Quinceañera: How Girls of the 21st Century Celebrate Coming of Age

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A Look Into the Religion, Celebration and Evolution of the Rite of Passage

By Cristina Galvan

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On a Saturday morning in March, Emily Mejia can’t stop smiling as she enters Our Lady of Solitude Catholic Church in East Los Angeles. Accompanying her are her parents, siblings and chambelánes, or escorts, who are wearing tuxedos — and Chuck Taylor Converse sneakers. Sitting in the pews are a few family members and friends.

Emily is led to the altar by her chambelán de honor. As they reach the altar, they both bow and he turns into the pews. Emily remains in front of the gold-painted altar where a crucifix rises above her. Next to Emily sit her godparents. After planning for about a year, she is following the path of millions of girls before her by celebrating her quinceañera and her passage to womanhood.

A quinceañera is a coming-of-age celebration that takes place in many Latin American communities when a girl turns 15. (The term refers both to the celebration and to the girl being celebrated.) The tradition, which is believed to have been influenced by the Aztecs and the Spanish who arrived in the New World in the 16th century, symbolizes the honoree’s transition from being a little girl into a young woman.

There are no rules for celebrating a quinceañera; the practice varies from family to family. But there are some elements that most girls follow, in keeping with centuries of tradition, as they plan their “quinces.”

For many girls it’s not just about having a party, but honoring family.

Because of the cost, when faced with the choice of going to a Catholic high school or having a quinceañera — Emily chose to have a quinceañera.

“My sisters had one,” she says, “and I felt like I needed one because like my grandpa isn’t here with me and I felt like he was gonna be here in spirit.”

Jaden Corona, who had her celebration in February, had an expectation to fill as one of the first girls in her family to have one.

“To me this is a very special day for the fact that I’m the first girl in this family to have a quinceañera,” she explains. “And I am the oldest of two other girls now and I’m hoping that they’ll get to spend this day and I will be the one able to help them.”

Today girls are keeping the quinceañera alive by following traditions, but at the same time they are modernizing it and making it their own.

Grecia Hernández, digital content manager for Quinceanera.com says, “The quinceañera’s evolution has made it where you can adapt the celebration to fit your budget, your lifestyle and your personality.”

Girls can use digital resources like Quinceanera.com, Instagram and Snapchat to research ideas, shop for services and document their celebrations. These tools have inspired, and even empowered, today’s quinceañeras.

“I think girls nowadays are more in charge because of their own online resources that they have,” Hernández says.

Rachel V. González-Martin, a folklorist at the University of Texas at Austin, says that some girls “might be expected to have a quinceañera and might not know about the tradition.”

She says today’s girls, “the YouTube generation,” are active in social media and want visibility.

“It’s not just having a quinceañera, but it’s looking your best, having the best ... the most trendy, being able to post pictures.”

To prepare for the religious Mass, Emily Mejia was required to attend a class with her parents, godparents and chambelánes. Emily, along with other girls planning their celebrations, heard about what it means to have a quinceañera from a church volunteer. A few days before the big day she and her court attended a practice at Our Lady of Solitude Catholic Church, where they were taught how to enter the church, where to bow and about the flow of the Mass.

Father Jesús Herrera García is a priest at Santa Isabel Church in Boyle Heights. He says that there are no official rules to celebrating a quinceañera's religious Mass. He says that it is more of a “pastoral observance” and that it is not a sacrament like a baptism or wedding.

Herrera García explains, speaking in Spanish, “It’s giving thanks because [she] reached this stage of her illusions, when [she] is going to start a new stage in life and look for a personal realization.”

Viviana Retana celebrated her quinceañera at St. Hilary Catholic Church in Pico Rivera, Calif. “As I was turning 13 and 14 I saw it as a party,” she says. “When the closer I got to it, it meant to me I'm becoming a woman; I'm becoming this young lady I am today. So it did mean a transition, a religious transition, just to becoming adulthood.”

