Our First Post

Welcome to our blog!

We passed the ten-month-to-go mark about a week ago, and just about simultaneously started our serious planning for everything. Ten months, I think, seems like a lot of time, but every week tends to go by so fast, since we're both working loads and my program starts in a few weeks. So I'm sitting here wondering about the couples that manage to put everything together inside of six months... Although in our defense (defence?), we've got the whole international aspect to deal with, so that adds a few more tasks to the list.

We'll try to keep you as up-to-date as possible with what's going on in both the wedding plans and our lives. It's safe to assume that posts in English have been done by me, and those in German are from Mareike. We'll try to make sure that everything gets said in both languages, but I'm not promising an exact translation of everything; could this also be a learning experience for anyone reading from America? There might be a tax rebate in that, I'll look into it.

So right now we're in the middle of finding the perfect venue for our wedding reception. I've set down my request that I'd like to have the party either a) in the mountains, b) on the waterside or c) in the forest. I suppose I'm a bit demanding, but consider this: If you travel from our home 30 minutes by car in any direction, you will find yourselves smack-dab in the middle of a) the mountains, b) water, AND c) the (Black, not just any) Forest. If you don't believe me, get Google Earth and look for us in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany. The best way to describe our location is as a wine-and-mineral-bath haven at the foot of the Black Forest, slightly up the hill from the Rhine River. How could we not take advantage of that in our wedding plans???

Our first choice of location turned out to have a few too many costs attached to renting the hall, so we've started looking at a number of other places. Once we get serious about a few, I'll put up a link to their website, or some pictures of the places.

As far as a timeline, we'd like to have a venue chosen fairly soon, and a band and caterer before 2008 starts. We can formally register ourselves as an "engaged couple" with the city starting six months before our "Wunschdatum" of July 4th. This means we'll go to the City Hall on January 4th (or about then) and sign up for the date before 20 other couples do. This date is also important because starting then, I have six months to obtain all the necessary documents that certify I am a legitimate American citizen who is available for marraige, e.g. I don't already have a wife and two children back in the States who I've left behind for an Amazing German Woman. Six months is also, I suppose, a good time to get invitations sent out to America, since guests will need to book accomodation and travel to Europe if they want to celebrate with us. On that note, let us know if you're serious about wanting to come over. We won't be offended if you can't make it, and we're going to plan a less formal reception back home in the States a few weeks later as part of our honeymoon, so hopefully the American turnout will be great there! And we'll get to put on our wedding attire twice! That's getting our money's worth!

So, if you're reading along, I hope you'll enjoy our updates and stories along the way. We're both new to planning a wedding, and neither of us have lots of close friends with whose planning we've helped out (there's no way to avoid ending that clause with a preposition!), so hopefully this information will be useful to many of you in the future, or useful to us if you've been through this and have any suggestions! Thanks for reading!