MOLLY BARTELS PHOTOGRAPHY

Editorial: Stories: Quinceanera

The night before leaving on a 24-hour long road-trip to Monterrey, Mexico, Ramiro Solis and his family gather around their kitchen table in Fellsmere to iron out the final details of the trip. The family usually travels to Mexico twice a year to visit relatives but this year four car loads of family members traveled to Monterrey to help Ramiro's youngest daughter, Evelia, make the preparations for her quinceanera.
   
Evelia tries on the first of several dresses for her quinceanera at a store in Monterrey, Mexico. While her sisters preferred dresses with more coverage, Evelia liked more revealing styles. After the celebration Evelia will frame her dress as a memento from the quinceanera.
  
After four days of shopping outside in the 102 degree heat in Monterrey, Mexico, Kenya Cantu, 4, takes out her frustrations on her cousin, Eliamar Solis, 4, between trying on dresses for the quinceanera. Some dress shops are so small that they don't have dressing rooms, so the girls have to try on dresses in the entryway.
     
  
Esperanza Lopez, right, works with Evelia, center, on some dance moves during a dance session with her escorts, or chambalanes, at a public tennis court in Fellsmere a month before the quinceanera.
   
Friends of Ramiro Solis, Evelia's father, prepare a steer for butchering on the Solis ranch in Fellsmere, Florida. The meat is then dried and prepared by the family for the dinner at the quinceanera. The family made enough food to feed several hundred people.
  
Evelia gets help applying her eyeshadow from Patricia Portugal, the videographer for the quinceanera. Evelia's hair and make-up took over three and a half hours.
     
  
Evelia's mother, Carmen, cooks asado de puerco, or pork with chili sauce, over an open fire outside their home in Fellsmere on the morning of the quinceanera. Family and friends helped prepare five homemade dishes that fed hundreds of guests at the reception.
   
Bored by all the feminine preparation s and tired of wearing his tuxedo, Ramiro Solis, 13, takes a rest while his sister, Elia, right, gets ready for the quinceanera.
   
Evelia waits at her sister's house for her parents, who are late because they can't find their car keys.
     
  
Followed by her father and ten chambalanes, or escorts, Evelia leaves her sister's house, where she got ready, and heads for her chariot, a Lincoln Navigator limousine that her parents rented for her. "She's the center of attention, you have to let her go first," said Velia Solis, Evelia's sister.
   
Evelia's parents, Carmen, left, and Ramiro, right, escort her into Our Lady of Guadalupe church in Fellsmere. Walking into the church Evelia is considered a child. When she leaves she will be considered a woman.
   
During the ceremony at Our Lady of Guadalupe church in Fellsmere Rev. Noel McGrath, blesses Evelia. Following tradition, Evelia's godparents give her a bracelet, watch, ring, bible and rosary, necklace and a bouquet of flowers in honor of her passage into adulthood.
     
  
A friend of the Solis family moves a 30x40 inch portrait of Evelia to a more prominent location inside the pavilion at the Indian River County Fairgrounds after the church service in preparation for the party. The portrait now hangs in Evelia's parents' house where it will remain until she moves into her own home.