Creole Wedding, New Orleans, LA, 1989

The chocolate groom's cake is adorned with a double bed and two pillows, one named for Glenn, the other for Trudy. His top hat and cane are laid on his side of the bed, and the bride's veil on hers.

Katrina Thomas's notes: Those who call themselves Louisiana Creoles, considered to be descendants of the original French settlers, distinguishing them from those descended from the Cajun exiles, are a people of mixed French, African, Spanish, Native American and other ancestry, who have created their own world and culture. I went to New Orleans to record a custom they keep at the end of a wedding celebration. Known as a second line, it is derived from jazz funerals when onlookers join those emerging from the graveyard and follow the instrumentalists, who have switched from mourning to play joyful music. Unfortunately, wedding guests dancing around a ballroom to a band playing "When the Saints Go Marching In" does not make for distinctive pictures. What I succeed in documenting are simply New Orleans customs.