I received a formal invitation but since I could not read much of it I just told my boss 1 person and asked the questions of when / where and I could figure it out from then. I realized that here in Belgium they generally have 2 ceremonies: 1 "legal wedding" and 1 "formal wedding" in the church. The legal ceremony takes place at the court house / town hall of the city they are living in and is needed to ensure the marriage is legally binding, and this takes place before the formal wedding. In this case, the courthouse wedding was done on Friday and the church wedding / receptions were on Saturday. Yes, I said receptions. On Saturday everyone was invited to the church for the ceremony at 2 PM, and at 4 PM they had a smaller reception where the "B list" guests are invited to: friends of parents, new colleagues, acquaintances, etc. Then at 7PM is the "real" reception with dinner / dancing -- similar to the American wedding reception and of course I was invited to the real reception!
I arrived at the reception about 5 minutes before 7 PM and realized I did not bring a gift / card or anything, but I knew people just give money as gifts in Belgium, but of course I only had 35 euros on me. So I left to find an ATM and of course, the first 3 ATMs I found, either were not working or did not take my type of ATM card. I did not want to be any later so I figured I could claim my "American amnesty" and would try to borrow money from someone or tell my boss I would pay him later. Luckily, I was able to borrow money so that ended up working out OK. The amount you ask - around 25-30 euros if you are invited to the earlier reception and 50 euros if you are invited to the evening reception.
I arrived and I have never met my boss' now wife, and of course she is the first person in the greeting / receiving line. I expect my boss to introduce me so I shake his hand first and of course get a hard time for skipping the bride... And I am supposed to give 3 kisses for congratulations which I totally messed up as well because I can never remember when to give 1, 2, or 3 kisses because it seems there are different rules all of the time! Then, I get to the parents of the bride and groom and they are not expecting me to only speak English so that was a painful 30 seconds but I kept my eyes on the prize which was the butler holding a tray full of champagne at the end of the line and I just went straight for that after I gave my congrats.
Around 8 PM they seated everyone and I was paired with some other colleagues from work so that was nice. They announced who as sitting at each table which was neat because you could tell how the guests new the couple during this: table 1: parents, table 2: college friends, table 8: colleagues, etc. The whole thing was in Dutch except for my table they did in English for me which was nice. After my boss said "I apologize it wasn't all in English, but there are more people here that can't speak English than can't speak Dutch."
The dinner / rest of the night was so typical European = relaxed. We were served a 3 course meal + a dessert buffet with wine pairings throughout the whole meal which was not complete until after 11. They did not really have a wedding cake, just a bunch of different ice creams and desserts which was fun to try a little bit of everything. There was one part in between courses that everyone started waving their napkins and getting excited for something that I was unaware of but I joined anyway.
The dance didn't even start until after 11:30 PM and did not end until 3 AM. Normally not a big deal, but I still had an hour drive home to wake up at 7 to leave again for my race which was in the same town as the wedding.... but I did not want to get a hotel because they shut down all of the main entrances to the city for the race and I have no clue how to get in / around Antwerp except for the main roads and I was running with people from Gent who picked me up Sunday morning which worked well.
No comments:
Post a Comment