When Janice Kwan planned her wedding, she was no different from any bride in that she wanted her dream to come true.
“Growing up, I remember looking at my parents’ wedding banquet pictures and thinking how beautiful my mom looked in her red silk dress,” Kwan says, who with her husband, Adrian, is first-generation Chinese American. “But I had also always envisioned myself wearing the traditional white wedding dress and getting married in a church.”
Instead of choosing one over the other, Kwan chose both.
When she and her husband entered their reception, she wore a white strapless dress. But for the traditional tea ceremony, she changed into a red Mandarin style gown and donned ornate gold jewelry, all symbols of good luck and fortune.
Using Adrian’s mother’s tea set, they first served Adrian’s elderly grandfather and then the next oldest female relative up to their parents. Upon receiving a cup of tea, each family elder bestowed a red envelope of money or jewelry to bless them with luck and fortune.
“We approached the [marriage] ceremony as a special moment for just Adrian and me,” Kwan says. “The reception was really for us to honor our parents and family members and it was also great that our close friends were able to witness some Chinese wedding traditions.”
Children of immigrant parents, or ethnic American brides and grooms, may have grown up on MTV and rolling their eyes at their parents’ or grandparents’ old superstitions and traditions. But when it comes to making a lifelong commitment, they return to their cultural roots.
When Camille Rey married her husband, Homero, in 1997, they agreed to integrate her Mexican and his Cuban customs.
“He and I both are very culturally aware,” Rey says. “We’re very grateful to have found each other. We chose everything that would bring all the cultures together.”
While the Rey’s kneeled in prayer during their bilingual ceremony, his best man and her maid of honor placed a lasso over them both. Their mothers, in the Cuban tradition, then draped a mantilla, a Spanish lace shawl, over their shoulders.
“I made my own a lasso because the ones I found were too gaudy,” Rey says with a laugh. The Mexican lasso is a rope, or a long strand of rosary beads that is placed in a figure eight over the shoulders of the bride and groom, symbolizing unity and eternity.
The Business of Beautifying Brides
Jeannie Jeffries and Madeeha Kibriya, co-owners of Couture Beauty in Irvine, California have built a mini-empire styling South Asian brides in and around Orange County. They met when Jeffries was hired as Kibriya’s sister’s make-up artist and stylist for her wedding. A year later, Jeffries and Kibriya joined forces.
“Brides would come to me and complain that other make-up artists made them look too yellow or that the colors were too subtle,” Jeffries remembers. She takes her inspiration from the colorful, flamboyant saris and gowns that take up to a year to be custom made.
However, understanding and respecting the religious aspects of courtship and marriage has put Jeffries and Kibriya in high demand. In contemporary American culture where brides may have long dating histories and lived with her fiancé before the wedding, the chaperoned and seemingly rigid interactions in more traditional cultures may seem outdated. But Jeffries has seen the more romantic side.
“The second bride I worked with [a Muslim] had gone to school with her fiancé but he hadn’t seen her hair since they were in the second grade,” says Jeffries. Even though Jeffries created a beautiful hairstyle, it would be concealed from the eyes of the groom and wedding guests by a hijab.
“When she told me that he would see her hair for the first time on their wedding night, we put in extra pins so he could help her with her hair,” she says.
Depending on the orthodoxy of the couple or their families, Muslim weddings can be simple or extravagant.
When Noor Abdullah converted to Islam in 1995, she diligently followed proper etiquette. She and her husband, Ibrahim, were introduced through a professor and initially they only spoke on the phone with the intent of marriage. After meeting in person at a mutual friend’s house, they agreed to be married in a nihka, the Islamic marriage contract ceremony.
“Several friends gathered there and the Imam officiated the signing of the contract,” says Abdullah. “Personally, I was glad to have a simple ceremony. I felt it was more in keeping with the original marriages contracted at the time of the Prophet Muhammad, Peace be upon him.”
A first generation Pakistani-American, Kibriya’s sister took some aspects of a traditional American ceremony and then integrated them into her nihka.
“The groom’s family walked down the aisle and then the groom,” Kibriya says. “Me and my sisters followed and my mother walked my sister down the aisle.” Their father had passed away before the wedding.
Some nihkas are conducted with the bride in one room and the groom in the other, requiring that the Iman go back and forth the parties until the contract is signed. But in all nihkas, the marriage is not sealed with a kiss, Kibriya says.
Hooray for Bollywood
Even though Muslim and Hindu weddings can seem worlds apart — for example, there is no dancing at a Muslim reception, whereas Hindu couples may hire professional dancers and then open up the floor to guests — Kibriya sees the cultural similarities of Muslim and Hindu wedding celebrations.
Both festivities are concluded by the rukhsati (Muslim) or the vidaai (Hindu) and both are the most poignant moments.
“This is the last walk the bride will take with her family,” Kibriya says. “Even though she might see them again tomorrow, her family formally gives her to the groom. The father and mother and bride are crying because it is very symbolic.”
Even though an Indian bride’s sari and her jewelry are flamboyant and rich with color, the groom has his moments in the spotlight.
“We did a wedding on the fourth of July where the groom rode on an elephant in his bharaat to the Ritz Carlton in Pasadena.” Jeffries says.
The bharaat is the boisterous arrival of the groom and is just one of the many events that feature him in the wedding.
During the reception, he inspects the bride’s mendhi (henna art) to find his initials in the intricate design. “If he finds it, he rules the house,” Kibriya says. “If he doesn’t, she rules the house.”
Also, he has to be careful with his shoes. Often when he’s sitting or eating, the bride’s wedding attendants will steal his shoes and hold them for ransom.
“I saw a wedding where he didn’t enough money to pay,” Kibriya says. “Everything stopped for 20 minutes until he came up with the money.”
Kibriya and Jeffries have seen grooms pay from $800 to $3,000 so that he doesn’t leave the reception in his bare feet. Whether they ransom his shoes or serve him curdled milk, the groom cannot deny the bride’s family any favor in return for having her hand.
Even though some couples are besieged by mamas and aunties whose ways, they insist, are most auspicious and should be followed, Kibriya and Jeffries have found that most couples chose to mark their marriage with these elaborate celebrations.
“They feel that it is so important to maintain the traditions of what their parents and grandparents did at home,” Kibriya says.