Quinceñera

Saturday night I went to my first quinceñera, which is the big celebration thrown for girls when they turn 15 (quince). The girl, Keyling, has never been in any of my classes at the instituto but one day last year one of the teachers brought her to me with homework questions and since she studies English in Managua she regularly finds me at school or at home with questions. She’s pretty awesome and I was super excited when she invited me.

It was really similar to a wedding, except in pink. The quinceñera wears a fluffy pink dress and carries a bouquet of flowers and I think there were 12 pairs of damas y caballeros (ladies and gentlemen, kinda like bridesmaids and groomsmen in a wedding) who all wore their matching dresses and suits. The whole party gets ready and then walks down to the church, Keyling was escorted by her father but also had a younger guy escort who’s traditionally her cousin or some other family relation. I saw them walking down the main street, which is also the highway incidentally, but wasn’t fast enough to get a picture.



At the church, they did a pretty usual catholic mass with bible readings, a couple songs, a sermon, and communion. I was happy to see some familiar faces at the church, I wasn’t sure if I would know anyone but I don’t know why because this is a small town and of course everyone’s related or friends or something! None of my pictures are spectacular because I was way in the back at both the church and the reception, but you get the idea.

With the damas:


With the caballeros (you can’t see it well in this picture, but the guy on the left of Keyling was her escort guy and his shirt was pink to match her dress):


The Quinceñera herself:


Some of the damas, the one in the middle is in my 9th grade class:


From the church we all walked over to the dancehall for the reception, again the whole party walking down the middle of the highway which I find so hilarious but is totally normal here – most families don’t have cars and they certainly don’t rent limos like you might do for something this big in the US hence we walk, besides the town’s not that big anyway. I actually saw a wedding party doing the same thing past my house earlier in the day.



Clearly the theme for quinceñeras is pink – pink balloons, pink table cloths, pink cake, pink pink pink!

I should mention that this is probably on the fancier side for a quinceñera, especially in a small town (I’m sure wealthy families in Managua do much bigger than this). They rented the dancehall and paid for a band which a lot of families around here would not be able to do.

Once we were in the dancehall, all the guys and girls processed in and danced a couple semi-choreographed dance numbers including a waltz, bachata, and salsa. It was adorable and I wish I could’ve gotten better pictures but I doubt they would’ve captured it anyway. Here they are in the middle of a coordinated spin move:



Once the group dances were over, the band started playing and everyone got out on the dance floor and tore it up. I stayed long enough to dance a little bit, but since I was unaccompanied I headed for home before it got too sketchy to be out alone (around 9 or 9:30 on a Saturday night).