Getting married, Ecuador style

Yesterday I had what I'm assuming is a pretty unique study abroad experience, I went to a wedding with my host family. The bride was my host cousin, Daniela (my dad's niece) and the groom was her fiancee, Carlos. They have been dating since their first year of medical school and just graduated on Thursday. They were getting married so soon after graduating because in Ecuador once you graduate medical school you get sent to a randomly chosen place to work for a year, but if you're married they take that into consideration so Daniela and Carlos will be sent to the same place. They had both saved up for the last year and paid for the wedding completely by themselves, so it was a pretty small wedding but really fun.

Wedding prep for me started on Thursday night when I tried on a bunch of my mom's dresses with my mom and sister to choose one to wear to the wedding. I didn't bring a dress to Ecuador because I just assumed that I'd never be in a situation when I'd need to dress up, but I got pretty lucky because my mom had a lot of old dresses for me to choose from! My mom outfitted me in a dress, shoes to match, jewelry, and a purse because the only one I had was black and my dress was brown. It was really fun trying on the dresses, and when I finally put on the one that I ended up wearing my mom and sister both exclaimed "you look so beautiful!" and ran to get my dad so he could see too.

On Friday my mom, sister, two of my sisters friends and I went to a beauty salon near our house to get manicures and pedicures. I was definitely a little apprehensive about getting a mani/pedi in a foreign country, but one of the other girls on my trip had gotten one a few weeks ago for a wedding her family was going to so I figured that if she was fine, I would be too. I ended up getting a french manicure on my fingers and some sort of dark pinkish red nail polish on my toes. Apparently nobody paints their toenails that color, because my mom and sister were both amazed at how good it looked. I only picked it because it was the closest color the salon had to one that I would normally wear, so I was glad that it turned out well!

We had told the stylists at the salon that we were going to come in at 9 on Saturday morning to get our hair done (my sister was in the wedding party and my mom was the master of ceremonies, I was just going along for the ride and a free hairdo) but Ecuadorian time kicked in and eventually at 10:15 on Saturday morning my sister and I went to the salon without my mom because she was telling a story to my brother and didn't want to go yet. And so began our 5 hour stint in the beauty salon. When we got to the salon around 10:30 there were already two people there (there are only two stylists) so we had to wait for them to finish before we could get our hair done. My sister went first, and her hair took a super long time because it's really long and thick and they had to blow it out straight first and then put a ridiculous amount of curlers in. When it was finally my turn I had my sister explain to the stylist what I wanted (I knew I would never be able to explain myself so I showed my mom and sister a picture of the hairstyle I wanted; Schuyler if you're reading this it was your hairdo from gala freshman year!), which was basically my hair curled at the bottom with the front pulled back a little bit. The hairstylist doubted my hair's ability to hold curls, but we decided to go for it and put curlers in my hair (about 1/8th the amount that she used for my sister).

Around then my mom showed up with her hot rollers, and the stylist started on her. It was probably around 1 by then, and Emilia and I were both really really hungry. Eventually my dad came to pick us up and we went home to eat lunch with the rollers still in our hair (they were working on my mom's updo at this point). After lunch we went back to the salon where they finished with my mom's hair and then did mine and Emilia's. By the time we were all finished it was 3:30, and my sister had told me earlier that the wedding ceremony started at 4, so we rushed home and my sister and I did our makeup and got dressed. However, in typical Ecuadorian fashion, what I wasn't told was that the wedding actually started at 6 (I'm not sure if my sister didn't know this either) and even then it started late because the groom didn't show up until 5 minutes before 6.

The wedding ceremony was really interesting. It was a Catholic ceremony and all in Spanish so it was a little hard for me to follow along at times, but there were a few times where I could tell what part of the service we were at and I would respond to the priest in English. My favorite part was when we got to "La Paz" (The Peace) and the priest said "Peace be with you" in Spanish and I answered back very enthusiastically "and also with you!" because I was so excited to know what was going on. Then my brother explained to me that all you do is shake people's hands and say "la paz," which was also exciting because for once I didn't have to be the ignorant American who didn't know what to do. After the ceremony was over the bride and groom were taking pictures with everyone in the wedding party and friends and family, etc. At one point my parents decided it was their turn to be in a picture, so we went up (minus my sister who was MIA) and took a picture with the bride and groom. I felt more than a little awkward and like I didn't belong, but now I can say that I'm in an Ecuadorian wedding album, so I guess that's exciting.

