Weddings

I had the privilege to take pictures of two different weddings in my time down here. Both have served as a sort of indicator to the excessiveness that permeates so much of my own culture in the US.

I shot the first wedding back at the beginning of September. I followed Esther, the bride, for the whole day, from putting on her dress to leaving for the hotel with her new husband. She got dressed in her parents home, a tin roofed, two-roomed place next to the river here in town. Her brother drove her to the wedding in a borrowed old Toyota corolla. The pastor married her and Jubenal, her new husband, in the small and slightly run-down evangelical church they had both attended since they were kids. They went eight hours away by bus to Cusco for their honeymoon and returned extremely happy.

I can't help but compare this to so many American weddings I see. There are so many lies that persist in much of our consumerist culture. I am not buying into the fairy tale idea that you have to spend $3,000 on a ring, $5,000 on a dress, and much more for a fancy venue simply because it is a special occasion. At the end of the day the purpose of a wedding, the celebration of the love between two people and joining them in a holy bond, remains the exact same. I do not see the juncture of an American couple who spend more than twenty grand on their wedding as any stronger than that of Jubenal and Esther.