A mayor in Mexico recently got a new bride, but it's not what you think. Victor Hugo Sosa, mayor of San Pedro Huamelula, married a reptile named Alicia Adriana as part of an ancestral ritual meant to bring good fortune to his people, according to AFP. San Pedro Huamelula is a town of the Indigenous Chontal people.

"I accept responsibility because we love each other. That is what is important. You can't have a marriage without love... I yield to marriage with the princess girl," Sosa said during the ritual.

Local lore refers to the female reptile as "the princess girl."

AFP says marriage between a man and a reptile has taken place for 230 years to commemorate the day two Indigenous groups of people reached peace through a marriage. Tradition says a Chontal king, represented in modern times by the mayor, married a princess girl from the Huave Indigenous group, represented by the caiman.

This marriage allows the sides to "link with what is the emblem of Mother Earth, asking the all-powerful for rain, the germination of the seed, all those things that are peace and harmony for the Chontal man," said Jaime Zarate, a chronicler of San Pedro Huamelula.

AFP says the reptile is taken from house to house before the ceremony dressed in a headdress of ribbons so residents can take her in their arms and dance. Her snout is bound shut.