Today's wedding is one of those beautiful international weddings that happened twice. Each with a particular sense of place, each with with a slightly different mix of loved ones. Eleanor & Armin had a civil marriage in Munich, where they live, followed by a homespun, DIY wedding in Sebastopol, California. I love these weddings because thy teach us (me, really) that there can never be an excess of love. Eleanor, today's graduate, is not only wise, she also happens to be an APW Wedding Elf, and one of the people that helps support this site (yayyy!) She offers beautiful, printable, crazy affordable wedding invitations, and apropos of Friday's discussion, printable affordable thank you notes (achem). I love her work, but after today I feel so invited into her life, now I want to move to Munich and hang out with her and drink Prosecco. So, for all of you couples with families bridging multiple countries or cultures, this one is for you:

After this year, I feel not only like a Wedding Graduate, but like I've just earned my post-doctoral wedding degree! My husband is German and I'm a California native. I've lived in Munich for over ten years and we met about four years ago at work. When we decided to get married, we went through the gamut of possibilities, should we elope? Should we get married quickly in the U.S. instead of Germany?  Do we have one wedding or two?

In the end, we decided to have a celebration in each country. We didn't want to ask or assume our guests could just shell out a few grand to fly to Germany or California. We knew if we just had one wedding, it would by default end up being either more my wedding or my husbands. We also didn't want to have a destination wedding in a place that held no personal meaning for us. It took me awhile to accept this, because one of the things about being an expat is that, in some ways, you live a dual life. I have my American family and friends and my German friends and family and only rarely do the two lives intersect - which saddens me sometimes. It wasn't until we really started talking about the logistics of getting married, that I had to let go of my fantasy of having one big wedding where both of my lives finally merge in a magical, matrimonial blowout celebration.

It being Germany and all, there was a very logical way to break down the festivities. It is standard in Germany to have both a legal ceremony at the Standesamt (sort of like city hall) followed by some sort of religious ceremony afterward (sometimes months afterward). Since neither my husband nor I are religious it made sense to have the legal ceremony in Munich and then to have some sort of home-made wedding ceremony, several months later at my parent's place in Northern California.

I'm so glad we ended up breaking things up this way. A dual-national marriage in Germany involves a LOT of paper work; you need to provide a recent copy of your birth certificate, an 'Apostile' (basically an international notary) from the state of your birth, then get everything translated into German and finally, approved by a judge. This takes time and patience, but there is a pretty clear process to get it done (I don't know how people got married internationally - or did anything for that matter - before the internets!) I found all this paperwork and our regular meetings in the government-y but friendly office of our 'Standesbeamtin' (marriage office clerk) oddly reassuring and confirming.

The process provided the space and time for me to savor and appreciate the gravity of our decision to get married.  No quick signing of a certificate after the ceremony for us - we were meeting with officials in government buildings, getting international documents approved, having the ins-and outs of marriage rights in Germany explained to us. It was all very serious and grown-up and was the antithesis of 'it's all about you and your special day!!!!' It felt right to me that the sober, serious part of getting married came first. Plus, there are tender little perks to getting married in Germany, one of which is the 'Stammbuch der Familie.' This is given to every couple getting married - it's a little book which contains a place to store your marriage certificate, a family tree template, each and every article of German marriage and family law(!) and a (not too subtle suggestion to get crackin') book of German baby names.

I also loved the Standesamt ceremony. There is pretty much a ceremony every 25 minutes, but they did a really good job of not making it feel that way. One wall of the Trausaal (room where they perform the legal ceremony) was a huge floor to ceiling window that looked out over the red tile rooftops of Munich. This was also fitting because both of our weddings were so much about place. I was not only marrying my husband, I was committing to a life residing in, as well as a lifelong connection, to a foreign country, as was he by marrying me.

After the small intimate ceremony we went to a great little cafe in our neighborhood, which is sort of a hipster take on a kitschy Bavarian grandmother's living room (and about the same size). We whiled away the afternoon chatting, visiting, hugging and happily drinking Prosecco with elderberry syrup, eating yummy panninis, soups, snacks and cake. It was leisurely, intimate and wonderful.

As my friend Elyse said afterward,  "I mean, Dayenu, right?" knowing that this was the first of three wedding celebrations. In many ways she was totally right. That simple, happy day would have been enough. Because of our spread-out life, I'm deeply glad we had our multiple wedding parties, but I also saw that you really don't need much to have a wonderful, happy, lovely and meaningful wedding.

A day later we had a dinner for about 80 in the banquet room at a traditional Bavarian Wirtshaus (sort of like a tavern) around the corner from our apartment. It was a warm and happy dinner full of tender toasts and followed by fun and dancing and hangin' at the bar. There was a lot of love floating through the evening (which our photographer captured beautifully) We also loved that the events were all at our 'neighborhood places' and that we worked with small and/or family-owned local vendors to get everything done. One more way that getting married in Munich helped connect us even more to the city we love and call home.

As I'm sure many of the other wedding graduates have experienced, we were in a blissful haze in the days following. There was a physical feeling to it. I truly believe that some sort of physiological alchemy takes place when you are with everyone you love and they are sending loving vibes your way.

Eight months later. Sebastopol, California...

Continue reading Wedding Graduates: Eleanor & Armin