Making wedding plans for some students at BYU means finding a way to combine the cultural traditions of their past with that of their new life together in the future.

Folding one thousand paper cranes in order to have good luck throughout their future marriage isn't a top priority for most brides-to-be when planning their wedding day; however, for Jill Shitamoto, a 21-year-old junior from Kahului, Hawaii, majoring in accounting, it is simply a must.

Shitamoto's ancestors originally came from Japan, along with many of her family's traditions.

Japanese tradition says in order to insure good luck in an upcoming marriage a future bride must fold a thousand paper cranes out of gold paper using the ancient Japanese folding paper art of origami, she said.

Folding the cranes can be a long and time-consuming process, she said.

"You should start when you're engaged," she said. She said although friends and cousins can assist the bride in folding the cranes, she plans to do it all herself.

Shitamoto said traditionally the cranes would be opened up and hung around the room.

Today most brides choose to display the cranes by laying them flat in a large picture frame. Often they are arranged in the shape of the family crest, or mon, she said.

Shitamoto is not the only student who believes in preserving cultural traditions when getting married.

Hanna Aiona, 21, a recreation management major from Bountiful, Utah, whose mother is Samoan and father is American, did what she calls 'the dollar dance' at her wedding reception, or at least pretended to.

"I got up and faked like I knew it because I didn't have time to learn it," Aiona said.

The dance, in which people give money to the performers, was a nod to her Samoan background and something Aiona's daughter Aile, who is less than a month old, will probably do too.

"There are certain parts of the culture we like and this is one of them," she said.

Tepoe Kaaumoana, 24, a BYU graduate, said she and her husband Kaleo, a 26-year-old fire science major at UVSC, performed their own version of 'the money dance' at their wedding reception, celebrating both their Tahitian and Hawaiian heritage.

"I think we made a thousand dollars," Kauumoana said. She said both she and her husband performed.

"People from Polynesia are just very generous," she said. "We had so many gifts we didn't know what to do with them all."

Kauumoana said a traditional Hawaiian buffet dinner was served at the reception and her father and a friend sang the Hawaiian wedding song while her mother danced to it, something Kauumoana would usually have done but her dress was too tight.

Even Kauumoana's engagement ring kept up with the Hawaiian theme, being a ring of plumerias, a popular Hawaiian flower.

For Kulve Vann and his wife Michaelle, their wedding reception was quite a unique experience.

Vann, a 22-year-old sophomore from Milledgeville, Georgia studying marriage family and human development, has family ties in Africa and his wife is from Haiti.

The couple used a Kwanzaa theme for their wedding reception, Vann said. Incorporating the traditional colors red, green was convenient, in light of the holiday season; however, they said finding black was difficult.

At the reception, a traditional Haitian feast was held-which included lots of chicken, rice and beans.

"I can't pronounce most of it [the food that was served] but it was good," Vann said.

As customary in Haiti, the bride's father gave a talk before dinner and the couple 'jumped the broom' in keeping with African tradition.

During slavery, blacks weren't allowed to have church weddings and so they 'jumped the broom' to make the marriage official, Vann said.

Overall, he said, the combining of traditions made for a very memorable evening.

"I wanted to share with her family a little of my culture and she wanted to the same with hers," he said.

Copyright Brigham Young University 13 Feb 2003