On Friday we had the legal wedding which was a fancier ceremony than I was expecting. It was held in a large baroque-ish room in Neusiedl am See's city hall. The town registrar sat at a table in the front, Marlene and I sat in throne-like chairs facing her, and then a group of just the closest friends and family sat behind us. I wore my wedding suit with a different shirt and tie and Marlene wore an all white Dirndl. Marlene's mom surprised us by having an extremely talented guitarist/singer there who was a family friend. Marlene had picked three songs she wanted to be played during the ceremony but he played them live instead. The town registrar then gave a speech giving advice and wishing us luck in our marriage, and one of Marlene's friends from university was the translator. We signed the wedding documents and according to Austrian law, we were married. Afterwards we went down to the building's inner garden, all the guests lined up to congratulate us and the next legal wedding filed into the room.
After the legal wedding we all went to a nearby town and had dinner together at a Heurigen. It's basically a restaurant which serves the freshest local wine along with cold dishes made up of bread, meat, cheese, and vegetables. If you're ever visiting Austria or Germany, it's a must that you have at least one meal at a Heurigen.
On Saturday was the main event - the church wedding. We woke up pretty early although we didn't need to. I didn't have anything to do in the morning and Marlene just had a hair appointment in the late morning. Everything started at 1:30 when we met to take pictures. Here are a couple of them courtesy of Franz Helmreich.
Here's the two of us under a willow tree
And here's the whole wedding partyAfter the pictures, we met at her parents' house for a pre-wedding party where people congratulated us and a band played. That lasted an hour before everyone was transported downtown a couple blocks from the church and we had a mini-parade with the band to walk into the church and immediately start the wedding. Everything went off without a hitch even though I was very nervous beforehand. Upon exiting the church after the ceremony, we were greeted by Marlene's folk dancing group who performed a dance for us then invited us to join in. We danced with them and then everyone lined up to congratulate us before we all had a couple glasses of wine and took some impromptu pictures and headed to the reception venue.
The reception was at a restaurant in a nearby town. The food there was amazing! It was pretty traditional Austrian cuisine, we had two kinds of soup to start, then main dishes of Wiener Schnitzel, roast beef, walleye fillets, and breaded vegetable patties. The side dishes were cabbage, zucchini, fries, potato wedges, maybe other things I'm not remembering right now because I didn't eat them. The folk dance group performed again after dinner and we also had a band and dance floor for normal dancing.
We had some American traditions like Marlene throwing her bouquet, me throwing her garter, and cutting the first piece of cake together. Mixed in were some Austrian traditions. At one point Marlene was kidnapped so I gathered a search party and we needed to go to surrounding bars to look for her where she's supposed to be pounding drinks until we arrive to rescue her. There weren't too many possibilities in the small town we were at so we found her at the nearest bar where we all had a couple drinks together. Then if the kidnapper brings along the bridal bouquet, Marlene's witness of marriage is supposed to pay the bill, otherwise the kidnapper has to pay. Luckily for the kidnapper, Marlene's witness of marriage was his mom, so she helped him find the correct bouquet, which took him a couple attempts, then paid the bill. The other strange traditions all happened in a hectic twenty or thirty minutes, Marlene and I were both lifted up on chairs and given glasses of wine which we chugged and shattered on the floor. Then we lowered to the ground and cleaned up the shattered glass. Marlene was given a wooden spoon and cloth which she put around her head to look like an old housewife. Then people threw tons of coins at us and we had to sweep them up while people continued throwing and ruining the coin pile I was trying to make. It was definitely my least favorite part of the night as I was on my hands on knees trying to collect thousands of coins, all the while having coins thrown at me and even shoved down the back of my shirt and pants! After what seemed like an eternity, the guests felt sorry for us and stopped, and a few of them helped pick everything up. There was more dancing and games and the party finally wrapped up at about 4 AM.
Marlene's parents gave us a ride to our hotel after the reception where some of Marlene's friends had brought our bags and already checked in for us. They were also nice enough to decorate our room with confetti, streamers, balloons, of course more coins, and some... ahem... adult toys. The coins were all over the bed and bathroom so we need to clean them before we could bathe and go to bed.
I wanted to continue and talk about the first day of our honeymoon, we're in Madeira right now, but I think I'll stop there and continue again later. We've got reservations at a Thai restaurant and this post has been long enough!
No comments:
Post a Comment