After the pictures we headed over to the reception. We found our table, sat down, my mom introduced the wedding party as they were coming in, we did a champagne toast, and then there were some other speeches by the parents of the novios before we got served dinner. The appetizer was little tiny shrimps in some sort of mayonnaise-y sauce and the main course was a plate with salad, scalloped potatoes, beef with a creamy mushroom sauce, and chicken cordon bleu (I thought the ham inside was undercooked chicken until I got to the end and realized it was actually ham). There was also a guy going around offering people green rice (no idea why it was green) but I declined because I wasn't very hungry and there was a lot of food already on my plate (like the terrible Ecuadorian I am I didn't finish it all, either). After that we got dessert, which was some sort of flan-ish custard-y thing that was heart shaped with red sauce around it. It was kind of weird, but also very pretty.

After dinner the dancing started. I pretty much danced with my brother the entire time and with my dad a few times, which was nice because I didn't have to worry about dancing with strange men who I didn't know. My brother and dad are also great dancers, so it was really fun. Eventually there was a break in the dancing so that the novios could cut the cake, and then they served cake to everyone. It was a little weird tasting and had walnuts in it, but I ate most of my piece which turned out to be a big mistake because right after eating it my brother and I were pulled back out on the dance floor by my uncle and the cake was just sitting in my stomach. Around 12:45 my brother and I both sat down again because our feet hurt and we were both super tired, but our parents were still dancing. My mom told us that we would leave at 1, which meant at 1:05 we started saying goodbye to everyone. Greeting and saying goodbye are super important in Ecuadorian culture, so we basically went around and said chao to EVERYBODY. That also meant kissing everybody on the cheek (the basic Ecuadorian greeting is touching right cheek to right cheek, there isn't any lip contact made), even people I had never met before, which was definitely strange for me. After that we had to go find Emilia, who had fallen asleep at a table just outside of the reception room. We finally got to our house at 1:30, and realized that nobody had the keys to the garage door, so my dad had to dig around until he found a spare set in the car. However, once we got into the carport my mom realized that we didn't have the key to the door of the house, so my brother had to go get his keys from my grandma's house.

All in all it was a really fun night, probably my favorite night that I've spent in Ecuador. It was also really cool to get to see how things are similar and different between weddings here and weddings in the U.S. Here are some of my findings:

- I'm not sure if this was because it was a Catholic wedding or because it was a small wedding, but there weren't any bridesmaids or groomsmen. The wedding party was the parents of the bride and groom, their godparents, one girl who may have been the sister of the groom, and the two flower girls.

- People only gave money as a wedding gift. Each family was given an envelope to put money in for the novios and a box was brought around during the reception for everyone to put their envelope in.

- At the beginning of the reception all the single women and men are called up to do something called "La Liga," which has to do with the garters. The groom takes the first garter off and then asks the men a question (this one was Name a city in Ecuador) and he writes down an answer. Then all the single guys go through one by one saying a city, and whoever says the same city that the groom wrote down gets the garter and chooses a single girl and puts it on her. Then they do the same thing with the single women (that time it was a number between 1 and 20), the groom takes the second garter off the bride, and then they choose a man to put it on the girl who got picked. Luckily I never got picked/said the right answer, because I had absolutely no idea what was going on the entire time.

- The bride doesn't throw her bouquet, she chooses someone to give it to (I think she gave it to her best friend).

- The first dance was the bride with her father and the groom with his mother, and then they switched so that the bride and groom were dancing together.

- Clinking your silverware together means the bride and groom have to kiss (although it appeared that a select few people, not including the bride and groom, actually knew this). I told my family how clinking your knife on your glass means the bride and groom have to kiss, so my dad started doing that and eventually it caught on a little bit.

- While we were eating dinner the DJ was playing power ballads from the 90s in English. It was pretty funny for me, and my family thought it was hilarious when I would sing along.

This is along weekend because Monday and Tuesday are El Dia de los Difuntos (the day of the dead here) and the Independence of Cuenca, which is a city. I'll update on how the rest of my weekend goes!

Hasta luego,
Caroline