“A lot of girls just have a party and don't see the religious aspect of it, so having the church involved really did mean a lot,” Viviana says. “It impacted me more than I thought it would.”

In Catholicism, during the religious ceremony the honoree is accompanied by her parents and godparents and leaves a fresh flower bouquet in front of an image or statue of the Virgin Mary. While leaving the flowers some girls offer a short prayer.

Herrera García says that offering flowers to the Virgin Mary is a symbol of affection and respect. “Overall she can lead her and guide her through everything that life presents her.” The Virgin Mary is also a role model for young girls because she teaches about overcoming obstacles, Herrera García says.

Norma E. Cantú, Murchison professor of the humanities at Trinity University in San Antonio, authored a variety of quinceañera works including, “La Quinceañera: Towards an Ethnographic Analysis of a Life-Cycle Ritual.” Cantú says that the quinceañera “marks a social status change.”

She says that in the past when girls turned 15, they were allowed to wear more makeup, start going to dances, and start dating or talking to boys on the phone.

“I think nowadays the change is more subtle and the expectations are different, but they are still there,” Cantú says. “And what’s amazing to me is how the young women just almost overnight change in their behavior and in their actions. And they do start acting more mature, more responsible.”

Cantú says that girls today have more of a say in what they want and in how they are going to do it.

“I think in that way they are way more feminist than we were back then,” she says. “Another aspect of the feminist influence -- I guess on the celebration, even though they may not call it that -- I think even the community is a little more open to having the young women be more assertive and independent.”

Today’s quinceañera, she says, “is consulted more as an adult than before.”

One of the highlights of the quinceañera is the party that is thrown for the girl. That event usually takes place at a banquet hall, but some families try to save money by hosting the celebration at their homes.” Emily Mejia celebrated her party in her backyard, complete with a tent.

Father Herrera García says that oftentimes more people attend the party than the religious celebration and that more importance is given to the party.

“The grand problem,” he says, “is that it has transformed into a social event, an event for society, and the spiritual dimension is not considered.”

In the anthology “Chicana Traditions: Continuity and Change,” which she co-edited, Cantú writes that the coming-of age-ritual “signals a change” and is “loaded with significant ritual behaviors that reflect the transformation.”

During the party, for instance, many girls start off the day with flats or sneakers that are then changed into heels by the girl’s father or family members.

After guests had dinner at Emily's party, the tables were cleared and guests sat around what would become the dance floor to see one of the night’s highlights - the waltz, during which the honoree dances with her court. Preparing for the waltz can take months. Some families hire a choreographer, while in others, a family member can be the one to teach the steps.

For her waltz, Emily danced with her chambelánes to “Valz de la Mariposas” (“Waltz of the Butterfly”) by Tommy Valles. They also danced to “A Thousand Years” by Christina Perri. As she danced from side, her chambelánes danced around her. At one point of the dance two of the chambelánes picked up Emily and turned her in a circle to present her to the cheering crowd.

After the waltz Emily was escorted to a chair that was placed in the middle of the tent where the waltz had taken place a few moments before. All eyes were on her as her siblings exchanged the small tiara on her head for a bigger one and changed her Converse to heels.

Then, Emily was given a porcelain doll wearing a dress similar to hers. The doll is intended to represent the girl’s last toy. Emily handed the doll to her chambelán de honor, who trailed behind her carrying the doll as she walked away arm in arm with two other chambelánes.

Some girls also do a surprise dance for guests during which they dance to a popular or current song.

Cantú, the cultural scholar, says that the dress, flats, doll and jewelry are “symbols” and “signifiers” that represent a change in status.

“It’s a shift so that she's no longer just being taken care of as child,” Cantú says, “but she's now going to be a member of the adult group that takes care of the community.”

Not all girls follow the same order, and not all girls incorporate these items into their quinceañeras. For example, Viviana Retana decided to skip the waltz with her court and instead put on a folklórico performance for her guests.

The reason, she says, is that she preferred to “showcase my dancing folklórico abilities to my family.”

