Wedding Invitations

In Mexico the polite person does not send their wedding invitations through the mail to be delivered by a stranger.  You must take the invitation (which is plainly visible in the clear envelope which carries it) to the person you are going to invite.  It's very personal and personable.  So Sam and Shadai have been making the rounds between his work and her classes to deliver their invitations personally to their invitados.  So, when the Gonzalez family gathered the day before Easter for their traditional Sabado de Gloria, Sam and Shadai carried their bag of invitations that had been carefully addressed to the family.

Sabado de Gloria

What is Sabado de Gloria?  It is the day before Easter in Mexico.  But in the Gonzalez family it has a double meaning.  Back when Josue and his brothers and sister were little his dad decided that they were going to begin a family tradition.  Josue's mom's name was Gloria and so for "her" day every year his dad would make something like home made ice cream.  But this was so time-consuming that he later changed it to snow cones and esquimos (something like a milk shake).  The tradition continued until today all the Gonzalez siblings, their children and spouses and grandchildren and even some in-laws gather to celebrate Sabado de Gloria.  Everyone brings food.  Someone brings the snow cone syrups and the ingredients for making the esquimos (pronounced es KEY mos).  In the back patio there were two solid blocks of ice about a yard and a half high and 12 inches square.  They had two "scrapers" and it was quite a feat for the different people to scrape the ice, which ends up in the "handle" of the scraper and is then dumped into a waiting plastic cup (NOTE:  if you have any Mardi  Gras cups you want to get rid of, I know a group of people who will put them to very good use!)  The best scrapers were the older people, of course, although the younger generation, having watched their parents do this for years, tried their hands at it as well.  So, everyone eats snow cones, drink milk shakes, then they eat lunch, eat more snow cones and the men and youngsters go to a park nearby and play soccer, come back, and the rest of the afternoon is spent repeating the process. 

But in the afternoon when everyone was relaxed and happy (which they always are)  Sam and Tio Rene got up and got everyone's attention.  Now Sam is bilingual and Tio Rene knows only a few words in English, but they proceeded to

pretend like Sam needed a translator.  So Sam said a few words in English about their engagement and Tio Rene proceeded to translate and, to everyone's surprise, he translated it perfectly. This went on for about three sentences and everyone was laughing (they dearly love to laugh) each time Tio translated.  Then things began to get a little quirky.  Sam would say a long speech, turn to Tio Rene, and Tio would say maybe three words (laughter, laughter).  Then Sam would say only a few words and Tio Rene would talk and talk and talk in Spanish to more laughter.  The further they went the more we laughed as they hammed it up good.

 

 

 

Finally they got the invitations out and Sam said, "So, line up..." and began to call out the names of each family group.  Each family or one person representing that family would come up, shake everyone's hands, get their invitation and give "abrazos" (a formal type of hug) down the line.

And so it went until everyone had their invitation designed by Sam and Shadai with the help of cousin Isaac.