We had originally planned to eat dinner inside, but once it became clear that it was going to be, shall we say, warm, the Kontrapunkt folks suggested we have dinner outside. They also suggested something they call a “flying dinner” instead of the buffet we had planned. What that meant was that food came out in courses served family style. It was perfect, in that everyone tried just about everything and we could all sit and be waited upon rather than getting up to make trips to the buffet.
Wouldn't you know it, but there's a charming little
florist just across the street from the restaurant? And after a couple informal conversations in which I described my vision (nothing too precious, nothing too tall, lots of wildflowers in small arrangements down the center of the tables) in a mixture of English and Deutsch, we paid a teeny tiny amount of money and left the decor entirely up to them.
I worked with the amazing Stephanie of
Pink Orchid Press to design little letterpress cards that said
Vielen Dank! with our wedding date. We wrote personal notes to each of our guests thanking them for joining us and used them as place cards on the dinner tables. We actually wrote the cards in our hotel room the night before the wedding, and it was a lovely way for us to think about each of our guests and feel grateful to have them all with us.
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| Taken this morning on my iPhone because I realized we didn't have any photos of the cards. |
We bought a little book in Paris and used it as a guestbook. We left our Instax cameras out on the table, and people wrote messages and put pictures in the book. It's a lovely souvenir.
As I've mentioned, the day was hot, and the weather forecast actually said 0% chance of rain. But of course almost immediately after we sat down to dinner, CM and I started feeling a few drops. We were just barely not covered by the awning, so everyone at our table stood up and helped move our table a few inches so that we'd be covered. It goes without saying that it stopped raining for good as soon as we were finished, right? Of course it did.
The food was indescribably good, probably the best meal I've had in my life. We had the menu printed in German and in English, and when our guests looked at it they thought they had to choose between all the items. Nope, they ALL came out, plus a couple unannounced items as well.
The wine was flowing, which partially explains why the other table (or the kids' table as we called it, since most of our friends sat there while our families were at our table) started writing and reciting limericks.
It started out tame:
There once was a girl named Louisa,
who wanted a man who could please he'.
He went down on one knee,
and said “Please marry me.”
On their honeymoon, they may stop in Pisa.
Which led to this:
There once was a couple aus Wien,
whose body types were very lean.
They served us great food
to get us in the mood,
but their priest was a really big queen.
And even an experiment in German:
Es war eine Hochzeit so heiss.
Gott sei dank das war nicht in der Schweiz.
Die gäste war schön,
as you will soon learn.
Oh my God, mein German ist scheiß!
Here's our reaction:
I love our friends.
After dinner, everyone lit sparklers (
Wunderkerzen, in case you ever are looking for them in a German-speaking country) and we walked through them into the restaurant. It was a little silly, but we were hoping good photos would come out of it.
Then it was time for cake, although everyone was so full that we still had half of it left after the wedding was over. We ordered a big Sachertorte from the Hotel Sacher, and the restaurant provided lots of freshly whipped cream.
We hadn't found a cake topper (or, frankly, made it a priority), but on our
photo scavenger hunt I happened to see this one in a store window and popped in and bought it. It was perfect.
We cut the cake and then had our first dance, to Eva Cassidy singing “Songbird.”
I am very graceful.
After that, there was lots of dancing and drinking and fun. The restaurant had originally planned to serve a midnight snack of
Gulaschsuppe (it's usual at Austrian parties to have something late at night to keep everyone's energy up), but we were all still so full that nobody needed it.
At some point in the evening, a red Vespa was discovered outside the restaurant (I still don't know who owns it), leading to lots of fun photo ops, all of which are far too embarrassing to include here.
At the end of the night, CM and I and two of our friends were left. We sat outside and drank a beer and talked about the day. Then CM and I got into a cab and went back to our
hotel and found a waiting bottle of champagne which we may or may not have consumed while soaking in a hot bath.
Oh, it was a good day.
Photos by the fabulous
Pink Pixel (except for the lame picture of the card—that was all me).
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