How Quinceañeras Work

The prom-like gown may be the central quinceañera tradition, but it isn't the only fancy dress featured in the celebration. Quinceañera custom calls for 14 damas, or maiden attendants, to accompany the quince girl and symbolize the past 14 years of her life. And of course, a group of young maidens needs a corresponding set of escorts, which means the quince girl must also select 15 chambelans, or male attendants in tuxedos.

The first stop during a quinceañera is the church, where a quince girl must receive a special blessing from the priest and commit herself to protecting her virginity and spiritual devotion. There, she will also leave a bouquet of flowers at the altar or near a statue of the Virgin Mary to further symbolize her purity. Symbolically abandoning her childhood and becoming a woman, a quince girl gives away a porcelain doll (although looser quince celebrations might substitute a stuffed animal or another childhood trinket) to a younger sister or female relative.

Once the quinceañera mass concludes, a more typical birthday party ensues. What happens during the rest of the quinceañera largely depends on the parents' budget. In lower income families, relatives and community members may pitch in together, acting as padrinos and madrinas, or godfathers and godmothers, to finance the quinceañera. Business owners and non-profits groups in Mexico City sponsor annual city-wide quinceañeras to allow girls from poor families to enjoy the special rite afforded to wealthier Mexicans [source: Llana].

One of the final rituals of a quinceañera is the changing of the quince girl's shoes. After the eating, drinking and dancing, the quince girl's father will remove the flat-soled slippers or shoes his daughter wore to the party and replace them with a pair of heels. Thus, the 15-year-old who sashayed into the quinceañera as a girl will stride out and back home as a young woman. And as we'll learn on the next page, this highly stylized rite of passage isn't a recent invention, but rather a cultural homage to coming out ceremonies orchestrated by Aztec high priests in the early 1500s [source: Alvarez].

To visually trace the origins of quinceañera festivities that happen in the United States, run a finger down a map of the Western hemisphere into the heart of Mexico. In that ancestral home of the Aztec Indians, whose empire thrived during the 1400s and early 1500s, young girls were considered marriage-ready at the age of 15. As a result, they went through ceremonial rites of passage that included parental speeches beseeching their adolescent daughters to become wise, upstanding women. Then the Spanish invaded modern-day Mexico and overthrew the Aztecs in the 1520s, bringing their European influence to the indigenous people. The upper-class debutante aspects of quinceañera likely emerged as a result of that [source: Alvarez].

The quinceañera as we know it today, celebrated by thousands of girls around Latin America and the estimated 525,000 Hispanic girls who turn 15 every year in the U.S., actually didn't become ingrained in the Hispanic cultural fabric until recently. Prior to the 1960s, quinceañeras were occasions reserved for the upper classes. As more Latinos have immigrated to the U.S. and their communities have assimilated into American society, quinceañeras have spread across all rungs of socioeconomic classes as a newfound expression of ethnic pride both in the United States and Latin America. In the same way that American rites and customs easily traverse state lines, quinceañeras have also become a shared tradition throughout Latin America, including cordoned-off Cuba. In this way, these Sweet 15s have become as much a way to commemorate the past as celebrate the future.

The growing popularity of quinceañeras hasn't always sat well with the Catholic Church, however. A quince girl's public commitment of faith is an integral part of the event, but the surrounding regalia has threatened to completely overshadow any religious spirit, especially as quinceañera budgets often balloon beyond $45,000 [source: Plummer]. In 1990, the Los Angeles Archdiocese issued stricter guidelines for permitting quinceañera masses, including rules that attempt to limit the size of the quinceañera parties at mass and allow priests to bless multiple quince girls at once, since the parties were beginning to constrain the number of weddings and baptisms churches could perform [source: Legon].

But even the protestations of priests haven't stopped the swell of Sweet 15s. The quinceañera industry now tops $11 billion in the United States, which makes sense since — in addition to invitations, venues, cake and beverages — these birthday affairs naturally revolve around gifts galore [source: Quinceañera Report].

From surrendering the last doll (ultima muñeca) during the Catholic mass to the shoe ceremony before the final father-daughter dance afterward, the quinceañera is full of symbolic gestures and gifts. Unlike the ordinary birthday parties that the quince girl might've enjoyed for the prior 14 years, her 15th extravaganza officially marks her coming of age, and therefore requires appropriate gifts and apparel to carry her through that transition.

Often, the quinceañera itself is the present for the birthday girl, rather than a bounty of wrapped packages. Parents who can afford big-budget fiestas may give their daughter a regálo sorpresa, or surprise gift, but the emphasis of traditional quinceañera presents — including the prayer book, rosary and Bible needed for mass — is on what the quince girl will wear and carry to her ceremony. These may be given by a combination of grandparents, other relatives and friends, and each of them carries a special meaning:

In a way, quinceañeras are more of a giant gift to the invited guests than to the quince girls. After the ceremonial mass, a quinceañera celebration migrates to a reception with food, drinks and lively music for attendees. While they're there to help welcome the quince girl into adulthood, guests also receive special keepsakes. Decorated champagne flutes are handed out for a toast to the quince girl's future joy. Tokens called cápias or cerámicas, may be imprinted with the quince girl's name and date as a memento for guests as well.

Not every quinceañera follows all these traditions. Some girls omit the church ceremony. Others opt for a pastel gown rather than a white one. The traditional waltz may be replaced by a choreographed reggaeton routine. The parents may spend the money on a birthday cruise or a car for their daughter rather than a lavish party. And some girls, for financial or other reasons, just have a small get-together at home and take pictures in their quince dresses [source: Plummer].

Though the rite of passage may vary from Puerto Rico to Panama to Palo Alto, the heart of the quinceañera remains constant. Whether lavish or low-key, these extraordinary Sweet 15 fiestas allow young girls to become fairytale princesses for a day on their way to becoming full-grown women.