Bossy Wedding: The Agape

It's traditional in Austria to have two wedding ceremonies (kind of like we did!): one at City Hall and one in church. It's common that only close friends and family members attend the legal ceremony, while larger crowds are invited to the church wedding and following party. Traditionally the bride and groom host a small reception and champagne toast after the City Hall wedding, called an Agape. We decided to have an Agape of our own so that we could take advantage of the lovely setting of our wedding for a bit longer after the ceremony. The Weingut Cobenzl has a gorgeous new building for wine tastings and events. It's even air-conditioned, which is rare in Vienna and was much appreciated since our wedding day happened to be the hottest day of the whole summer. Also, it seemed silly to get married in a vineyard and not sample any of its wine, am I right?

Before the Agape, we gathered everyone together to take a few group pictures. Here's what I learned: there is no such thing as a photo of 25 people where everyone has their eyes open and is looking at the camera. But trying did lead to general hilarity, and the pictures of everyone together are still some of my favorites of the day.

Then we sent the guests back to start drinking and cooling off while we took a few pictures with our parents.

And Lily, of course.

Once we got back to the Agape, we quickly grabbed our glasses of Sekt, and CM and I spoke briefly and thanked everyone for coming. Then we mingled and hugged all our loved ones.

There may have been a fisheye lens involved.

When we were researching wedding traditions and cobbling together what our day would be, we were both really taken with the idea of a Quaker wedding certificate (as a child I was raised what I generally refer to as “half-a**ed Quaker”). In a traditional Quaker wedding, there is no officiant because the couple is married by the congregation. The wedding certificate usually has the vows, as well as a record of the date and location of the wedding, and it is signed by the couple and the entire congregation. We decided we wanted one, and I started looking at Etsy and other resources to find someone who could make it. Of course, I should have asked Mama and Papa Bossy right away—they always know someone. Sure enough, they have a friend in Oregon who does beautiful custom calligraphy at ridiculously reasonable prices. She made our gorgeous wedding certificate, which we laid out at the Agape so that everyone could sign it. We haven't gotten around to framing it yet, but I know we'll have it forever.

Our dinner reception was in our neighborhood, about a half hour's drive from the ceremony venue. Maybe the best choice we made in planning the day was to rent an air-conditioned bus to drive the whole party from the vineyard to the reception. It was so lovely to just sit together and relax and chat in the cool air. In typical Viennese fashion, we made the reservation for the bus but didn't have to put down any deposit or sign any kind of contract beforehand, so we were slightly anxious that the bus wouldn't show up, but we shouldn't have worried. That's just the way things are designed to work over there.

All photos by the unparalleled Pink Pixel. I highly recommend you follow her on Instagram.


Can't remember the rest of our wedding (because it's been months and months)? Let me remind you.
The Invitations
The Week Before
The Clothes
The Ceremony, Part 1
The Ceremony, Part Zwei