Couples planning to wed in Argentina can expect twice the celebration and none of the ring shopping.

Vanesa Landrus, a native of Argentina and a Spanish instructor at Eastern, presented a movie Wednesday night in the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union and talked about marriage in Argentina as part of Latino Heritage Month.

“The celebration has changed a lot in the past 30 years. From my mother’s generation to mine, many things are different,” Landrus said. “In the old generation, people were getting married from the ages of 18 to 25. Now they are getting married in late twenties, maybe even thirties.”

The engagement period is the same in America as it is in Argentina. The average period lasts two or three months. One thing that is different is the proposal.

“There is no formal asking of the hand in marriage, and there is no diamond ring,” Landrus said. “Some of the traditional customs that we are used to, such as the bride’s parents paying for the wedding or the groom’s parents buying a new house, are not customs that Argentineans are used to.”

Another major difference is that divorce is socially acceptable. About one out of three couples are divorced, she said. Same sex marriages also are allowed.

“The capital of Argentina, Buenos Aires, was the first Latin American city to allow this (same sex marriage),” Landrus said.

Like in the United States, newly wed couples wait a few years before having children.

“Many married couples wait about three years to have children because of the deterioration of money,” Landrus said. “They don’t want the formal, social or legal pressure that marriage and family entails.”

After Landrus talked about the specifics of marriage in Argentina, she started the movie “Son of the Bride,” which gave examples of how marriage is thought of and played out.

In Argentina, there are two ceremonies, she said. The first one is on a Friday. It is a civil ceremony in the courthouse followed by a small gathering of family and friends, she said.

The second is on a Saturday. This ceremony is more familiar to Americans. It is a large celebration in a Catholic Church followed by a big party, she said.

The husband in the movie wanted to give his wife a Catholic ceremony because the couple never had the traditional second ceremony. But his wife had Alzheimer’s disease, so he wanted to make her happy before she forgot everything.

“The movie helped give me a better understanding of the culture in Argentina,” said Christy Kelley, a freshman political science major. “I thought it was touching how the father in the movie wanted nothing but to please his wife with a Catholic ceremony even though she was ill.”

“Son of the Bride” helped to connect the Latin American traditions with American ones.

“I was excited to see that some of the customs were different, but I thought their customs were unique and very interesting,” Kelley said.