My Wedding - Part IV (The Dinner)

I have always wanted to hold our wedding in a castle-like restaurant which gives that European flair. Well, after months of searching for the best location, believe it or not, the kinda castle that I wanted, was really hard to find in Germany. The so-called castle in Germany is just like a very big abandon house. It is completely different from the Neuschwanstein Castle thatI had in mind ;-) Anyway, after months of restaurant hunt, Maik's gf, asked us to have a look at the hotel (Mönch's Waldhotel) where she is working at. And since then, I have fallen in love with this Blackforest hotel. It is not a extremely luxury hotel but definitely has a very strong European style and very classy.

A typical German wedding ends very late, say until 4 or 5 the next morning. And of course with a lot of drinking. Therefore most of the guests stay overnight at the hotel. So when our guests arrived at the hotel, everyone was busy with checking in and having some small refreshments. We have also checked into our suite, which was barely acceptable as a "Bridal room". The thing is that Laura has shown us the nice and luxury "Bridal couple" room on the top floor and what we have got was the old "Bridal room". And of course, I have requested them to upgrade us to their 80 qm Suite! =-) So after a small pause, we went down to take more pictures with the guests and then at 19:00 dinner starts.

Alex's parents have organized live music for us. The music he played is typical German wedding/fest music. The idea of German wedding is not to have something really formal but have a fun and great celebration where people can get a bit drunk, laugh a lot and dance a lot! And of course, eat a lot! Anyway, before the dinner starts, the mother of Alex asked the musician to play a song that was dedicated to both of us. The song was about "Her son", which was very touching. The next song dedicated to the "mothers", to not be too sad about "loosing" their sons and daughters.

So after all that, the dinner started, with the so-called, Swabian ravioli, Maultaschen Soup and Swabian Wedding soup. Then came seasonal salad. And the main course is pork fillet and grilled steak with onions with red wine sauce and musroom cream sauce, serve with homemade Spätzle and German sautéed potatoes. And for dessert, we have the wedding cakes and ice-cream! YUM!

... Go to Part V ...

My Wedding - Part III (The Church)

We finished the photo shootings at around 14:00, however, Maggie and I just had a bread for breakfast this morning before we did our hair, so we were already striving to death by 14:00. So we quickly stopped by Alex's parents place for a Brezel (I just ate half) and then we had to head to the catholic church , Heilige Familie in Keltern-Dietlingen, where the church ceremony was held at 15:00.

Most of the guests were already waiting outside of the church when we got there. So we were busy talking with guests and my dad and I were a bit concerned about what was supposed to happen in the church cos he was supposed to walk me in and so we had a mini rehearsal right in front of the church. When the church bell rang, the guests slowly settled themselves for a good place. When the music started, my Dad slowly walked me in and at the altar, he handed me over to Alex. Then, came the speeches from the pastor(how exiting, Leslie told me that he was struggling very hard to keep himself awake, we even caught our guests asleep on video!! ;-)) Finally, came the highlight of the ceremony where Alex and I exchanged vows. I was a bit worried about it before cos I had to read the text in German out loud and there was this two sentences that I am supposed to memorized:
"Trag diesen Ring als Zeichen der Liebe und Treue. Im Namen des Vaters und des Sohnes und des heiligen Geistes." (Take this ring as a sign of my love and fidelity. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit)
The funny thing was that Alex has forgotten some part of the text, which before the wedding he has reminded me million times to memorize. ;-)

In between the speeches of the pastor, Alex's mom organized a singer to sing 2 songs with a guitar for us. One of them is a German song (I will have to find out the title of this song) and the other one, played almost at the end of the ceremony is "You are still the one"! At the beginning, we were thinking of skipping the church ceremony, but I am so glad we did that cos the ceremony was way more special than the civil !!!

After some more preaching, we were escorted by the pastor. When we got out of the church, Viktoria and Antonia, the daughters of Alex's relatives gave us a nice surprise by showering us with a flock of white little hearts. Next came the surprise prepared by Manfred, the guy who owns the company where Alex and I met 7 years ago, gave a very romantic surprise. He placed two big wooden boxes in front of us and suddenly he walked to use with two doves in his hands, one for me and one for Alex. And we are supposed to hold each of them in our hands. I could even feel the heart beat of the dove. We then released the doves after the small speech given by Manfred. At the same time, he unlid the two wooden boxes and more pigeons flew out from the boxes. All of the guests got a glass of sparkling wine for a toast. Every guests came up to us to give us their best greetings and blessings one by one. After some photo shoot, we decided to head to Mönch's Waldhotel Kapfenhardter Muhle in the Blackforest.

BTW, our wedding is of course, Alex's favorite brand name, Audi. He has chosen the exclusive version of A8! Check it out!

... Go to Part IV ...

My Wedding - Part II (Morning)

We hardly had any sleep the night before the wedding cos we were still busy preparing this and that. Anyway, the thing that worried me the most was the weather, we were expecting shower during the day. However, when I woke up that morning, I saw a clear blue sky. That definitely lightened up my day. Then all three of us, my mom, Maggie and myself, went to Park hotel to get our hair and makeup done.
Julia, my hairdresser, did a great job with my hair and my mom, who usually is hard to satisfy was very happy with my hair do! Poor Maggie had to have her hair done several times cos my mom was not that satisfy with Maggie's hairstylist.

Well well, at around 10:30 we were back at my mom's office where we were expecting Alex to pick me up and where the Chinese tea ceremony took place.

Most of the guests from my side have already arrived in PF and were already waiting at my mom's shop. We have not much idea what exactly would happen. Anyway, the highlight of the ceremony, was the "giving and drinking" tea part and in return receiving blessing and presents from my parents. =-) There then came thousand of photo shootings and photo sessions at my mom's shop. Then Alex and I left our guests to have our official photo session with a professional photographer at the world heritage, Maulbronn Monastery . And there's where took a lot of nice pictures with an European flair.












... Go To Part III ...

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!