Cultural Marriage Interview Report

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The cultural diversity in America is at an all-time high, with a number of cultures migrating their way to the land of the free. Throughout this integration of these different cultures into our society, an important constant has remained: Marriage. Marriage is a socially recognized relationship that may involve physical and emotional intimacy as well as legal rights to property and inheritance. (Guest p.360) Marriage has, and always will be the unification of man and woman as loving partners who begin their adventure through life together. This process will never change. When talking about marriages in different cultures, the end result is the same with the couple getting married. The difference arises in how the man and woman get married. …show more content…
Aziz, a native of the bay area, is a 28-year-old male, who recently got married in the fall of 2014. Aziz is of Gujarati descent, which is north Indian, and one of the most popular types of Indian. In his culture, marriage is done way differently than how the typical American marriage is usually completed. Marriages are very auspicious in Gujarati. Curious about how the marital process works in his culture, we agreed to FaceTime for an hour or so. To make sure I was ready for all scenarios during this interview, I created about 8 questions that I could possibly ask depending on the flow of the interview, which is a research strategy of gathering data through formal or informal conversation with informants. (Guest p. 90) My objectives for this interview were to create a good relationship with this individual by connecting with him early on in the conversation, get as much detail of how a Gujarati marriage done, and see if I could get any qualitative data, usually descriptive data drawn from nonstatistical sources, including participant observation, personal stories, interviews, and life histories. (Guest p. 90) Luckily, Aziz was willing to send me some copies of his beautiful wedding day to give me a good visual understanding of how it a Gujarati …show more content…
He was very engaging and made me feel as I was actually involved in the wedding. The first question I asked was how does a Gujarati marriage begin. As explained by Aziz, the wedding events actually begin a couple of days before the main wedding ceremony, he says, “The process for a typical Gujarati marriage usually begins a couple of days before the ultimate marital ceremony. Two days before the main ceremony, each of the families host separate events called Mehndi night. On Mehndi Night, the family members usually put henna tattoos on their hands for the wedding events to get ready for the subsequent events by beautifying themselves. The bride gets the most beautiful design of henna done on her because its her wedding and she must look the best. This night has more of a party atmosphere because it just consists of henna being done, usually on the women, while the men congregate and converse.” I was surprised to hear that a Gujarati marriage is actually a multiple day process because I am just used to an American marriage, where people just show up and the couple gets married. This is really fascinating because the families make a real effort in spending time with each other and shows the importance of this custom is to this culture. He continued on by saying, “The day before the main wedding ceremony, there is an event that takes place for each of the bride and groom, called the

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