The Wedding...

Yesterday I was invited to accompany Doña Rosa to our neighbor's wedding. The young lady getting married had lived next door for many years and at the age of 21 she was getting married and moving out of her parents house which is a pretty emotional event. I knew that it was typical for families to be quite emotional during weddings but I didn't realize the circumstances of this particular wedding until much later.
First of all, the wedding was at the Municipal Building or City Hall, rather than at a church. This should have been my first clue, but life has taught me not to make assumptions, and this being my first Guatemalan wedding, I didn't know the difference. Anyway, when we arrived we had to wait outside for a few minutes for another wedding to finish. I went over and wished the bride well and said congratulations to her family and asked if I could take some photos of the ceremony and print copies for them later. They smiled but seemed quite sullen... and while they were receptive to the idea of me taking photos they certainly weren't excited about it.

Finally we were able to enter the hall, and the ceremony got underway. There was a man and a woman conducting the ceremony. The man seemed to be in charge of the legal aspect of the marriage, while the woman seemed to talk to them about the responsibilities of marriage. In fact, this woman was more or less lecturing the couple for about 40 minutes about the weight of this decision, how they must act like adults now, not let their children become hoodlums, not fight, find jobs, etc. It was the most unromantic ceremony I have ever been to...
After the intense lecture, the couple had to sign the record as well as their parents. They also asked some of us to sign as witnesses. I noticed that throughout the ceremony, the bride's father was crying quite a lot but I assumed this to be a sweet gesture of his watching his little girl enter into a new phase of life.
We returned to the home of the bride (our neighbor) and sat down to a delicious lunch. At one point it appeared the mother of the bride was going to say a few words. I presumed this to be like the toast to the bride and groom but it turned out to be quite different... The mother of the bride got up and immediately started crying and said "This isn't what we wanted. We wanted Estefanía (the bride) to have a big, beautiful, happy wedding.." at this point the mother of the groom interrupted (also crying) and said, "This is not what we hoped for either. We wanted our son to graduate college and find a good job before getting married. And it is unfortunate that the relationship between these two became something sexual so early." This is when it finally all fit together. I felt sort of dumb for not figuring it out sooner and I probably looked like an idiot congratulating everyone so much at the ceremony.
So the lunch resumed, and people tried to be cordial and even make some jokes but there was definitely a lingering sadness in the air. After the lunch they brought out a birthday cake and sang to the bride's little brother who was turning 13. This was probably the only genuinely happy moment of the entire day... Once everyone had finished eating, the bride went in her room to retrieve her bags as it was customary for her to move out of her parents house the day she married. This was another source of great sadness for her family because the newlyweds would be moving to another town to live alone which s quite unusual. Normally, newlyweds go and live with either the bride's or the grooms parents so as to have some guidance on how to raise a family and run a household. In this case however, they could not live with the bride's parents because there simply was no room and they could not live with the groom's parents because the groom's mother had refused them. Apparently she had never like the girl from the beginning and refused to support them... So this poor couple, with no more than a high school education, no jobs, and a baby on the way was off to a knew town where they had no family to try and survive on their own. It made sense now why everyone was so sad... they kept saying things like, "God be with you" to the couple as they left. The brides father swiftly left the room hysterical as they drove away.
Being such a religious country, there is no question that if a girl becomes pregnant at any age, she must marry the father of her child before it is born. If not, she will likely never be married and bring great shame to her family. I suppose it wasn't or isn't so different in some parts of the US but keep in mind that divorce is also not an option here.
I have heard that these weddings out of necessity are extremely common here. In fact, it one of our goals working with Peace Corps in Youth Development to educate young people about the reality of having children at a young age. We are also hoping to open forums to parents to ask them, "what do you want your children to know about sex, STDs, HIV, and pregnancy?" Our hope is to open lines of communication between young people and parents and also remind youth that if they have goals of further education, or advanced careers, that these often must be pursued before having children. The goal is to build self-esteem, and life planning skills in youth so that they may have healthy, happy families as well as an education and chosen career. Of course it will be a long road to success but we're optimistic.