Breaking the language barrier

In writing our ceremony, Mr. Schnitzel and I have been working on getting the whole thing to be meaningful to us without being overly wordy. Why? Why not overly wordy? I mean, isn’t the ceremony about the words you speak, the promises you make?

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Yes, yes and yes. But here’s the thing – we do not share a common native language. We speak German with each other, and that works wonderfully. But, of course, although my German has much improved over the years, it isn’t perfect. I can’t always express what I want to say as well as I maybe could have in English.

How does this affect our relationship communication? Really? not at all. At least not in my opinion. Well, actually, I take that back. I actually think this IMPROVES our communication. Because we do not dwell on the nitty gritty wording. We laugh at my language errors, and I sigh with frustration when we can’t find the right German translation for an English word that I am thinking of.

As you may have noticed, I really like to write. I also love to read. Mr. Schnitzel doesn’t do either of these things – it sounds so silly but at some point in college I actually told someone that I refuse to date anyone who doesn’t read books regularly. Gosh, that sounds so egotistical and silly. Of course we are both intelligent people interested in all kinds of things, but that’s only a part of who we are.

Our relationship is not based on intellectual banter. Sure we have interesting debates about everything from politics to religion (gosh, if you know me, you know that I love to debate) but that is by no means the basis of our relationship. We communicate in our daily gestures, our smiles and routines and hugs and handholding. And this crosses not only language barriers, but cultures.

So for our ceremony, we will say some meaningful words. I will be reciting my vows in English, and he in German. But for us, it’s not really about that. It’s going to be about that moment, and looking into each other’s eyes and into the faces of our dearest friends and family and feeling married, and embracing that. Nothing we write, no matter how eloquent, will replace that.