It was not our wedding week lol! But, the long awaited week of our friends’ wedding!
We started on Monday with a dinner for friends who had moved back to the US, but were visiting for the wedding. I can’t believe we’ve been here long enough to see friends who have previously lived here, come back to visit, but here we are.
Tuesday was Ryan’s robotics competition. His team, the “Goofy Ahh Motors” had an almost perfect run of its assigned task. There were so many good teams though, that they won’t advance to the regionals, but he was really happy about their performance.
We filled up the middle of the week with homework, softball practice, and physical therapy appointments.
Friday night, we had another dinner with the wedding party and Saturday was the wedding.
The wedding itself was held in our town’s Stadtkirche, or the city church. It’s over 300 years old and our friend, the bride, said almost every generation of her family had been married there.
The ceremony was half in German and half in English. During the hymns, half the congregation sung in English, while the other half sung the same song in German. It was funny that the British side of the church was much louder, while the German side was more reserved. The ceremony was so beautiful!
The weather had been going back and forth between pouring rain and sun all day. Even during the ceremony, the weather changed several times. One difference between a German and American wedding, is that the congregation leaves the church first, and the bridal couple is the last to leave. It was still pouring rain as the congregation left, but the sun suddenly came out right as the couple was leaving the church.
Immediately after the service, there was a reverse receiving line outside the church, where all the guests took turns going up to the couple and congratulating them. Then, there were several group pictures outside the church. When pictures were done, all the guests were given ribbons for our cars and we caravanned to the reception, honking our horns.
The reception started at about 3:00pm, but dinner would not be served until 7:00pm, a big difference from American receptions that are usually no longer than four hours. The time flew by though; there were tons of appetizers and cocktails, more pictures at the reception venue. We had games to play like “guest bingo,” there were multiple photo booths, and then several pranks were played on the couple.
After dinner, was the dancing. As we had a flight the next morning at 5am, we had to leave around 1am, and we were the first to leave! I’m sure it ended up being a 12 hour+ reception. It was so much fun and we were so happy to be a part of it.
Gilcrests Abroad 
We were staying in a hotel that was built in 1492 in Bad Neustadt de Salle. The gates and entrance way for the horses and carriages was still in good shape. The barn was at the back of the hotel. The entire entry way from the gates to the barn was used for a huge wedding. We were in a room with a view of that area. A wedding reception started about 3pm and we thought this should be really nice to be able to see what they are like in Germany. We had no idea that there were still going to be people there at 4 am the next morning. The bride and groom arrived in a huge Buick from the mid 1950’s. I knew then that the Germanys had us beat when it came to drinking and having huge parties. Like the singing in the church Germans are normally more reserved than we are. I also observed that very few Germans actually go to church.
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