In their high school English class, papers were passed to the person in the desk behind for grading. That was how Elena and Erick first become aware of each other. But grading her paper was not the only reason Erick noticed Elena. “I don’t want to sound mean, but to me she was the only pretty girl in the class,” Erick says. “Then I started to talk to her, and it wasn’t just that she was pretty, it was her character.”
They were both quiet, but when they began to talk to each other a lot, the teacher separated them. Eventually, they sat next to each other again.
After five years of dating, Erick called Elena’s father to ask permission to marry his daughter. It wasn’t quite the surprise Erick was hoping for, however. After Erick asked permission, Elena’s dad came to congratulate her. “Wait—what?” she said to her dad. So she knew it was coming, she just didn’t know when.
Erick finally made a reservation at a nice restaurant downtown, and after dinner they went to the first park they had gone to together. He put a love letter with the ring box in the center of progressively larger boxes, wrapped it all up and gave it to her at the park. He got behind her while she unwrapped, and when she was done reading the letter, she turned to find him proposing on one knee. Elena said yes.
“It felt nice saying fiancée instead of girlfriend,” Erick says. “It just felt really secure. It still does. It always did.”
They had a traditional Mexican wedding at St. Rose Catholic Church, with a rosary, the Bible, the giving of wedding coins and the lasso ceremony. “Walking down the aisle with a lot of eyes on me, I was nervous,” Elena says. “When I got up to Erick at the altar, we just kept making little jokes, little remarks between each other, just to stay calm.”
After the ceremony, Erick and Elena drove to the rose garden in Capitol Park for more photos, then over to the reception. The biggest challenge was finding a venue that allowed them to bring in their own food. “Also, our families are huge, so we needed a big venue,” Elena says.
Food is one of the main traits of Mexican culture—not just consuming it but also cooking it. “This is where both Native American and Mexican cultures are very much alike,” Erick says. “We love to share our food with family and friends so it only makes sense that our family would rather cook the food for everyone than have it catered. Our moms, as well as other moms in the family, took up the responsibility for the cooking.” Among other things, the menu featured carnitas, nopalitos salad, and chicken mole.
Erick’s band performed a few songs before he joined Elena for their first dance and sang a song he wrote for her, “My Favorite All.”
It was a long way from English class. “Not to say that the other girls weren’t pretty, but she was the only one that caught my attention,” Erick says. “And that was that!”
—Margaret Snider
