Second Line: A New Orleans Tradition
6This past weekend the lady and I hopped on a plane and headed to the Big Easy for a wedding on the roof of the JAX Brewery in the French Quarters. The wedding was full of New Orleans traditions from cake pulls and classic Nola cuisine to one of the better wedding traditions I've been a part of: The Second Line.
In short, its your groups personal celebratory parade around the streets of New Orleans complete with a police escort and a marching jazz band. I took a couple of (grainy) videos of the experience to share with all of you.
I've had the opportunity to be a part of several weddings in my time but nothing was quite like this. It was hands down the coolest wedding experience I've had to date and I highly recommend accepting the next New Orleans wedding invitation that crosses your table if the Second Line is a part of the ceremony, it's well worth the time!
Have you ever experienced Second Linin'? If not, what other unique or crazy wedding stories do you have for us?
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A friend's wedding in NOLA was one of the best wedding experiences for me as well. The rehearsal dinner included a crawfish boil and Abita kegs at the bride's mom's house. On the wedding day, most of us broke off into smaller groups after the reception to continue celebrating in The Quarter. However, there was no parade. I'm officially jealous.
@nadroj Abita is pretty good! I haven't seen it outside of New Orleans, though, to be fair, I've never really looked for it either.
@MEHcus Abita is errywhere! I really like their purple haze.
@JonT As do I. We have a local place that occasionally has Purple Haze on tap. The Satsuma, OTOH, I was not a fan of.
I think I did see some Second Linin' when I was on vacation in New Orleans, but I didn't know what it was at the time- your description matches what I saw.
I went to my one cousin's wedding in Arubia. Fascinating place. There's a huge variety in landscapes for an island- desert and tropical beaches, and some insanely remote areas.
@dashcloud We actually could hear another weddings Second Line during the ceremony for the wedding we were at. I guess they are pretty common place, everyone that saw us doing ours seemed to know what was going on which was pretty cool.
Was once at a Bengali themed wedding. It was a beautiful and colorful ceremony with Kingfisher beer before and after.
My wedding was in a lovely garden of tiger lillies surrounded by the Lincoln National Forest in Ruidoso, NM. A week before the wedding the pastor I'd hired discovered he had been double booked and dropped us because the other couple were parishioners. I was freaking out, but my Maid of Honor came through for me, Her dad is an Apache shaman, licensed to marry. So my wedding became a Native American ceremony, with a peace pipe, drums, Apache blessings and salutations to nature that were perfect for the environment. More meaningful to me as well, since Native American beliefs are closer to my own beliefs than traditional Christian ones. Serendipity.
Those Cajuns know how to rock it. I've liked my weddings but mostly for the women I married and secondarily for words and music (a friend--and my favorite musician and probably my family's favorite non-family person--wrote a song and sang it for my wedding to the current wife) and just generally sentimental shit. For instance, first wife and I wrote the whole ceremony for our renewal (20th) and I'm proud to say that we made lots of macho Texas men cry (for the right reasons).
My daughter's wedding had some awesome gadgets. One thing they did that's maybe the coolest non-sentimental thing I've ever seen at a wedding is that while the bridal party were out getting pictures taken (this was almost a disaster at our wedding, because we're not really planners and so didn't have anything planned, doh) we were instructed to compose limericks. When the bridal party returned, the limericks were read and judged. It was genius. I realize this wouldn't work for every wedding, but for the folks gathered that day (many, many word nerds with twisted senses of humor) it worked splendidly.
Another cool thing that they did--which I have never seen elsewhere and which totally expressed the couple and their friends--is that instead of getting served first, the bridal party served everyone else at the reception. My kid and her man met and fell in love helping out in the camps in Haiti after that big earthquake a few years ago.
Even my wife--for whom our marriage is obviously special--says that my daughter's wedding is the coolest wedding she's ever witnessed.
I've heard that second lines are also a big part of funerals, especially for musicians I guess. (Glad this one wasn't.) Anyway, I do like how, for funerals, it turns the moment into a celebration, which is what it should be. Anyway, this is the first I've heard of doing it at weddings, and it looks like it does make a happy occasion even happier too. Very cool. Thanks for the vids!