Written by Gloria Elena Alicea PHOTOS: Lynda Guillu | 22 February 2010

Once upon a time, Graciela Perez, a pretty 14-year-old girl living in Mexico City with her parents and eight brothers and sisters, dreamed of celebrating her quinceañera dressed in a blue chiffon gown and swirling to a Viennese waltz in the arms of a dashing young man under the twinkling lights of glass chandeliers.

Seeing the princessy balls given for her cousins who lived in the better parts of town fanned her imagination, and she would rehearse her dream birthday ball over and over in her mind.

The quinceañera, a fancy coming-of-age party celebrated when a Latina girl turns 15 years old (quince años in Spanish), has been feeding the dreams of teen girls in Latin America since the time of the Conquistadores. Tradition has it that under the influence of the Spanish and the French, an initiation ceremony held for 15-year-old girls by the Aztecs, Mayans and Olmecs became the European-style debutante ball commemorated with Catholic rites known today as the quinceañera. Often celebrated with as much pomp as a lavish wedding — complete with a court of attending maidens (damas) and their escorts (chambelanes) — part of the thrill for a teenage girl is that, in its original intention, the quinceañera served to announce to her community that she had matured into a young woman who was ready to be courted.

Now this coming-of-age celebration that spread throughout Latin America is enjoying growing popularity among young Latinas in the United States — where many doting parents are willing to pay an extravagant price tag even in a sluggish economy.

Graciela — whose parents had many mouths to feed — never had her debutante ball. But years later, living with her husband and three daughters in their new home in the United States, Graciela Ramirez (her married surname) vowed she would pass on to her daughters time-honored cultural traditions such as the quinceañera.

However, it wasn’t until her youngest daughter, Dulcemaria, was set to turn 15 that Graciela realized just how challenging it would be to pass on her traditions to a new generation of Ramirez girls growing up in the all-American town of Rockford, Ill.

THE DRESS
There are only three weeks left, and 14-year-old Dulcemaria Ramirez disinterestedly thumbs through a row of shiny, silky, satiny and fluffy dresses hanging on the racks of a Chicago bridal shop, listening to rock music playing over the MP3 player headphones that dangle through her thick, dark strands of hair. The long-limbed teen, dressed in a checkerboard tunic top, skinny jeans and thong sandals, looks like she’d be much more content in a video game shop.

Finally, the laid-back, lanky, American-born teenager — whose name means “Sweet Maria” in Spanish but who prefers to just be called “Dulce” — tries on a long white gown. She insists on wearing a white dress, instead of the customary pink or pastel color, even though white is traditionally reserved for weddings.

Graciela says of her two older daughters, who were born in Mexico, “They didn’t give me as much grief.”

“My parents want to make it traditional,” says the eldest, Diana. “Dulce throws out her ideas, and (my parents) say, ‘No. That’s not traditional.’

“She told my parents, ‘For my quinceãnera, I want to break-dance!’” Diana exclaims with exasperation.

“I want to wear my Converse (gym) shoes,” says Dulce, who’s never worn high-heeled shoes.

But is she breaking for real? “Mom doesn’t want me to. But yeah, with my break-dancing crew,” she says.

“She should have gone to Japan,” says the grandmother, Ofelia Hernandez, in Spanish. Dulce had toyed with the idea of going with her aunt on a trip to Japan. Among families who can afford the expense, the birthday girl can choose between taking a special trip, often to Europe, or having a quinceañera party with a full court of seven damas and seven chambelanes (the total number of 14 signifies her 14 years of life). In the end, Dulce settled for the debutante ball.

THE CAKE
Next, the three generations of party planners head to Bombon Bakery at Ashland and Ogden avenues in Chicago. There, Diana leafs through a magazine thick with ads. In the past decade, quinceañera magazines and expos advertising banquet halls, tuxedo rentals, party decorations and florists have popped up in many major cities across the country.

Thumbing through a catalog of special-event cakes, Dulce goes for a cake with a psychedelic hot pink and purple design. “My daughter has strange tastes,” Graciela murmurs before asking Dulce what she thinks about a classic wedding cake topped with a Precious Moments doll wearing a princessy dress.

The chef-owner of Bombon Bakery, Laura Cid-Perea, estimates that more than 15 percent of their cake orders are for quinceañera parties. “This year we’ve sold more quinceañera cakes than ever,” she said. “They’re a big and growing part of our business.”

The trio samples slices of cake brought to them on a platter: the always popular tres leches (three-milk) cake; the convent cake made with Mexican rompope liquor; and a guayaba (guava) cream cheese cake. They agree on the guayaba cake, but change their mind when they worry that a four-layer cake might not hold up well on the 90-mile trip to Rockford. They would later buy the cake from a Rockford bakery.

THE DAMAS
Two weeks left and Dulce has had enough of bridal shops. She takes three of her damas — Brisa, Adriana and Angelica  — to look for a dress on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue. Destination: Forever 21, a retail chain that specializes in inexpensive hip and trendy clothing for young females.

