Brides toss old ethnic wedding traditions

In the Pinterest age, brides toss old ethnic wedding traditions in favor of something new

When Shabnam Nowrouzi began planning her lavish wedding to Alex Spithas last year, she knew what her parents, who are Iranian immigrants, expected. Colorful textiles, dancing and so much food that guests could fill up and then some. They expected tradition.

And the Bethesda, Md., 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 blond 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 checkbook-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.

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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 Engaging Affairs, a wedding planning company in Washington.

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: Ten years 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," Golesorkhi says.

It’s the wedding day, and Golesorkhi is hovering in a ballroom of the Ritz-Carlton in Tysons Corner, Va. She’s giving a final once-over to the couple’s sofreh aghd, the traditional Persian wedding tableau where Nowrouzi will later dip her pinky 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-color color 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 2 a.m. In a way, each shares the task of making sure 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 coordinators 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, the director of marketing for Early Mountain Vineyards in Charlottesville, Va. 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 program, 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 symbolize 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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