In September, Offbeat Wed celebrated Hispanic Heritage Month by sharing some of our favorite offbeat Latino / Latinx / Hispanic weddings on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.
As the posts started rolling out, I received this message from a follower named Aral:
I’m soooooo excited about you featuring Latino/x weddings just PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE be mindful, respectful, and recognize and PLEASE EMPHASIZE AND NOTATE our culture, customs, rituals, even religions are not a wedding theme.
- Taco party should not a wedding theme
- Fiesta should not be a wedding theme
- Mariachi should not a wedding theme
- Tacos and cerveza should not be a theme.
- Loteria should not be a wedding theme.
These are the REAL customs, traditions, and way of life for a lot of real people, and it’s offensive for people to use them as themes.
This is especially true when so many of people reject, demean, mistreat, and have prejudices against Latino people.
This is something my social media manager and I take very seriously when curating Offbeat Wed’s social media theme weeks — especially ones that involve cultural identities.
How we pick the posts we feature during a social media wedding theme week
For instance, each post we chose to share this week features has actual Latinx folks getting married — there are no white couples cosplaying dia de los muertos, and we’re not featuring weddings where white couples had a taco truck as part of our week of Latino / Latinx / Hispanic weddings. (To be clear, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with serving tacos at your wedding. The issue is when you make a whole wedding theme out of a culture that you admire, but aren’t a part of.)
Our goal is to celebrate the weddings of Latino / Latinx / Hispanic folks — not to celebrate weddings with Latino / Latinx / Hispanic themes.
That said, we are featuring many multicultural and intercultural weddings, so you may see white brides with loteria table settings, and white grooms with papel picado at their receptions. We don’t consider it a “wedding theme” when one of the folks getting married is celebrating their own heritage.
This issue is bigger than just Latinx weddings though, and is something we’ve covered several times on Offbeat Wed
The issue of wedding cultural appropriation has been a hot topic in these parts for well over a decade. Here are a few of the posts we’ve done in the past:
Related Reading
Why do couples borrow cultural elements for their wedding, and how can you do so respectfully?
Many Anglo-Americans have such a mishmash of culture that they have few or no traditions that hold significant meaning for them. Perhaps people are inclined to like culture, symbolism, rituals, and traditions. Maybe they seek these out in other cultures… Read more
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Is it cultural appropriation to have Japanese paper cranes at my wedding?
I started folding origami cranes obsessively back in elementary school after reading the very sad story about Sadako, a Japanese girl who survived the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima only to develop leukemia and die while working to fold 1,000 cranes.… Read more
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Are the gifts I’m getting for my attendants cultural appropriation?
I’m thinking about buying my bridal party luchador masks. But here’s the deal: I am not Mexican. I am a fan of the wrestling style, but not a huge one. I just think they’re delightful. Does this seem like co-opting… Read more
Thanks again to Aral for bringing up this important issue. As a final note for those concerned about wedding cultural appropriation, I’d like to remind everyone to be cautious about policing people’s identities based on wedding pictures. That can lead to some REALLY ugly situations.
I’d love to hear from readers: where is the line for you between wedding cultural appropriation and wedding cultural appreciation?