She also used her Adidas throughout the day and did not change her shoes into heels.

One of the most widely documented quinceañeras was that of Rubí Ibarra Garcia, a girl in San Luis Potosí state in Mexico, whose celebration went viral last year after a video of her father inviting the community was posted on Facebook. The video that announced the celebration’s performers and a horse race was intended for friends and family, but it soon caught the internet by storm. Thousands of people flooded the family’s small town to get a glimpse of the girl who was dubbed in Spanish as “la quinceañera mas famosa de Mexico,” or Mexico’s most famous quinceañera.

With the vast majority of quinceañeras, though, the internet is not a source of fame but a tool that some girls use to plan their celebrations. Many of them have grown up with technology, and some are adopting technological changes and social media into the planning and documentation of their celebration.

One popular source is Quinceanera.com, a print and online publication that girls can use to get ideas and tips for their big day. The magazine publishes articles such as “What to Wear to a Spring Quinceañera” and “15 Elements to Include in Your Parisian Quinceañera.” The magazine has a big social media presence, with more than 50,000 Instagram followers.

Grecia Hernádez is the digital content manager for the magazine, which is based in Norwalk in Southern California. She says that girls are using social media to plan their big day. “Because of social media, you see a 13-year-old and all the things she does know how to do and research.”

Andrew Karl, who works with social media and marketing at Quinceanera.com, says that one way in which quinceañeras are employing social media is by using hashtags to “aggregate their guests' pictures and memories in one spot.”

“Social media in and of itself, I think, provides an opportunity for like a time of memories. So they must naturally get it, they just naturally know how to use it, and it's a way that they are preserving their memories in a lot of ways,” he says.

The magazine has an app that allows users to find local vendors for photography, floral, choreography and other services. The app also has a checklist that allows girls to monitor their preparations.

“Every girl like who is turning 15 always has the same concerns and questions,” Karl says. “And that relates to [the]quinceañera itself, party planning, organization, budget, social concerns. So there’s almost this Venn diagram of all these different intersections that are really passed down on this girl, this little 15-year-old girl. It’s a heavy weight.”

The magazine recently launched a website, MiQuinceParty.com, that allows girls to upload pictures of their court, add event details such as time and location, and even create a gift registry.

“This is an opportunity for them to have this in one spot forever,” Karl says, “and it’s a memory they can go out and share [through] this link. So it’s an opportunity to like bring them very quickly up to the modern age, I would say. It’s a modern progression of where quinceañera tradition is going.”

During a recent expo that it hosted, the magazine created a Snapchat filter that attendees could use for the event.

“A lot of my inspiration came from Quinceanera.com,” Jaden Corona says, “so I would be less nervous because it told me what I was supposed to expect.”

Jaden used social media to plan her big day. “Most of my inspiration came from Pinterest,” she says. “I’ve been Snapchatting this whole occasion. Social media definitely made a big impact in how well this came out — finding people, hiring people, a lot of it came from online.”

To get ideas for their celebration, girls go to local businesses, get inspiration from each other and also use the internet and social media to find ideas.

Viviana says, “I used Instagram and looked at what my older friends did for their quince’s and sweet sixteens and I would see what I liked and what I didn’t like from their parties.”

Alejandra Mendez celebrated hers on April 22 and used the internet to look for a dress. “I basically searched up in Google like maroon dress because that was the type of dress I wanted. So a prom dress came up and it was on eBay but since it was too expensive I had to ask the lady if she could make it for me the way it is there and she made it.”

Alejandra did not use social media to look for ideas but she used Snapchat to take videos and pictures of her day. “In my party bus I recorded the way we were dancing and I took pictures of the church and basically everything,” says Alejandra.

Elizabeth Alcaraz found inspiration for her quinceañera from attending her friend’s celebrations. She also used Instagram to find ideas for her dress, makeup and nails.

