Behind the Scenes, Many Labor . . . : . . . to Present a Wedding Just for Two

A wedding brings together far more than the bride and groom and their relatives and friends. It attracts an incredible array of skills, trades, talents, callings and professions -- all aimed at making the day one of the cornerstones for at least two lives. Free-lance writer Bill Manson examines a recent big wedding and some of the people involved in making this important day a happy one. Next Thursday he will spotlight small weddings.

It’s 7:30 Sunday morning. The sun slants through Sallie Scardina’s curtains. She can already hear bustlings and voices downstairs. She lifts her head off the pillow. It slowly dawns on her: This is her wedding day.

Between this morning and tonight, her emotions, self-discipline, beliefs and sheer staying power will be challenged as never before. Today is the day the daughter of Angelo and Catherine Scardina becomes the wife of Andy Tutino.

Getting married--and doing it the conventional way--is back. After marriage took a severe beating in the ‘60s and ‘70s, young people, especially, are getting married in droves, with conventional ceremonies, conventional dress, conventional receptions. Gone is the idealistic expression of love in unofficial ceremonies, writing your own concept of God for the minister to read. To the enormous relief of some church establishments, youth, at least on the wedding day, is coming back.

Some never left. The San Diego Italian community, and perhaps especially the Sicilian community, has always been strong on marriage, meaning marriage-for-keeps.

Angelo and Catherine Scardina have three of their four daughters still to marry. Within 18 months they will all be married off, in traditional Italian style, which means high style, all-out, a once-in-a-lifetime affair to remember.

Because that is what it is supposed to be. San Diego’s Sicilian-Italian community looks at the national 50% divorce rate with horror. It is the direct contradiction of all they believe in. Family, children, religion, honor, tradition, loyalty perhaps above all. The sense of duty prevails right up there on a par with love.

So Sallie, 21, firm and wise in her ways, knows this is it. Everything tells her it is. The long-prepared dowry. A fiance who has been her first and only boyfriend since she was 16. A wedding dress that has taken eight months to put together, with fine lace from Italy, and above all, a wedding day of such lavishness as to be unforgettable--and unrepeatable. This, for this lifetime, is it.

By 9:30 a.m. Sallie is downstairs, but she’s far from alone. Uncles, aunts, cousins, sisters, grandparents are milling around the sunroom and kitchen, greeting each other with embraces, adjusting the clip-on bow ties of handsome young men in their tuxes rented from Gary’s on 4th Avenue.

Bridegroom Andy’s parents, Tony and Lucia, are mixing and chatting. These are all friends. They’ve all lived within miles of each other in Sicily. Andy, 23, who’s studying to be a chiropractor in Los Angeles, has pleased them by marrying within the Italian community.

In the living room, photographers John and Betts Gorman have already set up a mottled backdrop paper roll and lights for their portable studio. They’re already calling the first family groups. Catherine Scardina, mother of the bride, resplendent in her pale pink hand-beaded dress, is loading the kitchen table with cookies fresh-baked from New York, which the aunts have brought in with them this morning. Next to the cookies, fresh Italian bread and all sorts of Italian cheeses and salami. Near the large refrigerator, bottles of wine and beer sit waiting to be opened.

In the sunroom, Reuben Santa Cruz, Catherine Scardina’s hairdresser, has set up shop to do hair at the last minute. A group of portly women cluster around a young girl with her hair in a tussle. Sallie’s sorting out boutonnieres, white carnations for the uncles, white roses for the fathers.

“Trousseau?” says cousin Mario Alesi. “Sure! The cousins start off collecting for this day when they’re 13.”

“Andy! What are you doing here?” someone calls out. “You’re not supposed to see Sallie till . . . “

Andy stands at the back door, white from his bow-tie down to his shoes.

“I have to. The photos.”

“Quick, get Sallie upstairs. Sallie, don’t look!”

“OK, first, can we have the miniature bride and ring-bearer?” calls John Gorman, the photographer. Marie-Antoinette, the 3-year-old daughter of Sallie’s married sister Joanne, flounces up in a tiny replica of Sallie’s wedding dress, holding hands with Anthony Lalicata, resplendent in his mini-tux. Marie-Antoinette was Little Miss San Diego 1985. Her huge eyes and rosy cheeks tell you why.

Sallie’s sisters are arranging the confettis--four different kinds of fine porcelain orchids imported from Italy, with lace sachets of white sugared almonds tied to them. When the guests come up to present the couple with envelopes of money later, at the reception, this will be their gift in return.

“Now remember, there must be odd numbers of almonds inside,” says one of the sisters, “five or seven, and only white.”

It’s getting closer to The Hour.

Angelo Scardina stays calm smoking his ivory Turkish pipe. He’s wrestling a champagne bottle.

Pop!

“Champagne, everybody!” Everybody toasts the day to come. Andy has been photographed with relatives and has disappeared again.

