. It may seem to be a little over-the-top, but to me it feels like she is trying to handle this moment before he officially enters the family.

Any Woman should be Lucky to Marry a Cornell Gentleman

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Preschool Teacher/Student on Leave
Residence: Bronx, NY
Performance Date: 3/20/14
Primary Language: English

Item: When you get married at the chapel at Cornell the building was not designed with a room for her to prepare and wait.  The only room separate from the main building is the crypt, which happens to also be the place where the founders are buried.  So the legend goes that if the bride gets cold feet, the ghosts of the founders will rise from their graves and escort her down the aisle because any woman should be honored to marry a cornell gentleman.

I first heard this story when I went on a college tour of Cornell, but I asked my friend about it, since she goes there.  She liked the story because along with being fun and mystical it makes her school look good, since any woman would be lucky to marry a man who went there.

I think this is an interesting superstition because it is very connected to the liminal aspect of the marriage ritual.  The legend is about the time right before the marriage occurs, while everything is still in flux and everything can still go wrong.

A Rose to Remember

Nationality: American
Age: 48
Occupation: Proctor
Residence: Rancho Cucamonga, CA
Performance Date: 21 April 2014
Primary Language: English

The informant (A) has been married to her husband (D) for 24 years. They got married in a non-religious outdoor ceremony when A was 24 and D was 29. Though I do not recollect them being overly romantic while their children were at home, this changed slightly after their youngest son left for college. I asked A if she remembered anything she wanted to share with me about her wedding and told me of a practice that the reverend suggested on their wedding day and they continued to do for a couple years after their wedding. The reverend was of no special importance to them other than that he could legally marry them. When the reverend was talking to them before the ceremony, he said that they should give each other a single red rose whenever they needed to remember that they loved each other enough to get married. This could be in response to an argument, a special day like an anniversary, or just because. A continued to say that she gave D a red rose on their anniversary, and they maybe did this a couple of other times in the first couple years of marriage, but as life went on they forgot about the practice when other things became more important. A did not seem upset that she and her husband had stopped the practice. It was just something to do.

The romantic nature of a red rose itself has little to do with this gesture other than being a pretty story. The red rose could be replaced with anything: a favorite candy bar, a stuffed animal, a card. The meaning to this gesture seems to be in the kindness of remembering to give the red rose rather than the red rose itself. Effectively, giving the red rose simply says “I remember that I love you, and I want to show you that I remember.” A and her husband stopped doing this a couple of years after they got married, which coincides with when they had their first child. This is the point at which I think that they ceased to be a “couple” and started being a “family,” which does not need special gestures to show that there is love between them. A rose pales in comparison to looking at a child that you created with another person. Being romantic and stereotypically sappy does not seem to be a part of A and D’s relationship.

Brides wearing white

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 17
Occupation: Student
Residence: California, USA
Performance Date: 4/30/13
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

“Another one of the stories that I grew up hearing was the reason why a bride wears white on the day of her wedding is to like symbolize her purity in entering marriage and also in many ways that it is the happiest day of her life. I learned this from my mom and dad and it’s supposed to be the bride being pure and such or whatever. And I guess a variation of this is how it became a folklore joke I guess because it goes like this: ‘a kid asks his mom why the bride wears white and she says because it’s the happiest day of her life and then the kid asks why the man wears black’. I guess it’s just funny the fact that people joke about a man’s life being over when he gets married.”
Jokes are a very important part of folklore too because they help relieve pressure from social expectations by being funny. And traditions regarding marriages are also very important because they are everywhere and they dictate how many people see their lives with their spouses.

Rajasthani Wedding Games for the Bride

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

Rajasthani Wedding Games and Pranks
1. After the wedding ceremony, the bride goes to her husband’s house where his family will put her intelligence, courage, strength and cooking experience to the test (in a friendly series of games). The exact tests to be performed vary by family, but some that Mayuri listed were:
– The bride enters the house only after kicking a rice-filled pot with her right foot (auspicious one).
– The ring game: a vat is filled with milk and small metallic objects (along with the wedding rings) are thrown in. The bride and groom must reach in together and try and fish out their rings with one hand. The one who does so first will have the upper hand in the marriage!
– The bride must try and hold as many of the gifts that her new family will deposit in her lap. Brides will often use their veils to wrap all her new family’s gifts and carry them around. She must carry as much as she can in her sari (test of her ingenuity and resourcefulness).
– The bride must also pick up every female member of her husband’s family. This is a test of her strength.
Later on, right before the wedding night, the bride and groom will be teased together (especially by the cousins) and pushed and shoved all the way to their highly decorated bedroom.

These rituals are done to ease the liminal period for the bride. Traditionally in India, the bride does not meet her husband or his family before the marriage and so these games are done to ease the transition from her old family home she’s lived in her whole life, to her new home with her husband and his family. In India, families live together and share the same house; therefore, the rituals and games involve the whole family. The bride is also going from an unmarried virgin to a married woman on the wedding night so it is important for the bride to feel comfortable with her husband.