While Dulce's mom and dad wait in the wings, the girls try on the store’s snazzy, youthful, flirty dresses, most of which are under $50. They choose a snug, strapless, hot pink, taffeta bubble dress with a short, pleated skirt at a bargain price of $29. The other damas would later need to order the hot pink mini dress in their sizes.

Dulce would have the chambelanes, who Graciela wanted to see dressed in black tuxedos, wear white tuxedos with a hot pink vest to match the color of the damas’ dress. “But Dulce, I’ve never seen damas dance the waltz in a hot pink mini dress,” her mother pleads.

THE CHOREOGRAPHY
Romeo Zaleta, a dance instructor in Rockford who specializes in quinceañera parties, choreographs about 15 such balls a year, usually in ten two-hour sessions over three months.

Dulce and her father, Juan Ramirez, have just finished rehearsing the father-daughter waltz. The damas and chambelanes have practiced their waltz for the umpteenth time, and now the girls are swaying their hips to a cumbia beat under a light rain in Zaleta’s driveway. The girls are practicing the choreography to a medley of tropical Latin dance music, a dance they’ll do after the waltz. They rehearse by themselves because the boys argue the steps are too hard to learn in order to perform “the surprise dance” that Dulce agreed to do just last week.

But what about her dance crew? Dulce laments that her break-dancing crew backed out of taking part in the “surprise dance” she originally had in mind: her crew would break-dance around her while she danced to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” wearing a black jacket and a white studded glove. The thought horrified her mom.

After months of costly preparations, the question hangs in the damp, drizzly air: Will the free spirit of the Ramirez family acquiesce to her parents’ wishes for a traditional, religious, fairy-tale quinceañera end up costing her family nearly $7,000?

ONCE UPON A TIME
Once upon a time, in Rockford, Ill., a 15-year-old princess named Dulcemaria had the fairy tale quinceañera ball that her mother, Graciela Ramirez, had dreamed of at her age — only with some non-traditional touches.

At St. Patrick’s Church, where Dulce was baptized, all eyes are fixed on the sophisticated young woman with dark, flowing curls walking down the aisle in a long, simple, softly flowing white gown that her sister Carla found on the Internet on lovelypromdress.com.

During the traditional Mass of thanksgiving, the angelic-looking teenager wearing a tiara sits on an embroidered white cushion at the foot of the altar, surrounded by white flowers signifying the purity of her youth. Her parents, godparents, damas, chambelanes and guests listen solemnly in the pews to the priest's blessing and the hymns sung by a young choir.

After she is blessed by her parents and godparents, the madrinas (sponsors of the gifts) present her with a Bible, a rosary and a miniature bouquet. She is then handed a bouquet of roses that she places at the feet of a statue of the Virgin Mary in gratitude for her maternal protection. The guests burst into applause.

After the mass, a black stretch limousine sweeps the princess in white and her damas and chambelanes off to Rockford’s Klehm Arboretum and Botanic Garden, where a photographer takes pictures of her and her court under the colonnade of a gazebo and around a burbling water fountain.

In a grand ballroom at the riverside Cliffbreakers Banquet Hall, guests admire photographs of Dulce’s childhood, the traditional muñeca (a doll wearing a white laced dress that represents the debutante's “last doll” and the end of her childhood) and a cupcake tower topped with a hot pink and white zebra-striped cake surrounded by rose petals and chocolate-covered strawberries.

Dulce and her court are greeted with the thundering applause of the 200 guests. Barefooted under her bride-beautiful dress — because she finds high-heeled shoes uncomfortable, she kicked hers off — she dances the waltz with her chambelanes and then dances alone at the center of the waltzing court.

In keeping with her independent spirit, she has chosen to break with custom and not to have an escort herself. After the dance, champagne glasses are handed out and everyone toasts to the birthday girl who is entering womanhood.

The room then turns silent for the father-daughter waltz. Dulce swirls gracefully around the dance floor with her father, Juan, who is wearing a black tuxedo. While they dance, he tears up as he listens to the lyrics of the song he has selected especially for this occasion, called “Mi Niña Bonita” (My Beautiful Girl). The song tells the story of a father who had wished for a son, but who, overwhelmed with the tender affection of his daughter, regrets that he had once wished for anything but the love of a daughter. Graciela, who looks radiantly happy watching them dance under the shimmering chandeliers, wipes away tears of joy.

Her happiness is such that right before midnight, when the break-dancing crew arrives unexpectedly to surprise the birthday girl and the dancers pound their limbs fitfully on the dance floor, Graciela laughs and enjoys the end of a nearly perfect fairy-tale night. 

For Graciela and her husband — and most importantly, she says, for Dulce — no price is too high for the special memory she says they enjoyed together as a family, a memory that will last a lifetime.

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