Did Someone Say Destination Wedding In Germany? I’m In
I was invited to a beautiful wedding in Erfurt, the capital of Thuringia. My first time celebrating such an event in Germany. Oh yes, during the pandemic.
As you can imagine this year was a very challenging one to get married. Life changed for all of us. Kristina and I got married in February in Argentina and had our Caribbean Honeymoon straight away. However, we came back home and then the pandemic hit Europe very aggressively.
The fact that our friends’ wedding in Germany went ahead was great news. They told us that the only real highlight of the year was our wedding and fortunately now the highlight is their wedding.
1 Week Before
We travelled from London to Berlin with doubts about the wedding. We were not sure if the event was going ahead due to the second wave of COVID-19 in Europe. Many countries started to put more and more restrictions for travelling and self-isolation periods.
Luckily, we had no issues when travelling and we safely arrived to Germany. We spent the week before the wedding in Berlin, an absolutely amazing place to visit. I wrote about this here.
1 Day Before
We took the train from Berlin to Erfurt. Here’s the funny story.
We were at the platform 15’ earlier and walked towards the end of it. The train changed the platform 5′ before and we were still waiting in the original platform. Unfortunately, we missed it and waited for another hour for the next one.
After 2.5 hours, we arrived to Erfurt. We walked 10 minutes to our hotel, left our luggage and went for lunch in the Old Town. In fact, for some reason we had the idea it was a village and we discovered a colourful lively city.
We went back to the train station and headed to Weimar where we spent the afternoon exploring the cultural centre.
The Big Day
The church started at 1.00 pm and it lasted 30 minutes. They asked us to wear Face masks. Right after, just outside the church there was some wine and champagne to celebrate. The bride and groom’s families were in charge of it. Apparently, this is traditional in many German weddings.
They went to the photo session and us to the main venue located 1 minute away from the church. Everything was very convenient and carefully planned by them. We also picked our hotel just 4-5 minutes away from the venue.
Around 2.30 pm, on arrival to the venue, once again their families shared our table number. Big involvement from the families in part due to the pandemic and the challenge of finding people but also because their families were more than happy to play those roles.
Once we found our seats, we put our wedding gift in a wedding box. It’s very common to put cash in an envelope and a little letter to congratulate them.
The newly Weds’ entered and the fun started. Their rounded table was located in the middle and shared it with their families.
Here’s the most remarkable difference compared to other weddings I’ve been. In Germany, the first act of the wedding is slicing the cake. Coffee and Cake to start with. In every wedding I’ve ever been, the wedding is the final thing but it was not the case in Germany. It felt like watching the film knowing the ending. This was very interesting.
The waiters and waitresses served us the drinks at the table. For example, if we wanted a beer, they encouraged us to order while we were there. The cocktail bar had limited options, perhaps due to some local restrictions during the pandemic.
The menu consisted of a starter (gazpacho), main course (roasted vegetables with some sort of fritters for us and meat for the rest) and dessert (cake and ice cream with some berries and vanilla sauce).
Games and pranks are common at German weddings. There were games that their families organised with questions and answers about the newly Weds’ and moments of speeches too.
After dessert, it was time to kick off the dancing floor. The newly Weds’ put a great performance for the first dance (Hochzeitstanz). We then were invited to dance and officially the party started till 3.00 am with the majority of music being electronic and few salsa songs which I enjoyed a lot.
Towards the end of the party, they brought hot dogs to better digest the alcohol.
Overall, this was fun and an interesting experience. But the most important here is that the wedding went ahead and they are now super happy in a year where we don’t have so many happy stories.
The Day After
We were exhausted but still woke up relatively early as we needed to take the train to head back to Berlin and then to the airport to catch a flight for our next destination: Tallinn, Estonia. We spent an absolutely marvellous week there but I’ll leave this for another time.
