Tag Archives: wedding

The Lazo and Arras in Mexican Wedding Tradition

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: 67
Occupation: Reverend
Residence: Houston, TX
Performance Date: April 10, 2016
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

The informant is a 67-year-old Mexican-American woman who is a reverend. She is known for tailoring wedding receptions to couples from different cultural backgrounds, and in her words “taking old traditions and giving them new meaning.” Many consider her to be the “guru of new wedding traditions.”

When out to breakfast with the informant while she was visiting me in Los Angeles, I asked her if there were any Mexican rituals or traditions that she often incorporated in her weddings. She responded,

“Oh yes. The lazo and arras ceremony. Before the couple takes their vows, the maid of honor and the best man take a lazo (a rope) and wrap it around the bride and groom. This symbolizes to the community that the bride and groom are now one. The arras is 13 coins representing Jesus and the 12 apostles. I bless the coins and pour them into the groom’s hands. He then pours these into the bride’s hands. This symbolizes to the community that he will take care of her. Nowadays, because women want to be viewed as equals, often times the groom will pour las arras into the bride’s hands, and the bride will then pour them back into the groom’s hands, showing that she will take care of him, just as he will her, spiritually, emotionally, and financially.”

This ritual, which the informant often performs when marrying an individual with a Mexican cultural background to someone without this background, is symbolic of the spiritual, emotional, and physical commitments that come with marriage. It is typically performed at weddings where one or both partners practice the Christian faith, because of the parallel between the thirteen coins and Jesus and the 12 apostles. However, the informant stated that the ceremony is still sometimes conducted during secular weddings due to family tradition. It is interesting to examine how this form of folklore has evolved over time to reflect the cultural norms in which it is performed, as it was once held that the man is entirely responsible for taking care of his bride, but with the recent push for gender equality across all spectra of life it is now also important for the woman to show she will take care of her groom. The lazo is a public display of a couple’s commitment to one another, and highlights the permanent merging of two individual’s lives as a result of their marriage.

The Apache Blessing and Tying of the Hands in American Indian Wedding Tradition

Nationality: Mexican American
Age: 67
Occupation: Reverend
Residence: Houston, TX
Performance Date: April 10, 2016
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

The informant is a 67-year-old Mexican-American woman who is a reverend. She is known for tailoring wedding receptions to couples from different cultural backgrounds, and in her words “taking old traditions and giving them new meaning.” Many consider her to be the “guru of new wedding traditions.”

While out to breakfast while the informant was visiting me in Los Angeles, I asked her to describe a ritual or tradition that was commonly incorporated in weddings where either the bride or groom has an American Indian cultural background. She described a ritual called “the tying of the hands.”

“The tying of the hands is a lovely tradition. The families provide a traditional rope, which sometimes has a strip of material representing their tribe. I bind the couples’ hands together with the rope, and so they vow to be seen by the community as one. Usually the couple likes me to follow this by saying the Apache blessing. Christians, and secular weddings seem to like it as well. The start of it goes, ‘Now you will feel no rain, for each of you will be shelter for the other. Now you will feel no cold, for each of you will be warmth to the other. Now there will be no loneliness, for each of you will be companion to the other. Now you are two persons, but there is only one life before you.’”

While the Apache blessing is rooted in American Indian tradition and the tying of the knot may incorporate a bride or groom’s tribal heritage, the combination of the two can be used for a wedding ceremony between two individuals of any background. The Apache blessing in particular is extremely transferrable because it makes no reference to God or any higher power, instead focusing solely on the positive, heartwarming implications of marriage for the bride and the groom. The tying of the hands serves as a physical representation of the couple’s union, followed by the description of the details of this union in the blessing.

Cuban Riddle

Nationality: Cuban
Age: 57
Residence: Miami, FL
Performance Date: 3/16/16
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

Original Script: “Un muchacho le pregunta a una muchacha, ‘Cómo te llamas?’ Ella le contesta, ‘Si el enamorado es entendido, ahí va mi nombre y el color de mi vestido. La respuesta correcta es, ‘Su nombre es Elena y su vestido es morado.”

