Washington - When Shabnam Nowrouzi began planning her lavish wedding to Alex
Spithas last year, she knew what her parents, who are Iranian immigrants,
expected.
Colourful textiles, dancing and so much food that guests could fill up and
then some. They expected tradition.
And the Bethesda, Maryland, lawyer knew that she wanted something else:
subtle candlelight, white hydrangeas, pale pink roses and Vera Wang - elements
more often associated with Western-style nuptials than with vibrant Persian
weddings.
“I kind of had to debate my mom on that a little bit,” says Nowrouzi, who is
petite and blonde and clad for a pre-wedding meeting in a preppy pink
shirtdress. “I'm a classic bride. That's what I'm going for.”
The rise of the Pinterest Bride, who has steeped herself in the voyeuristic
universe of other people's nuptials, has transformed the modern wedding. The
newly engaged used to turn to planners or venue directors for guidance and
acquiesce to their chequebook-wielding parents on everything else. Now, couples
arm themselves with a cache of photographic inspiration for dresses, floral
arrangements, flower crowns and chalkboard welcome signs.
For Indian, Vietnamese, Persian, Jewish, Greek and an increasing number of
ethnically mixed couples, however, the era of the Pinterest wedding has raised a
thorny problem: Sometimes, tradition clashes with the inspiration. Or, more
accurately, with the inspiration boards.
Multicultural couples “don't want their parents' wedding,” says planner
Christine Godsey of Washington, DC firm Engaging Affairs.
While they're at it, they don't want their parents' house of worship, their
parents' 500-person guest list or their parents' 26-item buffet, either.
This year, most of Godsey's multicultural couples - Indian, Persian and Greek
alike - are going the rustic route, choosing woodsy venues, farmhouse tables and
natural elements and imposing firm bans on the red-and-gold hues associated with
the weddings of their motherlands. They've scaled guest lists down to 100 or
200, which can seem tiny compared with the weddings of just a few years ago.
The old-world rituals still matter to couples, but increasingly, Godsey's
clients tell her, it's mostly because they're important to their parents.
Nowrouzi's planner, Poopak Golesorkhi, confirms the shift: A decade ago, she
planned weddings exclusively with her Persian and Indian clients' families. Now,
she says, couples are calling the shots, often leaning on planners and venue
employees to help prevent any familial fires from igniting. “I'm usually kind of
bridging this East-meets-West thing,” she says.
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It's the wedding day, and Golesorkhi is hovering in a ballroom of the
Ritz-Carlton in Tysons Corner, Virginia. She's giving a final once-over to the
couple's sofreh aghd, the traditional Persian wedding tableau where Nowrouzi
will later dip her pinkie into a champagne flute of honey and feed her beloved,
and he will then do the same for her, sealing their union.
The sofreh is usually piled with artificial fruit, flatbreads, sweets and
sumptuous fabrics. The ceremony will be the day's single most significant
Persian tradition, and Golesorkhi's task is to make this one modern.
“She doesn't want to see any gold. None,” Golesorkhi says as staff pop in to
gaze at her handiwork, which includes having deftly blended everything into
tonight's no-colour colour scheme with a heavy dusting of silver glitter.
Upstairs in her suite, the bride is slipping on her strapless lace Vera
Wang.
Downstairs, dozens of employees have begun to filter in for the night shift
that will keep them there till 1, maybe 2am. In a way, each shares the task of
ensuring that the old rituals are upheld, knowing that several guests -
Nowrouzi's parents not least among them - expect them.
Cue “Fiddler on the Roof's” famous number, “Tradition.”
There's a single table with Persian cookies and sweets that will need to be
set up after the ceremony. Currently, it's wedged next to the stairs. As the
bridesmaids begin to descend in their pale-pink crepe gowns, a decision is made
to move the table to a prominent place next to the ballroom entrance. Another
display, flush with fruit and Greek cookies baked by the groom's mother, will
have to be tucked into a corner by the end of dinner. It will serve as a nod to
the groom's heritage.
