Well, where to start?  I had been thinking for a while that Becky and I had been together for quite some time (at least in total) and so far showed no signs of not wanting to spend more time together.  She had moved over here to Zurich to live with me and so far we had managed not to kill each other – or even come close.  It seemed therefore a natural step for us to get married.  That and of course the minor fact that I want to spend the rest of my life with her.  Of course as anyone who has proposed knows, it’s not quite as simple as it sounds.

So the first step was to find a ring.  Surely not too tricky, this being a city there are plenty of jewellers around.  This proves quite clearly how little I know about buying jewellery, but at least I did know that I needed to find out what size ring to get.  How to do this though, was anyone’s guess.  I raided Becky’s jewellery box to try to find a ring to give me some idea of size (not to pawn and pay for it I assure you) however as those of you who know Becky can attest to, she doesn’t wear much in the way of jewellery and I couldn’t find a single ring anywhere.  So I had to do the next best thing and guess – at least that was after I had discounted some subtle finger measuring device I could try to use when she was asleep.  So I went into a jewellers and had a long look at all they had on offer and chose what I hoped would be a ring that she liked.  They assured me that they would be able to resize it between one or two sizes should my guess have been wrong, but they just as quickly assured me she couldn’t return it if she didn’t like it!

So armed with a ring, I now needed to ask her father’s permission.  I know; a lot of people don’t think that’s necessary anymore, but call me traditional, soppy, whatever you like, I felt I had to ask.  This however was not quite as easy as it sounds since Becky’s family live in the UK and we are in Switzerland.  I was pretty sure this wasn’t the type of conversation I wanted to have over the telephone, so I had to decide when I would next see him face to face.  Since we were coming over to the UK and staying with Becky’s parents first, that seemed to be the perfect opportunity.  So I tried to figure out some way of broaching the topic and decided that it would really have to be a spur of the moment thing, but hopefully there would be enough moments since we were going to be with them for almost two days.  Of course as anyone who’s read our blog recently knows, Easyjet, Luton Airport and the Great British Weather quite nearly made this an impossibility.  So, fighting the very strong temptation to forget about it, I summoned what little courage I could find in the sub-zero English winter and asked for his daughter’s hand in marriage.  Thankfully he said yes (or this would be an extremely embarrassing blog post) so that was the second step out of the way!

So, ring and permission on my side, I now just needed to decide when to ask Becky.  I thought Christmas Day would be pretty good and was seriously hoping I hadn’t confused ‘good’ with ‘horribly kitschy and cliched’.  I toyed with a couple of ideas but decided I was pretty sure that I didn’t want the potential embarrassment of asking, and getting rejected, in front of my entire extended family (see the post here for details of what we were doing for Christmas), so it was Christmas Morning then – before we’d met everyone else.  So along came Christmas Morning and as we were opening the presents that my mother kindly supplied us with in our stockings, out came a little extra present.  I had earlier decided that the standard jeweller’s ring box was a little dull and obvious as well, so had elected to buy a little wooden draw that Becky and I had seen at the Christmas Market in Zurich and had thought was very nice, but completely useless.  As she unwrapped it, I explained that I thought I had found a use for it – and thankfully Becky agreed and the answer was ‘Yes’!

 
As we struggled to figure out which hand the engagement ring should go on, we decided it might be quite amusing to actually not mention anything to anyone and see how long it would take for people to realise.  Becky doesn’t wear much jewellery so we didn’t think it would take long with a number of eagle eyed female aunts and cousins, not to mention my sister and father.  However the only people that realised for pretty much the entire day were my cousin and his girlfriend who were staying in the same studio as us and confessed to actually overhearing.  It wasn’t until much later in the afternoon that one of my cousins realised what it was and then the proverbial cat was out of the bag.  One thing I hadn’t considered prior to deciding on when to propose, but that was a particularly nice fringe benefit, was that we had plenty of bottles of champagne already chilled for toasts before Christmas Dinner.

 
So there you go, for those that had been pressing for the story, hopefully you’re satisfied!  Now to go off and plan a wedding.