Transliteration: “A boy asks a girl, ‘How do you call yourself?’ She to him responds, ‘If the lover is understood, there goes my name and the color of my dress.’ The answer correct is, ‘Her name is Elena and her dress is purple.'”

Translation: “A boy asks a girl, ‘What’s your name?’ She responds, ‘If the lover is understood, there goes my name and the color of my dress.’ The correct answer is, “Her name is Elena and her dress is purple.'”

 

This riddle only makes sense in Spanish because the Spanish word for lover, enamorado, is a combination of the last three letter’s of the girl’s name, Elena, as well as the color of her dress, morado. ena+morado=enamorado. Furthermore, the word enamorado is preceded by the word el in the joke. El translates into “the” in this context. The woman in the riddle is testing the man to see if he’s clever enough to figure out  her name using only the clue, rather than just asking for it.

The source said she heard it at a bridal shower. They were telling wedding riddles, and this one came up. It’s a coy riddle, with the woman sounding very flirtatious. It seems she’s interested in this man, but only if he’s smart enough to beat her game. It seems odd that her dress would be purple rather than white, though. Perhaps in some earlier version of the riddle, the man was a prince? Because purple is known to indicate royalty.

 

For another form of this riddle:

Ortiz Y Pino De Dinkel, Reynalda, and Dora Gonzales De Martínez. Una Colección De Adivinanzas Y Diseños De Colcha = A Collection of Riddles and Colcha Designs. Santa Fe, NM: Sunstone, 1988. Google Books. Web. 23 Apr. 2016.

The Flying Dutchman

Nationality: American
Age: 24
Occupation: University Administrator
Residence: Auckland, NZ
Performance Date: March 26, 2016
Primary Language: English

The informant is a new professional in post-secondary administration. He lives in New Zealand, but he is originally from Apple Valley, California and went to university at the University of California, Irvine, where he was involved in student affairs and studied computer science. His background is Italian and Polish, and he has 3 older siblings.

This piece describes a dance that the informant’s family performs at Polish weddings.

“So at Polish weddings, there’s a polka dance called the Flying Dutchman, and so it’s pretty traditional to always do it. And so, basically how it works is you get in groups of three and you all kind of line up and walk around in a circle. So, the groups of three all go in a circle and there’s basically two tempos of the song—one is slow and one is fast. So when it’s slow, you’re just in your group of three with all your arms linked going in a circle, really simple. And then once the tempo picks up, then you start doing kind of a do-si-do thing. So the one person in the middle is always going to be moving around really really quickly because they’ll go to the left and swing around to the person on the right and then go around to the person on the left, so they’re basically doing a figure eight around the two people on the outside.

The reason it’s called the Flying Dutchman is cause if you’re going fast enough, eventually they should start actually flying. So then it’ll go really fast for about, I don’t know, 30 seconds, and then it’ll slow back down again and everyone gets back into their group of three and goes around in the slow circle again. And then it picks up and you do it really really quick, and then it slows down and you slow down, and it picks up, and it slows down. So it’s a very very very fun wedding song. I’ve been to….five weddings now? For my cousins, no—four, because two cousins and my brother and sister, and at all four of them, they did the Flying Dutchman. It was fantastic.”

What does the Flying Dutchman mean to you?

“Mainly it’s fun, but I also think of weddings—Polish weddings. Cause I’ve been to weddings with other people and no one knows what it is, or they haven’t done it, so, like, at every wedding I go to I would want to do the Flying Dutchman, but not everyone does it cause it’s a Polish thing.”

Do you know anything about where this tradition came from? It’s okay if you don’t, I’m just curious.

“I have no idea.”

Analysis:

I find this dance most interesting because of how it requires three people to a group instead of two, especially as it’s performed primarily at weddings. The do-si-do portion of the dance almost seems like a depiction of an inability to choose between the two partners on either side of the dancer. The informant did not describe whether or not the bride and groom performed this dance in any particular way.

