Celebratory Weekend (and setting the date!)

I spent this weekend with my parents, who were visiting us in Germany for three weeks (while my professor dad taught a seminar) and are leaving today! :( We had an amazing weekend though: we rode out to the Chiemsee (Lake Chiem) which is sometimes known as the "Bavarian Ocean". It is a beautiful lake framed by the Alps and chock full of q

uaintness. We stayed in an adorable hotel on a smaller lake, and spent satu

rday and sunday riding a ferry out to the "

women's island", browsing the shops, eating delicious food at all manner of island festivals, and just generally celebrating the occasion! My mom and I discussed colors and themes, of course, while the boys (dad and boy) raced up and down the waterslide at the lakeside pool complex trying to break the speed record as recorded by the automatic time system on the slide. So great :)

I am sad that my parents are leaving but I am excited about all the planning that is to come! My mom and I agreed that we would talk a lot on the phone and on Skype and that she would be consulted about every big decision, even if she is across an ocean. And we discussed the idea of me coming over in the spring to go dress shopping – I like that one! :)

We did already make one big decision though – we have set a date with our venue of choice! Oh right, we also picked a venue! But that was easy, because we knew we wanted to get married in Artur's hometown of Buchenberg im Allgäu, a small town in the Alps with a population of 4000 people – so there just aren't that many options. Fortunately, I have had my eye on a place ever since the thought occurred to me that I would love to marry this boy, and so as soon as he popped the question, we stopped by to take a look at the rooms! It's a lovely hotel/restaurant with a big event room complete with a stage and even a gallery balcony going around the outside. The catering is done in-house, which saves me the stress of finding a caterer, and there is no extra charge for renting the room, which is also great.Other perks include the tennis courts, mini-golf and duckpin bowling in the basement, and of course the guestrooms for all of my out of town guests! I really like the idea of everybody being able to stay in the same place – it will be a nice community atmosphere. And like so many things in German, the hotel is nice and beautiful without being too swanky or overpriced, so it should fit the bill for (hopefully) all my guests. They even offer guests of the wedding a cut price of 35 euro (including breakfast!) for the night on the evening of the wedding, so our friends coming from Munich can party into the late hours and still crash there without breaking the bank. So excited! We called and reserved our date, (sometime in early summer, psst), and are

ready to start to plan!

Our next big step will be to pick out a "Free Marrier" (for lack of a better translation) who can do our ceremony. Because we won't be marrying in a church (in German you must be a member of the church to marry in it, which neither of us are) and the only person with an actual power to marry people is the so called "marriage officiant" in each town, which is often the mayor. So the cool part is, we will probably be married by the Mayor of Buchenberg! Unfortunately, that ceremony is very much like a courthouse wedding in the US, all business and little romance, and also little room for other languages or traditions. So a possibility in Germany is to have a "free marrier" who does not actually have the power to marry you (which no one does in Germany except for the official people, not even the churches) but who basically does wedding ceremonies for people like us. We have found someone who we think we like, now we're just waiting to find out if the date is free!

Phew, well it turns out that we have done a lot! I have to get back to work, but I'll be keeping you updated!