As is common in a lot of European countries, in Austria you first get ‘officially married’ in the equivalent of the registrar’s office, and then the ‘proper’ church wedding follows.  Andreas and Judit therefore had their official ceremony at the Standesamt in Perchtoldsdorf on Friday 7th August 2009.  Andreas had asked me to be his witness and so I turned up (late to my embarrassment) in the sweltering heat to witness the official part of the marriage.  Pertoldsdorf was very pretty and the weather was beautiful, which always helps on these occasions.  The ceremony went off without a hitch which was impressive considering neither I nor my counterpart (Judit’s witness) had any idea what we were doing!  After the ceremony it was off to a local ‘Heuriger‘ for a very nice meal and of course the required copious quantities of home grown wine and grappa!  The meal was a great opportunity to get to know the rest of the wedding party and other relatives who were there before the big day on Saturday.

The church ceremony was not until 15:00 on Saturday, so we had an opportunity to continue Becky’s half-marathon training with a run through the grounds of Schoenbrunn castle.  The weather was nice again, which made for one of the nicest runs I’ve ever been on (those of you that know me realise this isn’t saying much since running is really not one of my preferred sports).  The amazing views made sure we didn’t get bored and the change in elevation allowed for a diverse workout. 

Once we’d finished our run and got ourselves ready, we decided to head into the centre of Vienna where the church wedding was going to be held.  We were a couple of hours early, but thought it would be nice to have a wander around before hand and reacquaint ourselves with the city (we were last there for a day during the summer of 2008).  As the weather was extremely warm, we ended up doing less wandering and more sitting down eating ice cream – which was just as nice!  It being a wedding, we decided it was high time we had a drink and thankfully the restaurant we were in had a nice range of Sgroppinos (effectively ice cream cocktails) for us to try!

The ceremony took place in the Reformed Evangelical church on Dorotheergasse in the centre of Vienna.  The wedding was conducted in both German and Hungarian so everyone felt included (possibly with the exception of Becky who’s still working on her German).  Once the ceremony was over, it was off for the obligatory photo sessions – something I know Andreas had been dreading all day.  The church had a courtyard next to it which was perfect for the photos.

Once that was over, all the obligations had been taken care of and it was off to the restaurant for dinner and drinks.  The restaurant they had chosen (apparently after long, careful and above all frequent test dinners) was Hill in the 19th district of Vienna.  The restaurant was very nice and just the right size to accommodate everyone in their courtyard for an aperatif before dinner in the main restaurant later.  The food was exceptional, as were the cigars that accompanied the digestifs after the wedding cake.

We headed back to the hotel at the end of the reception happy and ready to go and explore Vienna before our flight home the next day.

For all the pictures we took at the wedding and those we took around Vienna, click here.

As you can probably see from the previous post, Becky was on summer holiday so spent most of the week in the UK attending parties, dinners and so on (alright for some isn’t it?) whereas I was at home earning a living instead!  However we had been invited to a wedding in the UK on Friday 17th July, so it was off to the airport for me on Thursday evening to fly over to Luton.  Becky picked me up from Luton and we headed back to Boddington for a short night’s sleep and then off down to Kent.

On the way we managed to go through every kind of weather the heavens could throw at us so all we could do was hope that the weather would be nice for Ruth and Tom’s big day.  I (and therefore of course Becky too) was at university with Tom, where both of us worked for TSG to help us earn enough cash to enjoy ourselves while there, and we’ve stayed in touch with Ruth and Tom since then, trying to catch up as often as we can make it over to London!  The wedding was to take place in Kent (more specifically Lenham) where Ruth’s mother’s farm is, so we had booked ourselves into a hotel in Lenham called The Dog and Bear.

Since we had made pretty good time, we had a little while to look around Lenham (if you know Lenham you’ll know that doesn’t take particularly long) before getting ready.  The ceremony took place in Chilston Park Hotel which was a lovely venue for the wedding.  It was clear from the ceremony that an awful lot of planning had gone into everything and it showed.  The ceremony was beautiful (impressive colour coordination) and went without a hitch – despite Jamie trying to bring the house down with his rendition of Edward Monkton’s ‘A Lovely Love Story’.  After the ceremony it was outside for a couple of glasses of champagne and the obligatory photos (nice of the weather to play along until this point).

