After eight long months of planning, my big day finally came.
All eyes were going to be on me.

I stood in front of the mirror, looking at how beautiful they had made me look. It was almost too weird. It was me, but in someone else's face, I couldn’t even recognize myself.

My mom came in crying, she's so over-dramatic. As she wiped away the tears from her lips, she said,

"Babygirl, you're a young lady now, just remember to respect yourself and don’t let any boy get the best of you."

I never understood why every time she tries to lecture me, it seems like it always has something to do with boys. Well, I think that’s how all mothers are with their teenage daughters. Seeing my mom cry also made me want to cry, but honestly I didn’t want to mess my make-up. I stood up to wipe away her tears; I was way past her height already, probably since the 7th grade so I had to look down to her a bit. As I wiped away her tears, I told her,

"Mom, stop crying. I’m always going to be your little girl."

Of course I only told her that so she wouldn’t think I’m going to turn rebellious and sneak out of the house like every other girl who turns fifteen, and thinks they can do anything they want to do.

She looked at me with her beautiful brown eyes, smiled, and walked away; her smile always makes my day.

I was going to get ready to put on my dress and crown. We really went through heck to get the dress I wanted. Yazmin's Boutique was the name, the owner was a witch, and it took her three months to order my dress. In reality, it's only supposed to take ten minutes to order, with a simple phone call. Supposable she forgot, I can still remember her horrible Spanish accent every time we called her about the dress.

"So sorry, am so busy, I will order mañana."

We heard so many excuses, it was ridiculous. But at least she got it in, even though it was one month before my party.

I turned on my itunes trying to wake myself up, I couldn’t sleep at all last night, and I was way too excited. I prayed, hoping that everything went the way I wanted.

When we were trying to figure out which band we could afford to have at my quince., It was between Los Capis or Massore, I really loved Massore, Or everyone knows them as the band with the little boy singer. I first heard them when I stood up in my best friend’s Quinceanera back in August, I thought they were awesome. Massore was going to cost about five grand, not bad since the other group was about eight grand.

My dad is a full blooded Vietnamese man. At first he didn’t approve of this whole Quinceanera, spending eight thousand on a party thing. But I got my mom to actually talk him into letting me, especially since I’m his only girl and I really wanted this party.

He always asked me why I wanted to have a Quinceanera if I was 'china', but my mom's side of the family was hardcore Mexicans and they really wanted me to have one.
After I found out my dad was going to book Massore for me I was so stoked.
I began having Quinceanera practice about two months before the party, I had seven guys and seven girls, and they were mostly family or really close friends. We practiced in my garage every Monday, Wednesday, and Sunday, Well at least until the week of the party we practiced everyday.
My court was great, sometimes. My mom and I choreographed the dance on our own in just one week everyone had it down. It was sort bad having them know the dance already in one week, because then the next week at practice they were already bored of doing the same things over and over again. I cried at many of the practices because the court would not pay much attention to me, they always said,

"Don’t worry; it'll all work out in the end."

Yeah right.

I’m a big time daydreamer, I tried to imagine how the dance would look like before I got to see it actually finished. I thought to myself,

"What if no one shows up? What if the owner of the salon shuts down my party if it does get too crowded? What if someone ruins my party?"

So many things ran through my mind all morning.

"Hey girl, you ready to go to church?"

I heard my dad yell through my door. I was getting ready; everything we planned for is now ready to show. I started to get a little nervous, my legs began to get shaky and my toes began to tingle.

The church went by smoothly; all my family and friends showed up, the whole church was almost all filled up.

During the mass the priest asked my mom to give a speech, she talked about how I’m special and she loves me and everything. I turned to see my court and everyone was crying, I cried too. It was very touching, embarrassing because I was on the stage crying in front of everyone of course, but it was special to me.

My dad had rented me and my court a white hummer stretch limo. We took a ride to the mall to walk around, basically to show off how cute we looked that day. We had a blast while in there. Although I was sort of bummed because the guy I liked was acting like a jerk, like he didn’t want to be in there at all. But I didn’t let him bring me down with him, so I blew him off and had fun with my best friend taking pictures and acting crazy and all.

When we finally reached the salon after two hours it was barely getting packed. When I stepped in the doors my breath was taken away, it was everything I expected and more. I wanted to cry but I knew if I did they would look at me weird like "she's crying because she's likes the decorations?"


All my family was there enjoying their meal, my family had spent a long time preparing the food. We had a mix of Vietnamese food and Mexican food, heard of any Quinceanera like that? I didn’t think so.
After the reception we got ready to do the waltz. My mom and the ladies in the family helped pick up the dance floor with anything that may make anyone slip.

As the music started I realized I was finally fifteen, I've been waiting for this day since I was eight years old. And I get to share it with all my family and friends, with my main chamberlain. Tre Galvan. He's been my brother’s best friend since we were in daycare. My family always thought I’d end up marrying him someday; I liked him, but not that much. We both had feelings for someone else.

When the dance ended the spotlight showed on just us. I was really nice to not being able to see the crowd because I would've probably fainted.

Everyone clapped and whistled as we got off the dance floor. Then the band began to play. Surprisingly I wasn’t the first one on the dance floor. I was way to busy looking for where my court could've possibly disappeared to. I was really ticked that they had just left and didn’t tell me where they were going. But then when they returned, they were all in graphitized T-shirts that had my name and their name on it. They were going to do a surprise dance for me; they were all pretty good dancers so I knew it was going to be good. And yet I was right.

The rest of the night went really good. I met a new guy, he was the cutest, I swear. Me and him hung out most of the night, at the end of the night which was around 2, I walked him out to his car and he hugged me, he hugged me as if I was his girl and he didn’t want to let go. But I had to watch him leave.
My family is party people so of course we had to have an after party at my house. I didn’t party anymore though, I was to worn out. I, my brother, my crush and my best friend pasted out on my brothers floor soon after we got home.

The next day when we woke up, we had plenty of cleaning to do to last us the whole day. But it was all worth it in the end.

It was definitely the best night of my life.