Today is such a beautiful day in our international wedding series.  It’s exactly six months from Valentine’s Day, and it also happens to be the anniversary of the day Martin and I were married.  Today was originally going to be the end of our wedding series for the summer.  (Don’t worry – we’ll start up again for Valentine’s Day!)  

Except inspired by love and Valentine’s Day and all that is wonderful about creating a home with the people we love… well I just had to add one more wedding this summer.  It all began with an email from our dear friends, Vica and Ion, a few weeks ago.  The subject of their email:

“We said yes!”

To say we were tickled is an understatement.  I think Martin let out a big whoop!  Want to meet our dear friends, Vica and Ion?

Martin and I met this cute couple in Berlin a couple of days before Making This Home was officially up and running.  Ion is an engineer; he thinks logically like Martin.  Vica has an artistic flair and sense of style that I just love.  (Swing over to her photography blog if you get the chance.)

I must stop telling you about how much we enjoy their company, though.  Vica and Ion left Berlin and moved back to Romania while we’ve been in the US.  Wah!  We’ll miss being in the same place.  So why don’t I stop and let Vica take it from here, huh?

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Will you tell us about your wedding day a couple of weeks ago?

Hi to all! and thank you Katie for featuring our ceremony in your blog’s wedding series. As the question states, we did get married few weeks ago, more exactly 4, and it was only the court part or as we call it here “Civil Marriage”.

So then you’ll have a church wedding later?  What’s that like?

Yes, we want to have a church ceremony also. Right now we still analyzing this part, as my husband, Ion, is quite skeptical of some aspects of it. But from what I know, usually men are more interested in the civil/legal part (being more rational I think :) ), and we – women – are more attracted by the emotional/spiritual aspects of things. Hopefully we will get to an solution which will satisfy both of us.

I consider church ceremony being very beautiful and emotional. I have been to several church weddings and although they are particular to each couple and seem different, the ceremony and the procession is the same: the couple stays in front of the church, with the god parents by their sides; the priest(s) reads from the Bible; the moment of blessing and the exchange of the rings, the moment of crowning and once crowned the couple walks a circle three times in a ceremonial “dance” in the middle of the church; the couple is given to drink some blessing wine from a common cup, the removal of crowns and in the end the priest invites all the guests to congratulate the couple. A more detailed description I have found on wikipedia.

Why are there two separate weddings?  Does that get expensive?

I would say there are two separate ceremonies: the civil, which takes place at the town hall and is officiated by an officer and the religious part, which takes place at the church and is officiated only by a priest. Usually couples prefer to have both civil and church ceremonies in one day: they first go to the town hall, after that to the church and in the evening they have the party. But this is not mandatory, only the mandatory is that you should get first the official/legal certificate stating that you are married and just after that you can have the church ceremony.
About the expensiveness of the wedding, this is relative. There are some fees you must pay for both ceremonies, but it can get very high in costs if you prefer a sophisticated wedding, or you can keep it very simple and not so expensive. Depends on your tastes and preferences.

Maybe this questions sounds silly… but what will be your anniversary date then?  Or do you celebrate both dates somehow?

I think we will celebrate both dates in some way, but more close to our souls will be the church ceremony date.

Could you tell us about some of the traditions from your court wedding?

There are not so many traditions; I would say none, because everything is so official and quick (the entire process lasts less then 10 minutes): the officer reads to us the Family Code.

We are asked to confirm our wish to get married.

And then we sign the papers.

After that you receive congratulations and big hugs from everyone, and I also was amazed of how many flowers I got. Here there are at home already:

When we went outside, our families and friends made a flower gate and threw rice above our heads.

It was very nice, and we spent a little more outside for a glass of champagne and for more pictures.

You have so many happy people with you.  Did you mail them invitations or was your court wedding kind of a spur of the moment event that didn’t take months and months to plan?

Yes, we were so glad to see so many friends around us, besides our families. We did not make almost any plans in advanced. We just moved from Berlin and started the house renovation, so we just decided on the date and then, a week before sent some announcements by e-mail (this is ours, that I made in a hurry :)

The day before the ceremony, we bought some bottles of champagne and cookies, looked in the closet for some outfits (I made myself a fabric flower to accessorize the simple outfit I had :) ) and we were ready to say YES!.

Oh that’s all so beautiful, Vica.  How will your church wedding be different?

I think it won’t be different from how it is usually supposed to be. Because this depends on the church where we are going to have the ceremony and I am very excited about it.

Do people traditionally give wedding gifts?  What would they be… and which wedding would they give them at?

Yes, they do. Giving gifts at the court wedding is not so common.  Mostly guests give gifts at the party or people prefer to give money for the newlyweds. But we also got some gifts: photo albums and some tea sets.

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Congrats to Vica and Ion!  Don’t you just love that shot of everyone tossing rice?  Or all those flowers in their apartment?

Don’t forget to join us next week as I reveal the big day Martin and I celebrated.  And if you have a wedding we just have to hear about in the next wedding series (maybe around Valentine’s Day?), let us know… especially if that wedding is your own.

Keep it green and simple with 2 more ideas:

1. An Austrian Wedding
2. Our Own Wedding
3. A Japanese Wedding

This entry was posted on Friday, August 14th, 2009 at 3:20 am and is filed under European Life - like Fine Wine, International Wedding Crashing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.