The wedding day was always going to be about the wedding and in order to get there by train we had to leave the hotel by around 11am. That meant the hotel breakfast with bottomless coffee to get over the 3am phone call and time to get ready. I now understand why Australia’s foreign minister Julie Bishop requests an iron and ironing board in her rider. Our quite comfortable hotel room that looked like it was designed to host business guests didn’t come with an iron and for some reason it seemed to be the most difficult thing we asked for. Eventually Dan got his shirt ironed and we headed off to the train station. About 200 metres down the road I realised I had left my phone with the deutsche bahn train app and the GPS in the room. Dan went back to get it. Unfortunately we didn’t discover until we were at the train station that the battery for Dan’s camera was also in the room.
A short wait at the train station in Dülmen and a kilometre stroll and we arrived at Renaissanceburg Lüdinghausen, the venue for the wedding. It was easy to see why they had chosen the venue – A castle set on an island surrounded by a moat and lots of greenery. Now that’s definitely not something you see at an Australian wedding – a castle! Not a real one anyway – I imagine members of Medieval societies probably find old sandstone buildings to act as appropriate backdrops for photos and have their actual wedding in a park. Of course this wedding wasn’t themed (even though a few star wars references made their way into the ceremony.
This is the first German wedding I have attended (despite having been invited to one in Bonn many moons ago when I could barely afford to go to Yass for such an event). This one was very traditional (unlike, I imagine the Bonn one to have been). I was looking forward to the experience. The arrival of the bride and groom on foot across the moat was quite beautiful and there was no traditional giving away o the bride. I didn’t have a chance to ask whether that was tradition or just a choice. The civil ceremony itself was quite different to similar weddings in Australia. The personal part was lovely and the celebrant said a few words about the bride and groom and about marriage. The bride and groom said I do (only once and then they kissed and we thought it would be all over but no. The officious German registry office meant that they both had to agree to about a million clauses in the wedding contract that seemed to mostly about whether or not the bride changed her name and this involved repeating their dates of birth and where they lived about two or three times. It was the first bilingual wedding the celebrant had conducted but I don’t think that was what made the ceremony feel so officious. Like all weddings though it was a chance for the bride and groom to declare their love for each other and make a promise to each other and it was truly heartfelt. (Wonderful Life – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – The gothic overtones of Nick Cave often mean that the undying love and devotion that is at the core of many of the band’s tunes is lost. Like this beautiful number that somehow feels appropriate to listen to while writing about a wedding.)
When the guests left the room where the wedding was conducted, they were handed a white heart shaped balloon and asked to attach an addressed message to it with the how that it would be taken away on the wind and when it landed, be returned to the bride and groom. We all stood together and let the balloons go and they floated away like a hundred heart shaped clouds against the blue sky. Like an Australian wedding, it was then time for the guests to be kept busy between the ceremony and the reception. There was champagne served to celebrate the nuptials but also (because it is Germany) it was time for coffee and cake, which included plates of cookies and the cutting of the wedding cake – a task usually left until the end of an Australian wedding when everyone is so full of booze that the last thing they want is fruit cake with marzipan. The cake had three different layers – one of which was a German style cheesecake – perfect!
After photos, it was time for the reception. Many of the elements of the reception were the same as a traditional Australian wedding, like the heartfelt speeches with just a touch of humour (the Australian ones of course but there was a touch of humour in the German ones as well). In order to ensure all guests experienced the speeches without the need for an interpreter on hand, the speeches were translated into German or English as needed. And like most weddings, there were the tablemates you didn’t know before the wedding. In this case, cousins of the bride and their young kids – one from Berlin and another (and her husband) who run a local dairy farm. The bride had overestimated my rudimentary German skills but fortunately our tablemates spoke English well and made a real effort to ensure we felt included in the conversation. (Josie – Blink182 – One of my favourite pop punk ditties about love. Blink really encapsulate teenage love into three minutes and very few words.)
The menu (which featured a star wars photo where the bride and groom’s heads had been photo shopped in to replace Luke and Leia and their fur child to replace Chewbacca) was where the two traditions met. The first course – Wedding Soup, served in a tureen from the table is a traditional German wedding first course. It is like a chicken and vegetable consume with white cheese cubes and what appeared to be a gnocchi like pasta. It was delicious. The main course was a buffet that included German-style roast beef and gravy, chicken and pork schnitzel, kangaroo fillet, creamed potatoes, fried potatoes, carrots and greens, a salad with the most delectable yoghurt dressing ever and a range of vegetarian options. There was more food than could be eaten. But it was definitely worth waiting for the traditional dessert – Gentleman’s crème – a lush light creamy mousse with flecks of chocolate and rum. It was accompanied by a more traditional Australian chocolate mousse. The meal was finished with an aperitif. A traditional one in a glass – 40 per cent proof and really bitter – what I had and little bottles of other spirits – which Dan had. Wine (red and white) and beer was served throughout the afternoon and evening and imbibed heartily by all.
After the dinner and speeches, the bride changed and she and the groom emerged for their dance – it started as a traditional waltz but quickly turned into a more modern dance they had choreographed. Apparently this has become a bit of a tradition in German weddings. Hopefully it won’t catch on in Australia – way too ambitious for my dancing ability. The dancing ability of the guests was tested later on when all Australians were requested to dance to AC/DC – now head banging is a dance style I have mastered (well maybe not mastered…) My broken foot planted firmly on the ground, I did manage to move to the music a bit and (reluctantly) remained on the dancefloor for the Men at Work (not so) classic complete with million dollar kookaburra flute riff. To reward ourselves for dancing, or not, a fabulous cheese course was served. Not that I needed to eat anything more but it was one of the biggest and most delectable spread of cheeses I had ever seen.
It was a beautiful day and a fabulous evening but we bid the bride and groom farewell and headed off into the night around midnight before our coach turned back into a pumpkin (or at least before the last train left the station). After a ten minute train ride, we sat at the platform at Dülmen for about 45 minutes but despite the late hour on the open air platform at a non-attended station felt completely safe. In fact I think we were more at risk of being blown away by the freight trains passing us at a couple of hundred kilometres an hour. When we arrived back in Münster, it was amazing how many people we saw riding their bike home from a night out at 2am in the morning – I really need to get bike fit so I can do the same. (Spell – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – a beautiful tune about falling in love.)