...and everyone was happy about it.
Maybe partially because one night she ran away with her boyfriend and then decided to get married a month later. Jeimy (my host sister (pronounced hey-me not like Jamie)) and her boyfriend have been dating for one year and four months. It is my personal belief that if you still have to include months in how long you have been dating then you have not been dating long enough to get married!
The wedding started started at around 6:30/7am with breakfast in my host family's kitchen and yard, but my day started at 5am when I woke up to men shouting and music blaring - they were raising the tent right outside of my door. The entire wedding took place in the bride and groom's houses. The groom's side of the family had breakfast and lunch at his house (apparently within walking distance) and came for the ceremony at my host family's house. Jeimy's family had breakfast and lunch at our house. Sometimes the culture of women serving men really gets to me (it is extremely rare to find a man cooking, cleaning, or washing clothes). My latest bout of really? that's happening? was at lunch when I saw a woman unwrapping her husband's tamalitos and then handing them to him.
Here is the rough run-down of events (all events were done partially in K'iche' and partially in Spanish):
Thursday night: pre-wedding celebration dinner (smaller affair in my host family's house.
Saturday 5am: set-up for the wedding began
6:30: Guests start arriving for breakfast of beans with pork cracklings and an egg
8:30: the "service" started which was basically speeches and advice-giving.
9:00: the groom's family arrived and more advice was given
10:30 they passed out candy - Guatemalans are devoted to their mid-morning snack (and subsequently now so am I)
10:40 the lawyer arrived (for a very evangelical town all weddings that I have been to have been done by a lawyer)
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| Food for the wedding. All the cooking was done in our house |
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| Leaves to wrap the tamalitos |
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| Left to right: me, my host mom, Jeimy the bride, her fiancé |
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| People ate wherever there was room |
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| Lunch: pepian (traditional Guatemalan dish) with rice and tamalitos |
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| Women serving breakfast: egg, pork crackling, and beans |
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| Assembly line to pass out the food |
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| Morning set-up |
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| View taken from the door to my room |
Jeimy told me that she is planning on continuing studying but her husband isn't. He only completed the 9th grade. She said he doesn't like school. Ninth grade is also on the higher end of the spectrum in my town, sadly enough.
Things you will not find at weddings in my predominantly Evangelical town: wedding cake, alcohol, dancing, caterers, wedding planners, or wedding photographers.
Just as there is no one way to have a wedding in the United States, here too there are different traditions even within my small town. Three of the brides wore traditional traje and one a white wedding dress. The bride in the white wedding dress held the ceremony/food in a salon whereas the other three had them in their houses. In two of the weddings family members formed an assembly line to move the bride's things out of her house during the ceremony. All weddings took place in the morning and followed the general format of: breakfast, friends and relatives giving advice to the bride and groom, the lawyer officiating, lunch. All served a soda in a glass bottle with lunch and gave each family a little bag of bread as a party favor.
Her wedding was on June 13th. Just yesterday she came back to visit for the first time and she is very noticeably pregnant.
Huge crowd. What a great custom to give the guests bread. Someone was doing a whole lot of bread baking. I second your thought that guests should help out more at US weddings - it could be fun.
ReplyDeleteWhat you see of teenage brides and mothers in puro campo was the norm for most civilizations up to the 20th century. Societies were agricultural and large families were needed to share the work (not to mention high infant and childhood mortality). Without refrigeration, washing machines and other quite modern conveniences--many of which are still not common in rural Guatemala--the chores of daily life meant that woman could not afford "luxuries" such as formal education. Those of us in the developed economies are living in the first era in which options are realistic and small families do not equate to a lower living standard. You--we--must appreciate what we have, though I suspect Jeimy and her family do not feel in any way resentful or negative. This is their life.
ReplyDeleteI do find it curious that even in observant religious households that lawyers perform the marriage ceremony. Perhaps it's a legal requirement. Did any of the families go to a commemorative church service immediately before or after the formal wedding to have the couple blessed?
Not that I know of. I found this to be strange too as my host father is a pastor at the Evangelical church. The whole family goes to church for 3-4 hours every Sunday and once a month from around 8pm-12am, but there was no mention of any kind of church service for my host sister.
DeleteThe informality and simplicity of the wedding is quite beautiful. I wonder what time the women got up to prepare the breakfast and lunch. I wish Jeimy and Gerdon the very best.
ReplyDeleteWhat was the advice? Did you get to give some? Like maybe finish school before you get married?
ReplyDeleteUsually the advice for the women is somewhere along the lines of: make sure you care for your husband and perform all of your womanly duties and have children. (This is from my limited experience at three Guatemalan weddings but these were definite advice themes. I did give advice at the baby shower that I went to of: "I hope you read to your baby a lot." I think people just thought crazy gringa...I bet she didn't understand the question.
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