My Wedding - Part I

July 28th, 2007, my big day, was the most beautiful and happiest moment in my life. Before the wedding, I was always thinking that a wedding is just another party. Actually, it is not just a party, but also a very nice and unforgettable piece of memory. I have been to several Chinese and German weddings, I would say, my wedding was exactly how I wanted it to be....
10 days before our wedding, Christine, Leandro, Joyce and I were in London for my Bachelorette party, the so-called Hen party. More detail & pictures can be found in my other post here and from Leandro's blog here.

7 days before our wedding, Melissa, Victoria and Elliot arrived in Germany from Vancouver, However, Melissa took BA and it happened that it was flooding in London so she had to stay over in London for an extra day!!! Victoria and Elliot flew from Vancouver to Düsseldorf and escaped the bad weather in London.

1 days before our wedding, Friday 27.07.7. That's the day where our civil ceremony took place at the city hall of Pforzheim. Weather although was not particularly fine but we had luck that most of the time the weather was great and only when we were at lunch there was a quick shower. The civil ceremony took only around 20 mins and that's it. I was wearing a red-pinkish dress and had my hair down. Alex was wearing normal dark grey suit with a tie matching my dress. On that day, Alex drove his beloved baby blue old-timer, Audi 80 as the "wedding car". Under the witness of my family and friends, at 11:30 27.07.2007, I officially became, Mrs. Tso-Sutter, the wife of Alex! We then had a toast of sparkling wine again at the city hall. After lots of photo shooting, we went to Raskeller for lunch. We then went to the downtown PF to do more photo shot with the parents and then Maik, Alex and I drove to the top of PF and make more pictures there. Then came the highlight of the boys, picking up the wedding car!!! Well, don't even have to guess which wedding car Alex picked, it's gotta be Audi. And he had always dreamed of having an Audi A8 in Black. Although, we've got a dark sliver-grey one, it looked really cool and the guys of course, had GREAT fun with driving the car. For the rest of the day, Melissa, Maggie and my mom where very busy with decorating her shop and the garden with fresh white and pink roses. Melissa also managed to get an arch decorated with pink rose!!
The unexpected:

• Alex's uncle and aunt was supposed to be our official witnesses. However, his aunt must have been too excited and left all her personal identity cards at home, and the thing is that they live around 150 km from PF. So at the end, this has been replaced by Miak, Alex's best man.
  
• Maggie, my bridesmaid was supposed to be here the night before but couldn't make it to the ceremony cos there was a 30 mins delay of her first connection train and she just missed the last train to PF from Bielefeld. It was such a pity. But she arrived in the afternoon after our ceremony but the most important is that she arrived before the real wedding tomorrow.
  
• Joyce and Calvin also arrive that day from England. It was such a pity that I didn't have time to meet them up.

... Go to Part II ...

Hen Party in London

Well, well, I had the idea of having a hen party when Alex's friends suggested a Bachelor party for him (which they ended up didn't have one). At that moment, I was thinking that my Bachelorette party must gotta be much better than theirs and so what came to my mind was to party somewhere outside of Germany. At the end, I chose London, cos it is quite easy to get cheap flights to London from Germany and it should have a rather exciting night life, plus my good friend, Joyce, lives there and she really knows how to have fun! So at the end, my good friends from HI, Christine and Leandro also joined my trip. We have agreed not to let Alex know about our trip, until 1 week before the trip because we wouldn't want his friends to steal our great idea!

Anyway, we all had a great time there. However, it has been quite a LONG trip though. To save costs, we have decided to take a cheap flight with Germanwings from Hamburg --> London. However, the train from HI -> Hamburg is around 2-3 hrs and our flight was early in the morning at around 6:00, and we wouldn't have been able to made it to Hamburg on time if we would have taken the earliest train. So we decided to leave one day early and started to head to Hamburg on the 17.07 . We arrived in Hamburg at around dinner time, so we just had dinner there and then went straight to the hotel! We stayed at Kock's Hotel Garni, near the airport that night. However, we didn't have a good sleep at all cos the room was quite noisy and was very hot!!! With only a couple of hours of sleep we headed to Hamburg airport and straight to London! We were pretty much tired already when we arrived in London and we took those open-top tour bus which took us to every must-see of London.

