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.

the first "sparks"

The last week has been a relaxing one, the first in about a month and a half since our trip to the US and my parents visiting. Not that I didn't enjoy all that tremendously, but it's awful nice to just come home from work and relax at home, or do the laundry, or run errands. The weekend weather was gorgeous, so we soaked up all that sunny Munich has to offer, visiting biergartens, grilling by the Isar river and going to the public pool on sunday, topping it all off with Schnitzel in yet another biergarten. It's too bad, in fact, that such a picture perfect weekend had to end in my very first wedding planning fight.

I won't go into details in such a public forum but suffice it to say it had to do with the guest list and numbers and the fact that I am inviting so many friends and it was a very turmoiled 11pm on a sunday night phone call. I mean… I am one of those people who invites 45 people to my birthday party. I just like to be surrounded by people I love. Lots of them. But really I never considered that my guest list, "gigantic". I mean, it's all relative and I guess certain relatives of mine had tiny backyard weddings, and that's not exactly what this will be. But there will most certainly not be 500 people milling about. Not even 1/5 of that…

It turns out that the "problem" had a lot to do with feeling overwhelmed about the number of German guests who will be coming. Like the whole thing will become a wholly Germanized German speaking event. Of course, that's one of my biggest goals: make sure that everyone there, regardless of language or nationality, feels welcome and can follow what's going on! It'll be a challenge, sure, but actually I think that once everyone is there it will all mesh just fine. Plus, all my German friends speak English anyways, so communication shouldn't be a problem at all.

At any rate, I do hope that the rest of this planning process is relatively Sunday-night-argument-free or very argument free in general. I think just because the TV shows show feuding families and disagreements, doesn't mean that it has to be like that. What do you think?

Most Important Things

At my mom's request, I made a list of ten things that are most important to me about our wedding. I will be going over this list with the boy and refining it as time goes on, but here's what I'm thinking now:

1) Bringing two families together
2) Comfortable, festive, beautiful atmosphere
3) Relaxing fun and memorable celebration
4) Meaningful ceremony
5) Photographs to preserve all the memories
6) Ceremony and reception that reflect aspects of all cultures (American, German, polish) and make everyone feel at home
7) Including everyone in the event, regardless of language or nationality
8) Opportunities for people to interact with eachother
9) Dress: comfortable, beautiful, special
10) food and drink: delicious, "cross culturally edible" and elegant without being overly fancy. Abundance without going overboard.

What do you think? What was most important to you?

Combining Cultural Traditions

So with the planning underway, I'm starting a list of various traditions and aspects from each country that we want to integrate into the wedding, and other ways we will emphasize the multicultural and multi-language nature of our partnership and celebration. I will be adding and subtracting to/from this list as I go.

American:
-Bridesmaids and Groomsmen including "matching" clothing (no matching dresses for me, but I like the idea of a color theme, with matching boutonnieres for the men)
-Procession including family members
-Groom comes in first, bride is brought in last by father
-Save the date cards
-Bridal Shower
-Wedding Registries

Bavarian/German:
-Friends plan various games/surprises for the party
-Midnight snacks, party that goes till the wee hours
-Polterabend, where friends bring old china to throw on the ground and the soon to be pair has to sweep it up
-Live Bavarian band (who can also rock to the oldies)

Polish
-Hopefully some pre-wedding celebration food: Pierogies and "Pasteciki" by boy's mom.

Language:
-Ceremony in at least partially German and English, perhaps with a Polish program
-Invitations for each language
-Website in three languages

Other things:
I really liked this photo (see above) of a Swedish wedding with the flags of the couple hanging on a string – perhaps there will be flags at our ceremony, too.
Table seating will be hard, we are hoping to be able to mix it up a bit. Maybe we should have people indicate their language abilities on their RSVP, hehe!