Like many other girls, Elizabeth went to Hollenbeck Park in Boyle Heights to take quinceañera pictures. She said that she wasn’t really using social media to document her celebration, “I’ve just been having fun today,” she says.

Jessika Virgen used Facebook and Instagram to get inspiration for elements of her celebration, such as her damas’ dresses and her Parisian theme.

“On the hashtags I would just put #quinceañeras and a lot of pictures would just come out,” she says.

Social media and the internet can also help families get ideas to make decorations or other elements themselves, thus saving them money.

Gissell Cordero’s mother, Brenda Soto, used YouTube to plan her daughter’s waltz. Most choreographers that she contacted would have charged hundreds of dollars to choreograph a dance. The cheapest one they found proposed $350.

“I’m not going to pay that much to make a waltz or a surprise dance so I did it,” Soto says, speaking in Spanish. After watching YouTube videos, Soto taught her daughter and the damas the steps to the waltz and the surprise dance.

Martha Aguilar, the owner of Gabriela’s Party Rental in Huntington Park, Calif., says that before the internet, girls used magazines to get inspirations. “They bring me their phone and show me what they like,” she says in Spanish. “Now with the internet they create new ideas from around the world.”

Outside of her shop, tucked at the end of a brick shopping mall, visitors stop by to look at “Beauty and the Beast” table setups complete with gold tablecloths and a red rose enclosed in a glass container that Aguilar put together when the latest “Beauty and the Beast” film came out.

Aguilar uses social media to keep up with trends and stay relevant, which she says has helped her business. “I also see novelties and see what is going on. I see what is in style in colors and base myself off that.”

The dress is one of the most important items for a quinceañera. Most dresses today tend to be colorful, a shift from the white dresses that were prevalent in the past. Girls can get custom-made dresses or pick from a catalog at a store.

Scholar Norma E. Cantú says that the dress helps show the honoree’s status change in the community.

“The dress signals that, and so do the shoes,” Cantú says. “The switch from the flats to the heels, the last muñeca [doll], the jewelry. All of those are symbols; they're signifiers.”

Lucy Luna has been professionally making quinceañera dresses for about 14 years. Her showroom in Huntington Park is filled with designs in pink, purple, blue and other colors. There is even one that uses macaroon-print fabric. The dresses are covered in lace, rhinestones and ruffles.

“I focus a lot on elegance, in the traditional,” Luna says in Spanish. Her aim is that “the quinceañera doesn’t leave the glamour behind.”

Luna says that about 18 years ago, the traditional quinceañera dress in the U.S. was white and in Central America it was pink. “Now the color doesn’t matter as long as the quinceañera likes it.”

A lot of girls want big, puffy dresses, Luna notes. “Right now, what they want is the more crinoline inside of the dress the better.”

Rhinestones are very popular, these days. They can be made of plastic, glass or crystal. Luna says that it all depends on how much the customer wants to spend.

Pastel and neutral colors have made a comeback since a few years ago, when animal print and striking colors were popular, she says.

Ricardo Cruz, the owner of Bellas 15 in Huntington Park, finds inspiration for his dresses in gardens and nature. “There are gardens that have different types of flowers, or there are flowers like orchids and others that already have color combinations. And from there I get the idea to design something,” he says in Spanish.

He says in the past year he saw a lot of dresses that were ivory combined with royal blue, red combined with white, and red with gold. He says that pink remains popular year after year.

Some girls have also decided to use dresses inspired by Mexican charrería, or horsemanship.

“There are people whose entire family is here,” Cruz says, “but they conserve traditions…. There are girls whose party theme is charrería and they want a dress with traditional embroidery, with horses, with horseshoes and buttons whether in gold or silver.”

During her quinceañera Emily Mejia had a candy table. Taking center stage in her table was a cake with an Eiffel Tower cake topper and an Eiffel Tower stand that held chocolate cupcakes. Her older sister Karen wore Eiffel Tower earrings.

Jessika used the Paris theme for her celebration, she says, because it was elegant.