And someone will have to remember to hand the wooden cocktail stirrers to the
bartenders to slip into the evening's peach-tini: They have been emblazoned with
the word “love” in Farsi.
The staff goes over the dances: The couple's is first, then there is a
Persian dance, followed by the Greek money dance, when guests toss dollar bills
at the bride and groom for their new life together.
“I have to get a broom,” banquet captain Kadir Jamezadah murmurs. He's doing
the math in his head. Two hundred thirty-five guests. “There's so much money,”
he sighs. “Maybe next time, we should get a vacuum.”
Many venues used to balk at the requests of ethnic and multicultural couples.
Their extensive guest lists, which in the case of, say, Indian weddings,
regularly top 500 people. Their kosher dinner services. The lighting of
ceremonial fires and demands for tandoor ovens. The dancing and revelry that go
on for hours after typical Western weddings have waved their sparklers and gone
on their way.
Now that the media have tipped venues to the lavish budgets of multicultural
affairs - venues say that weddings such as these clock in at $250,000 or
$350,000, several times the Washington-area average of $39,025 - the days of
turning them away are over, Godsey says.
Several Washington-area venues now allow the fires (as long as couples pony
up the ceremonial-fire fee). They have begun to open up their kitchens to
outside caterers. But as couples nix some rituals, scale back guest lists and
seek out one-of-a-kind experiences, their wedding co-ordinators have also been
able to provide solutions to ease differences between couples and their parents
- and to explain to parents when their ideas won't fit into the vision.
“We're seeing a lot of mash-ups, mixing of different traditions, and some old
traditions that are new again. Brides have a very clear idea of what they want
to do,” says Rachel Caggiano, director of marketing for Early Mountain Vineyards
in Charlottesville, Virginia. She recalls a wedding in which the groom was Irish
and the bride's family was from India, where elders don't always approve of
drinking at religious functions.
“We worked with them to be really tasteful,” Caggiano says. “Wine is served
with the food and integrated with the programme, and not necessarily the main
event.” To parents, it can look like a compromise, she says, to an open bar.
Golesorkhi has seen the new-tradition traditions, too: “The horah dance,
which is usually Jewish, I have (non-Jewish) couples say, 'We want to do that.'
We had a couple from El Salvador who wanted to do Persian food.”
To woo Nowrouzi, the Ritz promised its specialty chef. Ahmed Masouleh made
pastas and set up buffets for years before he got his first requests to make the
kebabs and rice and breads from his native Iran, when executives of Darcars,
owned by an Iranian American family, hosted banquets at the hotel. Now he
routinely makes the trek to a Persian grocer in Tysons Corner for long-grain
rice to make his Persian wedding rice.
Tonight, as always, he'll soak and cook it before bathing it in a fragrant
mix of saffron, sugar and orange-flower water and sprinkling it with sour
barberries and pistachios to symbolise marriage's ups and downs.
But it goes out to guests in chic martini glasses, a side dish to the main
event, which is a plated dinner of sea bass and steak draped in a red-wine
reduction.
The Nowrouzi-Spithas nuptials went off just as the bride had dreamed,
complete with a late-night delivery of sliders and truffle fries.
What did the guests make of it?
There were some strange looks when it came time for the couple to cut the
cake, Golesorkhi says with a laugh a couple of days later.
They had skipped the Persian knife dance.
A popular wedding game, Golesorkhi explains, the dance has female guests
making off and dancing with the cake knife until the groom bribes them to
retrieve it. Only then can the slicing commence. But Spithas and Nowrouzi had
breezed right past the ritual.
The guests, Golesorkhi says, “kind of gave me the look, like, 'Why not?'
“
The truth is, the bride had told her: “Eh, it's kind of cheesy. I don't want
to do it.” So the planner threw herself on the, er, knife, telling guests it was
her call to omit it.
“I have taken the fall,” Golesorkhi confesses, “for many, many
situations.”
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