Flower "Mädl"

Our flower "Mädl" (girl) will be my cousin's daughter. She is going to be five for our wedding, and she earns, like any good flower girl, an extra special dress!

But not just any dress for this Bavarian the hills-are-alive wedding. A Dirndl! Here are some possibilities that I stumbled upon in my internet browsing. None really fit the color scheme yet - we are looking for sapphire blue and bright green - but just to get an idea...

look at this cutie. I like the blues...

doesn't she remind you of little Gretel?

this is the closest we came to our color scheme... pretty prints

 I like the contrasting prints

so cute! this is my favorite (the one on the little girl)

So, what do you think? Did you incorporate any traditional ethnic costumes into your wedding?

German Traditions- a Bavarian "farmer's" wedding

I wrote about the meeting with our venue director last weekend and mentioned how funny and animated Michael was. He told us all kinds of stories about other weddings they've hosted: Hungarian ones, Russian ones, "modern" ones, and of course, the traditional Bavarian "open" weddings.

As Michael explained, traditionally, when one farmer's son marries another farmer's daughter from the same region, there are no fancy invitations. In fact, all the happy couple needs to do is tack up a poster in the town square. These kind of weddings are "open" - anyone and everyone is invited, there are no formal invitations. Generally, the ceremony takes place at the town church - which, in Bavaria, is almost always catholic. Then, the whole wedding group parades through town with music and celebration, until reaching the party location.

Michael has hosted many such weddings. He described them as being "a lot of fun" - all guests don traditional outfits and the festivities start with coffee and cake. That's right, cake BEFORE dinner.

The festivities then continue with the traditional speeches and dancing, and at some point during the evening, the bride is "stolen" by her friends, who take her to a neighboring bar. When the groom and best man notice (which we hope they do rather quickly!) they have to go find her, and when they do, the groom must pay the bill for the drinks they consumed at the bar. Sometimes, he must also perform "tasks" like naming the ten reasons that he loves her, or kneeling in front of her, etc... 

Here are some pictures from various Bavarian weddings for your enjoyment. Source

the traditional Bavarian band

a couple in traditional dress

traditional Bavarian wedding soup - we will probably have this too (yum yum)

this is a video of the beginning of a "Brautstehlen" (bride stealing) - you can see how she is accompanied by a Bavarian band and is being lead away. The job of the groom is to find her and reclaim her.

We are still deciding which traditions (american/polish/german/bavarian) we want to incorperate, but in the mean time we are "investigating" what different traditions are out there - what regional and cultural traditions did you incorperate into your wedding?

Oktoberfest couple..

Love is in the air...

Since I am still waiting to meet with a potential photographer this afternoon, I will regale you with yet another neat German wedding tradition: the helium balloon/postcard send-off.

This is a fun, photogenic, and touching action that extends the excitement of the wedding for weeks to follow. The concept is simple:

1) Each wedding guest/couple gets a postcard which is already addressed to the happy couple and stamped. There is also a note/sticker on the postcard that says "if you find me, please toss me in a mailbox". You can also include a space for senders to note their location before they toss it in, so you can find out where the balloons made it to!

2) Guests fill out the postcards by either writing happy wedding wishes or by "promising" the pair something special in the future, like a game night, a dinner invite, something like that.

3) Postcards are hole-punched and affixed to helium balloons (heart-shaped ones look especially nice)

4) All wedding guests release balloons at once. Picture opportunities abound.

5) The newlyweds enjoy receiving lovely wishes in the mail from their guests over the next weeks.

Now I know this isn't strictly environmentally friendly. I wouldn't recommend doing it if you're on the beach, since fish and other marine life can choke and die from popped balloons. But it is a lovely, beautiful event and the two weddings where I experienced it, the couple received over half the postcards back! Some of them had made it a hundred kilometers or so! Amazing, eh?

Meeting with Oliver

So! Some actual, concrete steps are happening. This weekend, we met with Oliver, our Officiant for the ceremony. He drove all the way from Nurnberg to our apartment on Sunday afternoon, and even though Mr. Schnitzel complained about this "silly stranger" barging into his lazy Sunday afternoon, I think he really ended up appreciating it.

We talked about lots of things: what we envision, what elements are traditionally included, possibilities for bi-lingual (or tri-lingual) elements, rituals, music, vows: the whole shebang. It was interesting, because I think Mr. Schnitzel was thinking "why do we need to meet with this guy at all? I mean? we have 10 months till the wedding, and really, what's in a ceremony? But after the meeting he was bubbling to me about all the decisions we have to make and all the possibilities and he also had some GREAT ideas. So there's a lesson to the ladies out there desperately trying to get the men involved: bring them to the meetings!

We have so many ideas now, and I am so happy that it seems like we are going to be able to realize our goal of having an American-style ceremony with other German and Polish elements. We also thought of some things to check out: location of the outdoor ceremony, available space in the indoor location, speakers, music? I am hoping that my dad will agree to play something during the ceremony on his guitar.

We want to do the welcome in all three languages, the vows in English and German, and include lots of bilingual material in the program. The speech will be translated at least into English. We also want to do as much as possible that speaks WITHOUT words ? beautiful music, special ritual, nice setting. We want to face our friends and family, and have our brides and groomsmen standing with us. If there's anything I've learned from years living abroad, it's that eye contact and facial expressions can tell so much, without words.

So basically: we're excited! Any suggestions from our there in the blogosphere? We are most especially looking for ritual ideas and ways to make our Multilanguage group feel included without giving everyone headsets and translating like in the UN. They should all be present, in the moment, even if they don't understand the words. Big task, I know.

Registries

So it might be a bit early to be talking about this, but I have been thinking about the registry situation. In Germany, they don't really do registries, at least not really. It's still stuck in the old-fashioned days where you actually have to go to the fancy store and they give you all kinds of advice about what fancy schmancy stuff you should put on your grown up fancy schmancy list and how you need a roasting pan to go with your sauce pan… Part of the problem is, Germany is woefully lacking in wonderful stores like Target, Pottery Barn and Williams Sonoma. Lovely stores for the normal people of the world who like gadgets and household stuff but don't want to spend a million dollars or drive all the way to ikea to buy some plastic bins(ok, I know that Williams Sonoma is actually kinda fancy… but it's also kinda wonderful). I have been browsing the amazingly designed registry sites of those stores and bemoaning Germany's medieval stance on weddings. The other problem is, there are about a million things that I want at Target, Pottery Barn and Williams Sonoma precisely because I CAN'T get them here in Europe: Jalapeno roaster pans and measuring cups and Ziploc bags and stuff like that. But of course, who wants to schlep a Bundt pan across the ocean?

So here's the solution I'm thinking of: we will register at the above mentioned three American places, but only for things that are packable. That way, people who are interested in giving us the joy of lovely American products that we otherwise couldn't get will be able to do that, if they are willing to schlep them in their suitcase. Then, we will go to snooty Kustermann (who has really really nice stuff, but they are still snooty) and having one of those archaic registry meetings and pick stuff like plates and glasses and silverware that people otherwise wouldn't want to pack. And we will probably also use something called the "wish gallery" which is a German website where you can make your wedding registry from a bunch of different online shops who were too lazy to make their own registries, so people can then order directly from those stores (like amazon, karstadt, etc…). That seems like a rather unwieldy solution, but the best of both worlds :)

Not that this thing is about the presents, or anything :) Just a thought in the planning process… (hope this didn't come off as to egotistical and material!!)

How did other expats deal with this? Did anyone follow the German tradition of just asking for money? Does anyone else think that is pretty boring? Hmmm..

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?

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!

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!