Last year in the beginning of my 9th grade school year, one of my friends came to me with the idea about how she was going to have a quinceañera. I thought it was an awesome idea and that it would be great for her to have one. Moments later she then asked me to be one of her damas. Damas are pretty much the bridesmaids of the quinceañera. I was super stoked to be one. She talked about it all year and threw out some ideas. She started having some gatherings at her house so that her and all the damas could plan on the dance and the dresses we had to wear. We originally were supposed to find dates but none of us could find a date or keep a date in time for the party, so she cancelled having dates. The only person who found a date in time was the birthday girl herself which was great and needed anyways.

Two weeks before the party we started meeting up every day to learn the dance. It is tradition that at a quinceañera the damas and the birthday girl do a dance with their dates, in this case we had to do it without dates. Coming up with a good dance was sort of difficult because we all had our own opinions and some of us could and couldn’t pick up certain moves. Also it was hard to teach everybody the dance because not everybody would be at each rehearsal so we would have to go back and teach the people who weren’t there the day before. I will admit that it was pretty fun learning the dance. During our breaks we would play games like hide and go seek, we even made a Harlem Shake video just for fun.

Since I was a dama, that meant I had a very specific dress code to go under. All the damas have to look the same, so that meant wearing the same dress. We all wore a white dress that was one sleeved and had a gold piece that served as the one sleeve and had gold and silver embellishments on it. It was a fairly simple dress so it wasn’t very hard to style. We also had to wear gold, white, or silver shoes with the dresses. We were only supposed to wear minimal jewelry, which was simple silver or gold earrings. We had to have our hair up in some sort of bun, I decided to go with a messy bun to style it a bit differently. Makeup was very simple, but we had to wear a bold red lip stick color. All the damas looked great because we all made sure to stay within the dress code and we ended up looking amazing together and matched the birthday girl’s dress very well.

It came to the time of the party and all the damas were pretty nervous about the dance. I mean it’s not often you stand in front of a bunch of people and bust out your moves for their entertainment, at least not often for me. Before we got to the party we made sure to take some pictures of all the damas and the birthday girl. The first set of pictures were taken by mom because she insisted on it, I think she wanted the practice. The next round of pictures were taken by the birthday girl’s mom, we drove to some water fountains and took some nice pictures there. The next stop was the party and I was sort of freaking out and making sure I remembered the dance because I was the one who had to lead everyone into the dance, it was sort of scary for me. We got there and came in to the building in an orderly fashion. The DJ announced that birthday girl had just walked into the building and everyone started clapping. The birthday girl and the damas were seated in their own table at the front of the room, kind of like the king and queens.

Just moments after sitting down we were rushed onto the floor so that we could do our dance. We had some troubles at first because the DJ started too early and he couldn’t hear us when we were telling him to rewind the song, this caused me to freak out a bit more. The track then started and I walked out and started dancing and the girls came after one by one. The dance went so smoothly and well by what I could see. Everyone seemed to remember each part and there was no trouble! That was a huge load off my shoulders. The rest of the night consisted of me rapping to “Can’t hold us”, dancing the Gangnam Style, the Cupid Shuffle, and the Electric Slide. Also they played some hispanic music to which I dance with my parents (remembering how we used to dance back in Puerto Rico). I also made sure to teach a few moves to my friends while I was at it.

In all I would have to say that I did have a lot of fun. I had fun being able to hang out with my friends and just have fun and let loose. We all were dancing and smiling, I would say we all had fun. I’m mostly happy that I was able to be there for my friend on her birthday because you only turn 15 once. I would have to say that my first quinceañera was a success and I hope to be attending more in the future!