The reception was then due to take place at Ashdown Farm in a large marquee that had been setup in front of the amazing view over the surrounding countryside that the farm commands.  Lunch was a fantastic hog-roast which definitely hit the spot and stopped the champagne from going to my head too much (although I’m not sure the wine with lunch helped all that much).  After lunch there were speeches and the theory was to have a bit of a wander around the surrounding country side (or play on the bouncy castle) however the weather had decided by this point that enough was enough and refused to allow anyone to venture far from the shelter of the marquee!  Afternoon then moved on to evening with a good spread of food throughout including the lovely cupcakes that formed the wedding cake – what a great idea!  The evening entertainment was provided by a couple of DJs (including Tom’s brother Ed) all belted out of a ridiculously over-spec Funktion One sound system (5k for a 100 capacity marquee?  Only with TSG in charge.) and supported by the lovely light and AV rig put together by Ben and Sue (also ex-TSG).

All in all a great wedding and so much fun to see everyone having so much fun.  Tom and Ruth jetted off the next day on their honeymoon while Becky and I decided we had time to spend Saturday in London – more of that to come later.

For all the pictures, check our photo album by clicking this link.

It’s always nice when two people choose to get married, so much nicer when they’re two good friends and they decided to have the wedding in Sweden!  We wasted no time in confirming out desire to attend, and so headed over on Friday evening after work (for me anyway, Becky of course was on holiday).

We flew into Arlanda and needed to get down to Soedertaelje where we were staying and where the wedding was taking place.  We arrived just in time to join the happy couple and friends and family for  dinner in Soedertaelje and then made our way to the hotel we were staying in, Hotell Torpa Pensionat, which conveniently was also where the wedding ceremony and reception were scheduled to take place.  The hotel was south of Soedertaelje and designed in a very Swedish style from the outside, then inside they had done up each and every room in a unique style, which made it a very interesting place to stay!

The ceremony was not due to take place until 16:00 on Saturday so we had all morning to explore what we could find of interest in Soedertaelje.  We decided to walk into town from the hotel which unfortunately was not the most scenic of walks (unless you particularly like looking at Scania plants).   Once there though, we found our way to the open air museum called Torekaellberget at the top of Bjorn Borg Promenade (not much more to say about the promenade apart from the name unfortunately!) and spent an hour or two wandering around.  It had many buildings constructed in typical Swedish style with employees wearing traditional dress and selling traditional wares.  It was all very pretty, and they had quite a collection of farm animals as well which kept Becky amused for a while.

After the museum we though we’d head into the centre of town and try to find Tom Tits Experiment (sic) – if for no other reason than it would give us an excuse to explore (oh, and the name is mildly amusing).  This gave us an excuse to walk through the centre of Soedertaelje which was quite nice (in a 60s/70s pedestrianised mall sort of way) and try a typical Swedish delicacy which we had been told about the night before, but had laughed off as some kind of a bad joke – a hot dog with mashed potato (or tunnbroedsrulle for those in the know)!  Unfortunately we went for a ‘French Hotdog’ to start with, which didn’t include mashed potato – so we had to ‘force’ ourselves to have another one – this time we chose properly!

Anyway, I’ve been going on and on without actually getting to the wedding!  After we’d finished investigating Soedertaelje we headed back to the hotel in time to get changed and attend the wedding.  Thankfully (and despite weather reports) the weather turned out to be dry, and even sunny at some points – which was great news considering the ceremony and reception were taking place outside in the garden of the hotel.  It was a beautiful setting and the couple looked very happy together, which is a good start considering they’re now going to spend the rest of their lives together!

