Three Cultures and a Wedding: San Fernando Cathedral
By the time Alejandro and Carmen exchanged vows there, San Fernando Cathedral had already witnessed nearly two centuries of people arriving from elsewhere and calling San Antonio home. Founded by families from the Canary Islands, the small parish church built its first walls in 1731 and was initially called Villa de San Fernando de Béxar. Then Mexican, then American hands rebuilt it after war, fire, and flood, layering a Gothic-revival face over its eighteenth-century Spanish masonry without losing what lay underneath. On January 3, 1926, a Sunday, it simply did what it had always done: opened its doors to two more people carrying two more histories into a room.[1]
Their own paths had already crossed two worlds. Two days earlier, on New Year's Eve, they had stood before a Bexar County Clerk, satisfying the law of the state they lived in by getting the required Marriage License.[2] Now they stood before a priest, satisfying the rite of the church their families had carried with them across oceans and borders. American, Mexican, and Italian, they met under a cathedral's twin bell towers and were married in the church, the way so many families found their footing between an old country and a new one.
The marriage did not last, but it produced a child who continued merging with another culture. Along with their grandchildren and great-grandchildren, they add to the cultures this country encourages. And San Fernando Cathedral continues to witness people arriving from elsewhere and calling San Antonio home.
- "Texas U.S. Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Antonio Sacramental Records, 1700-2000," database with images, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/61845/images/61845_302022005539_0115-00211?usePUB=true&usePUBJs=true&pId=90121163 : accessed 2 September 2026) > San Fernando Cathedral > unidentified volume, page 89, Alejandro Cadena and Carmen Vizza, marriage 3 January 1926; images 214-5 of 430.↩︎
- "Texas U.S., Select County Marriage Records, 1837-1965," database, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/9168/records/132153722 : accessed 2 September 2026); search term: Carmen Vizza; citing Bexar County Clerk's Office; San Antonio, Texas; Bexar County Marriage Records; Volumes: 37; Page: 92.↩︎
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