The name of the dance is also interesting—as it’s a Polish tradition, it was surprising that the name of the dance is the Flying Dutchman. As the informant did not know the origin of the tradition, he did not know why it has the name it does, or whether or not it also is performed by the Dutch.

The Miracle Paste

Nationality: Italian
Age: 26
Occupation: Event Planner
Residence: San Marcos, CA
Performance Date: 02.20.2016
Primary Language: English
Language: Italian

Original Script: “Okay so you were there when we heard this story from Sheliah…but I will say it again because GOD BLESS, that stuff has helped us. So, a while ago, Sheliah was doing this wedding—she is a makeup artist—and the bride had food poisoning on her wedding day! Food. Poisoning. That is probably the worst possible thing that could happen on her wedding day. It was from a Mexican restaurant at the rehearsal dinner the night before. Anyways, the bride was literally feeling so sick and Sheliah had tried EVERYTHING to get the bride to feel better. Even the vendors who were just for set up were trying to get the bride to feel better because she was going to call off her wedding! They tried bread, everything you could find in CVS to make food positioning subside, EVERYTHING. Sheliah was about to follow the bride down the aisle with a bucket! The bride was crying and Sheliah was trying to put on her false eyelashes while the bride kept throwing up. But, this one lady from production or another, came into the room with this weird purple paste called ‘Umeboshi Paste,’ basically like a Japanese plum puree, that you have to go to a world market to find. Anyways, she open the jar up, took out a spoon full and gave it to the bride, you could literally see the brides color in her face come back! It is literally a miracle paste! The ending of the story was sooooo funny though! Everyone started working double time to get the bride all set and ready. Sheliah walked into the room where the bride had her wedding dress and stopped in her tracks, she ran out of the room yelling, ‘YOU HAVE A FREAKING MONIQUE LHUILLIER!? IF I WOULD OF KNOWN THAT I WOULD OF KICKED YOUR BUTT TWO HOURS AGO!!’ Hahah, but ever since hearing that story, we, and every other wedding planner I know carry this miracle paste in their emergency kits. Just in case. You never know!”

Background Information about the Piece by the informant: Tiffany is an event coordinator and has been for a couple of years. She has ample experience in the event planning business and usually knows how to get out of the most complicated situations. However, She has never heard of a story where a planner was able to cure food poisoning during the wedding day (given that most brides do not risk having rehearsal dinners at unknown restaurants). Usually, when food poisoning occurs the bride is able to last the ceremony. Recently, the story Tiffany, and I, heard was a few months ago. Since then, she always carries this Umeboshi paste and knows many event planners that carry the paste as well. Just in case food poisoning occurs.

Context of the Performance: Wedding Day Food Poisoning

Thoughts about the piece: Given the fact that I work with Tiffany as well as heard the story myself, it is still an interesting and funny tale as well as a fascinating way to cure food poisoning. Hearing the story a second time was just as amusing as the first time I heard it. At first, Tiffany and I thought that Sheliah was making this story up—that it was a practical joke. Nonetheless, after she showed us a picture of the paste, and using it in a food poisoning case ourselves (but thankfully only once) it is as Tiffany had noted, a “miracle paste.”

Furthermore, it is interesting to note that CVS or western medicines—a “modern” medicine—could not cure the food poisoning of the bride but a paste from Japan was able to—and quickly as well. This shows that even though America prides itself on being a developed nation, there are still some barriers that are not broken. Moreover, the fact that this paste is now widely used with event planners to cure food poisoning, it has become a folk medicine; the folk being event planners and the medicine being the Umeboshi Paste. Even though, this paste was probably not meant to be a cure for food poisoning, event planners have innovated it to work as such.

Following up with Tiffany a month later, she said that she does not go to an event without it. Thus, this material object—which is now a folk medicine—can also be seen as a sacred object and/ or good luck charm just in case something was to go wrong during the event. This folk medicine demonstrates how even when modern medicine, that has coincidently been mostly derived from folk medicine, cannot cure a simple case of food poisoning, when a simple paste from Japan can. In which, this folk medicine surpasses westernized medicine.