Once the ceremony was over, everybody milled around socialising before heading inside for dinner.  Dinner was a traditional Swedish smorgasbord style buffet which gave us the opportunity to try many Swedish specialities.  Not least of which were various types of herring (one of my favourite parts of Swedish cuisine), salmon, elk and reindeer!  As usual at weddings, we ended up eating (and drinking – Akvavit was in abundance, as were the accompanying songs) far too much, but it was well worth it.  A very enjoyable reception which finished late on (with a swim in the canal in some cases) when everyone retired to bed.

All in all it was great fun being at the wedding and I can only hope the happy couple enjoyed it as much as everyone else seemed to!  On Sunday we headed off to Stockholm as we were spending Sunday night there so that we could explore Stockholm at our leisure as well as meet up with an old friend of mine; Volker Holdau!  More of that in a later post.

For all the photos of the wedding, please click here to check our photo album.

The first wedding of 2009 was cunningly timed to include a long weekend – just as well since the wedding was in Belgrade.  Labour day gave us the opportunity to have a nice relaxing morning, flying out from Zurich to Belgrade just after midday.  We were greeted at the airport by Chris (groom) and his parents-in-law along with a large sweet bread and bowl of salt, which is apparently a Serbian tradition.  There were twenty members of the wedding party on the same flight, so the assistance in organising taxis was greatly appreciated!  We were lucky that both of us made the flight due to Swiss overbooking, if there hadn’t been one jump seat place available, one of us (meaning me of course) would have had to fly via Munich, landing a couple of hours later on.

This being the first time either of us had been to Serbia, we thought we’d take full advantage of any spare time to do some sight seeing.  The weather seemed to want to cooperate, so as soon as we had checked in we headed out to wander around and take in the sights and sounds of Belgrade.  The hotel did not seem to have any maps, and the tourist information centre did not seem to be open, but thankfully the hotel was located right in the heart of Belgrade so we were quickly able to find our way to Knez Mihailova Street and from there further on to the Kalemegdan Fortress to admire the view of the city. 

After this little walk it was high time to rejoin the wedding party and head out to dinner.  This was an impressive feat, as there were 60 people to move from the hotel to the restaurants (they needed two as one was not big enough) as well as to feed!  The food was typical Serbian food, which suited us fine as we like to experience everything local when in a new country, and was a hearty meal.  This was also our first taste of Rakia – which was to feature quite heavily at the wedding the following day.

The wedding was not due to start until 13:00 on Saturday in Belgrade Cathedral, so we had the whole morning (or as much as was left of it after having a slow breakfast to recover from the excesses of the night before) to explore what more we could find in Belgrade without the aid of any tourist information!  We did quite well (or so we thought) and here are a couple of the sights we found:

Above: The Old Palace, currently the city assembly of Belgrade and the Palace of the Assembly of Serbia

Above: St Mark’s Church and the Monument to Karadorde in front of St Sava’s Temple

After a couple of hours of these sights and more, it was time to head back to the hotel and get ready for  the wedding.  Thankfully the cathedral was only a couple of minutes by foot from the hotel, so everyone seemed to manage to get there on time!  It was the first time I had been to an Orthodox Serbian church, let alone wedding, so it was a relief (probably a sentiment shared by the groom) that the service was done both in Serbian and in English.

After the relatively short service (this was probably much appreciated by the congregation as the there was no seating in the cathedral), it was off to the reception.  The reception took place in a large restaurant called Arinc Ranc about 30 minutes outside of Belgrade in a town called Pancevo.  The restaurant was filled by the wedding party and as soon as everybody was seated Dragan Nestorovic (father of the bride) started proceedings with his speech.  This was translated into English which was very useful as it also consisted of details on how the rest of the evening would continue – quickly summed up as: Drink and dance straight away, helping yourself to the huge selection of buffet food available whenever more energy is required.

This continued all afternoon and evening, with the food continuously being replaced with new courses, and the dance floor rarely empty.  In order to show the foreigners how it should be done, there was a professional dance group that performed some typical Serbian dances.  As the evening drew to a close we returned to the hotel very full and very happy.  I think I could get used to Serbian weddings!

For more pictures of the wedding, visit our photo gallery