“Oh, yes, the bride and groom start saving up for this long before they meet each other,” says cousin Andy Amenta. “That’s the way we do it. Anglo-Americans, they don’t plan ahead, and they’d rather save their money anyway, for the car, the house, ‘useful’ things. Not us. We want to have a day to remember. It’s the occasion that counts.”

Reuben Santa Cruz is making sure the veils are going to stay on. He is surrounded by women, blow dryers, bobby pins and countless tall cans of “professional” hair spray.

“I use the really strong stuff on these occasions, just to make sure it doesn’t come down halfway through the ceremony,” he says. He has done this before--seen tears, lopsided cuts. Reuben’s packing up. “I’m going to leave, before anybody changes their minds, but I’ll be back at 4, to get you ready for the evening.”

Action Video is in action. Jack Valentine has been hired to record every moment for the screen, just as the Gormans are here to create an exhaustive album of everybody and everything on the Great Day. Photographer and videotaper cooperate with the lights and group shots--which mostly means Valentine waits for Gorman to set things up and then just starts rolling. Gorman is feeling the pressure.

“Yes, Grandfather,” he’s saying to the fine-looking, granite-faced old man. “Good smile.”

Grandma, next to him suddenly decides to change fingers for her rings.

“Mama, qui fai? “

“Grrr-reat! Now, Mrs. Scardina, nice smile from this way. Big smile. One more time.”

Behind Gorman, Betts dances round waving and hooking her fingers into her mouth corners to make his point about smiling.

“Say ‘spaghetti’ . . . ha ha! Bene. Molto bene!” says Gorman into the eyepiece of his camera. “Now, bridesmaids please . . . “

“Gotta tell you about yesterday’s wedding,” mumbles Valentine to Gorman. “Palm Springs and it rained. Know how often that happens in Palm Springs?” But Gorman has no time. Valentine, who just seems to quietly push his button every now and then, is Gorman’s opposite. Valentine watches him. “John’s like a pit crew in a racing car stop,” he said. “He’s going to have a heart attack.”

“Right,” calls John. “Bride and bridesmaids please!” He snaps off the back of his Hasselblad to reload.

Sallie wakes from a moment of reverie. It has been a hard day already. She moves from a large painting, “The Fountains,” a romantic historical fantasy with great arches and veiled women. In her French-lace wedding gown, Sallie seems to have stepped right out of it.

“Here’s one!” says Betts. She pulls out a shiny penny. “OK, let’s do this upstairs, uh, Sallie, Angelo . . . “

Cameras, dresses and Angelo rustle their way up the stairs to a chair, where Sallie sits and takes off a shoe.

“OK, Angelo, can you bend over . . . that’s right, as though you’re putting the penny in the shoe.”

An album on the table shows Angelo, four years ago, doing exactly the same thing with Joanne. The lucky penny in the shoe.

“You see this?” he says, pointing to a black-and-white photo of a ruddy young couple painted into color, “That’s me. My wedding picture. Sallie’s mother and me, 26 years ago. In Sicily. Aspra. My wife’s town. One mile from Bagheria, where I lived. That was a nice wedding. A good one. All the family was there. . . . but this will be grander. Even grander than Joanne’s. Hers was not at the del Coronado.”

Angelo, who came over in 1961 when he was 31, has had some difficult times, but he has succeeded now, running his own carpentry business. The United States has been good to him. Still, the old country and its ways still mean a lot.

“Andy, my new son-in-law, his father’s from my wife’s town. It’s nice. We get the traditional ways, even here. We like to stick with them a little bit.”

“They’re here!” yells a young cousin from the front room. He points through the windows. Rolling up outside are three shiny white limos. And behind them, what looks like a Rolls-Royce. An off-white, stately relic of the ‘50s, a hump-backed whale among sharks.

“Come on everybody, let’s go! Let’s go get married! Andiamo!”

Sallie’s rushing around upstairs. “Mom,” she calls, not conscious that this will be her last act as a child of the family, a member of this household. “The sliding door in my bedroom’s open.”

The church of Our Lady of The Rosary is in downtown San Diego, but straight out of Southern Italy: the carvings, the hooped roof, the ornate paintings of the Last Supper, the statue of the Virgin next to the altar, the Italian flag to the right, the American flag to the left.

Outside, the limo drivers are standing around rubbing finger marks off the doors and joking about shenanigans they can expect in their back seats on Prom Night. Up in the choir loft, Bill Peck and Catherine De Los Rios are poised for “Ave Maria.” Down below, among the forest of orchids, gladioli and roses, those in the church rise, necks craning to hear the words, the rite of passage of that little girl who was just one of the Scardina twins a couple years ago, it seems.

“I, Sallie . . . take you Andy . . . to be my lawfully wedded . . . “

It’s handkerchief time. As Sallie presents roses to the Virgin, the “Ave Maria” will ensure the handkerchiefs will be used.

Half an hour later the church is emptied. Father Vincent Posillico is outside in his shirt-sleeves hosing down the sidewalk where almonds tossed with the confetti and rice got ground into the concrete. Glenn Hoag the florist is gathering the huge bunches of glads to take out to his van.

