Diana Lopez’s dream came true Sunday under a stormy sky and inside a tent big enough to hold 200 tearful guests at her quinceanera party.

“I’m so happy,” she told them from her wheelchair. “Thank you all for coming. Thank everyone who made this possible.”

That would be a lot of people. Several months ago, when Diana mentioned her wish, the staff at Sub-Acute Saratoga Children’s Hospital, where she lives, agreed to take it on even though it didn’t have the money and didn’t know much about the traditional rite of passage for Latinas turning 15. But after word of Diana’s dream got around, donations and volunteers poured in.

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Cecilia Gabriel of Dallas, Texas, is frantically looking for a place to hold her daughter Jacqueline’s quinceañera. It isn’t easy. “It’s coming up in September. We waited too long,” says Gabriel. For many, the15th birthday rite of passage in Latino culture is an event that must be planned at least a year in advance, if not longer.

I saw this interesting article about a big Quinceanara expo that they had in Southern California.  It would have been nice to go and check it out.

While fashion week wrapped up in various parts of the world, the 2011Quinceanera.com Expo and Fashion Showpresented by El Clasificado was in full swing. The announcement that for the first time the event was taking place in the San Fernando Valley area spread like wildfire drawing hundreds of quinceañera fashionistas and their families to the recently renovated Sportsmen’s Lodge Events Center in Studio City. Vendors demonstrating their custom quinceañera cakes, tiaras, hair jewelry, floral designs and make-up artistry excitedly interacted with the more than one thousand attendees at the free Quinceanera.com event.

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