Martha Aguilar of Gabriela’s Party Rental says that last year the Paris theme was one of the most popular. This year, she says, a lot of girls are using crowns and princess themes. Other themes, such as butterflies and roses, have fallen out of favor, she says.

For her quinceañera Jaden Corona chose an enchanted forest theme. “It’s very whimsical,” she says. “It kind of reminds me of like a story tale. And I’m not the most girly girl, but for my quince I wanted to have the full princess experience.”

Not all girls follow a theme, but most use a primary color for their celebration. Decorations and oftentimes the dress are that color.

Gissell Cordero, who celebrated her quinceañera in March, used shades of purple, her childhood favorite, for her dress, flowers and decorations. Though her favorite color these days is red, she says, “I wanted to incorporate something from my childhood.”

Gissell also had silver accents in her celebration. Her mother, Brenda Soto, wore a silver dress and Gissell wore silver glittered flats.

Aguilar notes that silver has replaced gold as this year’s popular color, adding that “silver is combined with everything; with red, with blue.”

Although quinceañeras have more commonly been a celebration for girls, some boys have had celebrations for their 15 years. Aguilar is planning a celebration for her son in November.

“He is my only son,” she says in Spanish. “So I told him, ‘You know what, let’s celebrate grandiose — a quinceañera for you, a quinceañero.”

Norma E. Cantú, the Trinity University professor, celebrated her quinceañera in the 1960s, but when she turned 50 she threw herself a cinquentañera. During the celebration she also had a Mass and was surrounded by family and friends.

She said that the celebration, like a quinceañera, also marked a change. “You just kind of feel like it’s time to celebrate your life,” Cantú says. ”And that is what it was, it was celebration of you.”

Hhaving a quinceañera does not come cheap. Oftentimes families have to save and make sacrifices. Some families cover part of the costs and seek help of padrinos (patrons) or godparents to help cover other expenses. In some instances, padrinos might pay for the music, the limousine, the toast, flowers or decorations.

For her celebration Viviana Retana had a budget of $3,800 or $500 more than what her older sisters had a few years prior.

Viviana says that most of the money went toward the banquet hall at the Pico Rivera Golf Club.

Like many girls, she found creative ways to stretch her budget. She tapped her personal bank account to pay for a photo booth at her party. She was going to use her white lace Veracruz dress from her folklórico dancing, but in the end her godfather was able to pay for a gown.

Karlibeth Villarreal’s quinceañera cost her parents more than $18,000. She did not have godparents so her parents footed the bill. Her father says that they saved for about three years.

The middle sister in the family, Magali, was unable to have a quinceañera since money was needed to pay the college tuition of the oldest sister, Areli.

Aguilar says that aside from the quinceañeras going for more glamour, they are now spending more. “Now they can spend more than before,” she says, speaking in Spanish. “I don’t know why, since there’s less money, but they are spending a little more on that.”

What counts as expenses for quinceañeras and their families are income for many vendors, such as dress shops, caterers, musicians and choreographers.

Evelyn Diaz owns a choreography business, Diaz de Baile, in Lakeview Terrace in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley. In addition to choreography, quinceañeras can hire chambelánes to show up for the dance or to take part in the all day festivities, including the Mass, photography session and party.

“So basically what happens is some girls have good-looking guys in their court and they don’t really know how to dance, and we have the best of both worlds,” Diaz says. “We have good- looking chambelánes and they have dance skills.... They go to the rehearsals, they dance with the girls, they do stuff that regular guys don’t know how to do.”

Renting out a single chambelán can cost the family a few hundred dollars: about $350 for the waltz and surprise dance and $450 for the whole day.

The dresses can also cost a few hundred dollars. Designers say that the cost of the dress depends on the fabric and on the type of detail that the dress has. Some dresses at Ricardo Cruz designs can sell for $550, while more elaborate ones can cost $950. He says that dresses that have to be taken to get embroidered can cost more than $1,000.

Despite the high cost, the celebration continues to be a significant tradition for quinceañeras and their families.