Initially, this was what made me doubt that it might not be a ritual. However, what this thought process revealed was that my instinct was to value the meaning of a marriage more in terms of the meaning bestowed by the authority of the state versus the social and cultural meaning bestowed upon it. A ritual requires only an external authoritative force to provide meaning. So despite the absence of an official officiant, I would be inclined to believe that this quasi-marriage was, in fact, a ritual due to the social significance it had, which might be slightly diminished by the lack of legal justification, but holds significance nonetheless . That day, the emotions were palpable, as people constantly went from holding back the urge to sob with reckless abandon to bursting into raucous laughter. Although devoid of the meaning bestowed by the state, quasi-marriage is still called marriage and would most likely be easily recognized as such by someone of the same culture. It certainly looked like a wedding to the people who attended, and therefore it was a wedding. The power of individual experiences finds a place in rituals, continuing the evolution or stagnation of tradition and convention. One day they are the artists and the next day they are the ancestors that the next artists will look up to