The next highlight of the trip was that we watched "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" at Odeon Cinema at the Leicester Square, where Joyce said that most premiers in London are shown there and it is where you see movie stars treading the 'Red Carpet'. After dinner, we went straight to the club. Well, to be frank, there wasn't much clubbing going on a Wednesday night but Joyce managed to get us a club with great music and we spent our whole night there until they kicked us out. O, one thing that I have to mention is that Joyce gave me a surprise, which is to have me dressed like someone who just won the beauty pageant -- I have to wear a sash, scepter, a cute veil and some furry stuff sticking the back of me. Joyce told me that usually the bride who are making hen party in London has to wear those the whole night and of course, doing crazier things... which of course, I was behaving and was just enjoying myself in the music with my friends!! ;-)

After we got kicked out from the club, we went to the 24-hr open restaurant near Chinatown and had a rather big breakfast and then head back to the London airport. Of course, on the way back we slept the whole time on the train, plan and airport; but again, after we arrived back in Hamburg we still have a long way back to HI. So we didn't get back home until 16:30 on 19.07.

Arlinger Fest

Yo, finally got some time to update my blog! Actually quite a lot of things happened the last two weeks. Arlinger Fest then X-File Project Meeting in KA, new colleagues joining our group and of course lots to prepare for my big day! Today, I will just talk about Arlinger Fest. Arlinger Fest takes place once every 2 years on the first weekend of July at the neighborhood where Alex lives. This is like a street fest where every family decorates their home and make party. Alex usually is the extreme one where he turns his garage to party room and people just drink and eat until the next morning. Of course also with loud music. So this year, Leandro and I was thinking that maybe we could do some Live music at his party and perform our very first "The Chubby Bunnies Show"!! We have prepared quite some songs. Check the details at leandro's blog + videos. Well, the show lasted around 30 mins. Although the ppl are less energetic than we expected, but we had a lot of fun and we got a lot of compliments afterwards.

I didn't drink at all though because of my medication and none of them really got drunk. So that were no crazy scenes at all. I guess the reason is that all of us are getting older and the weather was really quite cold so nobody was in the mood for a real party. Anyway, some pictures of the show.

Lars' Party

Last week, Lars and his wife had their Antrittsvorlesungen and after that they invited relatives and close friends to their new home. C+L and I of course joined the party. His place is like a big mansion with a super super big garden. It was quite a nice party, we had grill and there was also live music- a band from Uni Hildesheim. L said it was playing some kinda progressive/jazz music. Anyway, L was then suggesting that when it gets dark, we should play some songs! I didn't take it really seriously though but when the live band made the 2nd break, we asked one of ppl from the band and see if we can play a few songs. They said ya so we started to play with them! And I think C called Lars up , where the music was and I guess he was kinda surprised that we were playing music at his party! It seems like the ppl liked the music. After that, we told Lars that we are doing it for hobby and he said "I hope you are only doing this for hobby" and then comes Lars' typical laugh "ha ha ha". Anyway, that was definitely a good rehearsal for the Arlinger Fest performance and we had real FUN and that was my first performance with a LIVE band!!! COOL!

We won 2nd place

Yo! A and I joined the Oldtimer Rally this weekend with his Silver Audi 80 GTE (Youngtimer)! And we won 2nd place!! Schade, only 3 points differences from the 1st place! Anyway, it was fun and the weather was much better than expected cos we were expecting rain and storm this weekend!

When the result sheets are posted, I was one of the first ones to check our position. When I bought the good news to Alex he does not believe it!! Cos on the initial result sheets we did very bad and got 50 minus points. And at the final result, we got only 24 minus points because they realized that there is something wrong with the timer, so everybody scores got boosted. We are especially happy about it cos we didn't win anything in the last two years and so we were thinking that probably we will not get anything this time! We are planning to join the next one in July... probably 1 or 2 weeks right before our wedding! ;-)

I am Brazilian?

It has been quite a busy week, working on the wedding preparation and performance for Arlinger Fest. Actually, I never thought that there would be so much to do for the wedding... I guess, it's the details that took most of the time. Cos everything has to be perfect as I want, all the little things. Now I see why there is a need to hire a wedding planner.
O and surprise, surprise, two of my friends from Canada are planning to come to my wedding! I never thought that they would really come all the way from Canada!

Anyway last week, I was helping L for his Brazilian party for the UNI and guess what? someone told L that she thought I am from Brazil?! Uh?

O yo, it's such a hot day today, gotta to enjoy my Radler now!

Parking Lot

Yesterday, Alex and I went to the Rathaus in PF early in the morning to get some paper work done and so usual, we park the car at the Rathaus parking lot. And guess what? We entered the parking lot and there is a car stopped right in front of the barrier and then an old man step out from the car and tell us that the ticket machine is not working and we should help. And guess what's wrong with the ticket machine?! It can't stop giving tickets! I have never seen this before. =-)