Seated, alone in the front pew, exhausted in the afternoon heat, is Sallie, Sallie Tutino as of 30 minutes ago. Photos at the altar have kept her here long after most of the others left. She feels so tired, and she’s not halfway through the day. Not by a mile. The footsteps of her husband echo at the far entrance. He stands there in the flaring light. She gets up and walks down to meet him. He picks up her white train and they go back out into a world so recently crammed with crowds and confetti and cheers, and now almost deserted.

Almost, but not quite.

“All right! About time!”

Suddenly sprouting up through the limos’ slide roofs like pop-up dolls, the 10 silver-dressed bridesmaids and the 10 black-suited groomsmen raise a whoop and a cheer, champagne glasses raised to the sky.

“A Sicilian song! What about a Sicilian song!” Angelo Scardina makes his way toward the ballroom stage to talk with band leader Tony de Bruno of Los Angeles. It’s 9 p.m. already at the Hotel del Coronado, and 500 guests have drunk champagne, eaten prime rib and thrown money over the bride and groom as they danced their first dance.

That first dance was to a record, Freddy Jackson’s “You Are My Lady.” It’s the only intrusion of electronic America into the entire evening. The disc jockey and everybody else succumbs to the inexhaustible charm of De Bruno and his Neopolitan songs, the songs all Italians take to their hearts. Once he starts, De Bruno never stops. And on this night of sentiment, nobody, not even the young, object.

But now the tarantella, genuine Sicilian music for this celebration of Sicilian life, begins. Everybody joins in circles. The men dance, Zorba-style. The wine, the bride, and the haunting accordion of De Bruno’s son all add to the richness of the mixture.

“Italians, they’ll do this even if they can’t afford to,” says Franca Aurilio, wife of Frank, who plays the guitar in Tony’s band. “They wouldn’t let a moment like this pass. Even if they don’t have it, they’ll somehow make sure they do. That’s the way we are.”

The garter, the bouquet, the speeches, and then the telegrams. From New York, from France, and, of course, from Sicily. Relatives in Mazzara del Vallo, Bagheria, Palermo want them to know the tie is still strong.

And then it’s back to dancing. More and more boisterous until “Funiculi Funicula” bursts out and sends everybody, in a whooping, clapping, singing, shouting snake, out of the ballroom down the passageway and through the lobby of the august Hotel Del, out of the front door and back again. The hotel’s assistant front office manager, Philip Skitch, who is British, stands pinned against the reception counter. “This is not frightfully usual, I must say,” he says.

“The grand march? You can’t have a wedding without a grand march!” calls one of the older guests.

As the evening climbs toward midnight, the older women start dancing with each other. The Gormans are still plucking aunts and uncles out to have them photographed with the bride and groom next door to the ballroom, where they’ve set up a little studio. Jack Valentine has given his video camera to his assistant with instructions to get as many people as possible saying “good luck!” and “congratulations!” to the camera, and he’s gone home.

When it’s time to cut the cake, Sallie pushes the first slice in Andy’s face. Andy, after a lot of goading from the crowd, does likewise. Sallie cleans herself, then tidies up her new husband. Then the hotel cutter slices in--for a prearranged fee of $200, or about 50 cents a slice.

As the dancing jigs on, the staff are beginning to relax. Roberto Millot, the banquet captain, has been going since 8:30 this morning. He’s already done two lunchtime weddings. But they were a different kettle of fish.

“The Italian families are always so close, both sides of the wedding,” he says. “American weddings tend to have more friends than family, so people don’t know each other so well.”

Pat Schrag, waitress and grandmother, thinks Jewish weddings are the wildest. Millot credits the Portuguese for being the most elegant.

“They spend their money, and they have their fun, but it’s the same tonight. This is a big wedding, but it’s not cold. You can feel the warmth.”

At Italian weddings, the bride and groom don’t take off halfway through the proceedings. They stay to the end. Tonight nobody wants to go home, except Marie-Antoinette, the miniature bride. She’s tired. She wants her mama.

One of the guests, Frank Ruffino comes over. He has only been out from Sicily three years. He is already very politically minded. Wants to draw this Italian community here together. Give them some political clout. “You know something? You never see weddings like this in Sicily.”

Is it more traditional there?

“Traditional? No way! They’ve swept all this aside. They want to be modern over there. Forget all this traditional stuff. Discos, modern weddings. The only place you’ll find these traditional Sicilian weddings now are here! Or New York. Crazy, isn’t it? I’ve got my own wedding coming up, and Italian television want to film it so they can show our own people what a traditional wedding is!”

The photographers are slumped at a table. The video man is holding up a pillar. But for the Scardina and Tutino relatives and the 400 other guests, this is the moment. Even Sallie joins in to celebrate her first married midnight, gathering what must be her third or fourth wind.

It’s been a long day, Sallie Tutino, but then, why not? You’re not likely to be part of that other 50%, so this only comes once in a lifetime. Enjoy.