An Austrian Wedding

This past week I’ve been laid low by a summer flu. Every day from Sunday to Friday I experienced unwelcome new symptoms, but that did not made it any less boring. One of the worst parts of sickness, I think, is how you feel so wretched that you can’t really do anything, and anything you can do you don’t really enjoy. But you aren’t completely insensible, either. Hence, a lot of time spent being bored.

Last Friday we attended a wedding, which I have been wanting to write about. I still feel somewhat gross, but my brain is working again, at least. Hurray!

The wedding was exceptionally lovely. It was held at 4 PM in one of the “Baroque” rooms in the Museums Quartier (MQ), across the ring from the city center. I write that in quotation marks because the room was just like a regular event/conference room, albeit with fancier wood floors and higher ceilings. Quite a lot of things in Vienna actually do have Baroque decorations, but this room did not. However, it did feature a nice view towards the Hofburg palace.

The ceremony was touching, although we found it very hard to hear the officiant. In Austria, you must be married by a government official (or you have two ceremonies, one real and one symbolic/religious), and the wedding party sits at a table in front of the guests during the entire ceremony. 4+ babies were extremely adorable flower children. Conrad was asked to be the ring bearer; he slipped on some of the flower petals and almost fell on his way to the front. They made this request because the rings came from the US. The jeweler would not ship directly to Austria, so the rings were sent to my parents and hand-carried here by some of our visitors this summer. Friends of the bride and groom played music and sang. We all rang little bells when they kissed. At the end, the couple stood by the table and all of the guests filed past to give them well-wishes. Many guests brought bouquets or pots of flowers, which we will have to remember, should we be invited to another Austrian wedding.

Interestingly, the word for wedding ceremony in German is die Trauung. To a non-German-speaker this seems very close to the words die Trauer, which means both grief and the period of mourning following a death, and traurig, which means sad. However, I have discovered that these words come from different root words in Middle High German.

After the ceremony everything more closely resembled an American wedding. There was a cocktail hour, during which the bride and groom and families took photos. The dinner reception was at a nearby restaurant, where we sat in a glass enclosure, large doors open to an enchanting green courtyard strung with lights.

Fortunately, our table was not short on conversation, as many of the people work together (all in Conrad’s lab); also we had an adorable baby seated with us. The drinks flowed (this is Austria, after all) and the food was quite tasty. We were also utterly flabbergasted when an Elvis impersonator appeared and performed about 10 songs right in the middle of the tables. He was ok, but the accompanying music was too loud for his singing to be very discernible most of the time. There wasn’t any dancing, but there was a paper silhouette artist, who cut silhouettes of all the guests to put into the guestbook, and to take home. The likenesses were not exact, but I thought it was a very fun idea, probably because I sat next to the setup and observed the whole time. You may judge for yourself, whether you think they look like us at all :)

There was even more food at the end, after the cocktail appetizers, three-course dinner, cake and cookies: some truly delicious goulasch, which we did all eat. We left at around 2 AM, taking with us generous and awesome favors: Ladurée macarons (shipped from Paris!) and wine (2 bottles!). The bride also gave me some of the table flowers, which I have attempted to dry, with mixed results. It was kind of funny to be riding home on the nightbus wearing formal wedding finery, surrounded by drunken teenagers.

Hopefully, it was not our last wedding in Austria! In the meantime, we enjoyed a wonderful evening and wish the newlyweds much joy.

Cheers for now,

Renn

---

DOING: nothing; being sick and bored; whining

EATING: chicken noodle soup; eggs; yogurt

DRINKING: more water than I want; tea

LISTENING: just finished Audible's Emma

READING: Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg

WATCHING: Archer Season 9; old Psych episodes

WEARING: pajamas