Weddingbee Blog

Part 1: Sharing Tissues

{ Sidenote: sorry I’ve been so late following up with this video series! We had some technical difficulties over here at Cupcake headquarters, but we’re back in business now… so, as we are still patiently awaiting our pro wedding pics, I’ll get back to sharing a few moments of our day in film! }

If you’re not from the Philadelphia area, chances are you’ve never heard of the Mummers. Basically, the Mummer’s Parade is a New Year’s Day tradition here in Philadelphia, one that I attended every year as a kid. The Mummers consist of elaborately costumed Philadelphians who perform up Broad Street; there are different “clubs” in four different categories, the best of which (in my humble opinion) is the String Bands category. There is just nothing like hearing the music of banjos, saxophones, accordians, and strings and seeing men in gaudy, sequined costumes dancing their hearts out amidst thousands of drunk Philadelphian spectators on a freezing January day. My mom’s second-cousin is the captain of Fralinger, the string band that has taken home the first place prize for their performance for a record SEVEN years in a row, so we take our Mummers pretty seriously in my family. There was no way I couldn’t include the Mummers somehow in our wedding day.

Now, it’s not what you’re thinking — we didn’t have Mummers actually perform at our wedding (although I have heard of couples doing this) — but we DID do some Mummers Strutting. Mummers Whatting? Mummers STRUTTING. Just take a looksee. (Pardon the shaky camera — our videographer, a family member, was filming and strutting ).

After having searched high and low for inexpensive, non-patterned parasols and coming up empty-handed, my cousin from New Orleans came to the rescue — she bought twenty black and white cheap plastic parasols at a Mardi Gras store in New Orleans before boarding the plane for our wedding, and having the parasols made it perfectly strutter-iffic. It was mostly my family on the dance floor, as any of our out-of-town friends and Mr. Cupcake’s family didn’t have a clue what was going on, but it was two minutes of good, family fun for my clan!

This New Year’s Day was the first Mummer’s Parade that Mr. Cupcake has ever attended, and it was a blast! We’ll always remember strutting at our wedding, and now we can carry on the New Year’s Day Mummers tradition together.

Mr. Police Man was trying to keep people out of the street, but we grabbed a quick shot with Fralinger passing behind us.

MOH Nicole is home from Austria for the holidays, so she joined us at the parade. She snagged these t-shirts for us — two for $5.

Then we saw this nice guy selling shirts for $5 a piece… we informed him of the competitive salesperson down the street, and even though we didn’t buy shirts from him he was a good sport and let us take a picture.

“Tired? Need a place to rest? Why, here’s one right here!” says Mr. Cupcake.

Still curious about what in the world the Mummers are? Here’s Fralinger’s 1st place performance on New Year’s Day 2008 — each club comes up with a unique theme each year and carries it through their routine with music, costumes, and props. The music is so much more amazing in person!)