in a Young Country
It's not the first time I’ve visited my cousins in Argentina, and not even the first wedding I’ve attended there. These cousins are my age, children of my Jewish mother’s siblings who fled there from Europe when my mother came to London. My cousins were born, educated, grew up and worked there, speaking Spanish and identifying with life in the capital city of a country that longed to be as prosperous, bourgeois, cultural and internationally accepted as any in Europe, embodying a history of material culture that cannot be invented but grows to define its self-importance.
At this time of year it is Spring, the arterial roads, avenues, and smaller cobbled residential streets are lined with luminous pale purple Jacaranda blossoming trees, magenta Bougainvillea, Hibiscus, wild oranges… and as I attuned I became aware also of the colourful clamour of birdsong -no longer associated with London city life.
This wedding of a cousin’s daughter has been planned for nearly a year, and meanwhile several more contemporaries of that 30 year old generation in both hemispheres have coupled up in various ways according to their local conventions, some have had babies, others are expecting. This couple, however are doing it all in the approved order, and are not pregnant.
My cousin’s daughter found her ideal love match (from a “very good family”) and has a clear picture of the wedding she wants, which she feels will ensure a lasting partnership and she wants it visibly celebrated with a generous and lavish event that fulfills all the accepted standards of her peer group for a conventional Catholic wedding.
While in the UK our youngsters and their friends reject many of the norms, there, in a not yet fully recognised country that has most of its aspirations still intact, it really matters how well the conventions are observed, at anyrate to this niece.
My presence with my mother representing all the old world ancestral line is a validation of the propriety of the event according to the family traditions they want to create and remember. My mother is now the most senior survivor and honoured for that as well as her personal effort, aged 94, to to get there and participate.
On the Thursday the civil ceremony takes place. Out comes wardrobe no. 1. We get to the registry office in good time –it’s a small corner shopfront between local shops, boutiques and homes. All day there are crowds spilling over the pavements from newly completed marriages and those waiting to be joined. Appropriate gestures of joy and congratulation everywhere, and it hardly seems to matter if this was the wedding we were witnessing or some other. Bouquets, teetering high heels, amateur snappers and professional photographers, jostling greetings and goodbyes, pride and weary relief among the swarms of kin remind me of the strange emotional sense of transit that is experienced in airports-there is an entrance to the office and a different exit door.
The civil ceremony is short, I dont understand a literal word, though I can discern a joke moment when the groom is teased for nearly forgetting his I.D. papers.
Outside the pavement is crunchy with dry rice grains tossed about by the packetful, and continuously swept up by an employee. Ines looks so pretty in her trendy, colourful lacy dress; the guests here are casually smart in day suits, skirts, etc.
We pile into cars and there are drinks and ostentatiously grand canapes and snacks at the family home of the bridegroom, not from a caterer but mostly prepared by the cooks and housekeepers of all the closely involved families. Cutting of the cake is also photographed, but this is not “The” wedding cake, not “The” party. There are no toasts or speeches and tonight the bride will still sleep at her mum’s home.
Its on Saturday night that the really grand celebration takes place. These cousins did not feel that they had to maintain a “Jewish” identity but preferred to adopt the faith of their adopted country, so the “real” event is in a church, very much “up-to-date” and “of the moment”. The church is modern, we gather for the ceremony at 8.30. pm. We are already wearing our evening dress for the party to follow.
The priest clearly makes an effort to be accepted, speaking informally to the couple, not in biblical language. The guests generally warm to this. The church is wired for sound with amplifiers and theatrical lighting, and the presence of photographers is intrusive -walking about and flashing, in, out and in front of the ceremony in progress which is on a stage rather than at an altar.
In the church it is a spectacle -a performance for the DVDs of posterity. My cousin (bride’s mother) has spent previous weeks and days getting her dress (a fabulous red ballgown) made and fitted, hairdressing, make-up, etc. as well as looking after guests including myself and my mother.
We start with singers rendering the flower aria from “Lakme”. The bride enters to “Land of Hope and Glory” sung in English. I’m told it’s a wedding favourite here! The bride’s dress is amazingly elaborate and splendid. Both sets of in-laws stand on each side of the altar throughout. The marriage book is signed under the spotlight on the “stage” rather than in a back room. Lots of cheering and applause.
People attend the ceremony who are not necessarily invited to the party. (This includes at least one ex-wife of my other cousin). We are driven to the reception. Not many houses here are large enough to accomodate so many for a celebration, so a rather splendid neo-baroque/French style palatial house has been hired for the night, for 200 dinner guests. Table arrangments bring us seniors together with other English-speaking friends.
This wedding is typical for Buenos Aires I’m told, where there are not usually speeches or toasts but a screen is erected in the main dining room. While we have been making bilingual smalltalk over dinner, the photographers have patched together a “movie” including childhood photos of the bride and groom, witness accounts by family and friends of the suitability of the happy couple for each other, as well as footage from earlier that evening, so it can be screened as we eat. This entirely replaces what for us has always been the most lively and personal part of a wedding reception, the live and witty contributions of the parents and best man, but posterity is well catered for.
When the meal is over, well after midnight, dancing is due and the music changes. The bride does a bit of a waltz and many are ready to dance with her. Then will come the high volume dance tunes and popular rock songs and some of us are tired enough to sneak out and get back to our accomodation for a night’s sleep. The newlyweds will not leave for their honeymoon till the next morning.
It has been the climax of months of preparation by my cousin, the bride’s mother, driven by her innate motherliness, by the requirements of her daughter and daughter’s peer group, by their aspiration to affirm their place in this emerging Argentinian nationhood.
Now there will be many days of thanks and admiring comments for my cousin which will flow on until every dress, every word, every hairstyle or glance will have been discussed and appreciated. And of course the DVD will be there in perpetuity to prove it.
S. Tomalin 2006
