While each wedding was different, after 3, all within a 4 week stretch, I'm glad there aren't any more on the horizon.
Before going to Seattle, I first stopped off in Vancouver to visit some cousins and take advantage of being in the neighborhood. While visiting Granville Island I went into a hat shop and found a really fun fascinator. I'd seen them at other weddings in France and thought it would be fun to wear one to the three weddings this summer, especially since they were three different groups of friends.
In Seattle, I went to the bride and groom's house for a backyard party on Friday evening with other guests who'd come from out of town. While almost all the American friends left by 10pm, I stayed on with the Lebanese friends and three American friends the bride met when she was studying in Paris. When the couple needed to go to bed, we took the party to the rooftop lounge of one of the local friends. On Saturday the wedding was held at the Yacht Club and was appropriately chic without being snobby. I expected other women to be wearing fascinators, but I was the only one! Everyone commented on how elegant and French/English it was. At 5:30 the short ceremony started, followed by a cocktail hour and receiving line. Dinner was from about 7 to 10pm, and then a few tables were cleared to make way for the dancing. During the meal there were some really nice speeches as well as a great movie put together by friends who could not be present. At midnight the Yacht Club closed, but the bride and groom and a group of friends were motivated to keep the party going longer. Before leaving the club the wedding organizer invited us to take center piece bouquets because they were to be trashed, so I took her up on the offer. We piled into cars, drove downtown Seattle to a club, and danced and drank until 2am when the clubs and bars closed. I got about 10 congratulations on my marriage (beige dress + fascinator + flowers in hand) which was a lot of fun, and one drunk guy even mistook a friend of the groom's as my new husband! After some hotdogs purchased on the street at 2am, everyone agreed it was still too early to stop the party, so we went back to the rooftop lounge. After some more wine and general goofing around 7 of us piled into a 5 seat BMW to be dropped off at our hotels at 4:30am. Two of the American friends who had joined the after party on Friday evening stayed with the party (the 3rd had to leave for the airport) but almost all of the other guests were Lebanese. I couldn't believe that the American friends who had flown in from New York or other places just went home at midnight! As I told the bride and groom "I didn't come this far to call it a night at 10pm/midnight/2am!" Sunday I met up with the same group of friends and the married couple for general shenanigans around Seattle. Only one extra American friend joined us for part of the afternoon.
Two weeks later, B and I went to his former colleague's wedding (the one I did the bachelorette with). Waiting outside city hall in the small town south of Toulouse there were at least 15 women wearing either a hat or a fascinator. "Ah, I wasn't crazy, this is clearly a French wedding thing," I thought to myself. After the regular civil ceremony in the too-small room (why can't city halls ever have a room large enough to accommodate everyone?) we crossed the street to the church. In homage to the bride's Catholic Italian family, they had a ceremony in church. The priest turned out to be ultra conservative and made the whole thing sententious. The vin d'honneur and reception were held in a 19th century building near the Canal du Midi with some nice garden areas around it. After the Yacht Club's pathetic attempt to coordinate wine with each dish, it was really nice to have good wine with good French food. B and I were pleasantly surprised by the catering since there were just over a 100 guests. There weren't really any speeches during the meal, just the bride's sister who said some words and later came back to play a song on the guitar that was a family tradition. To accompany the pièce montée/desserts we were to have some Champagne. The DJ had the bride and groom begin to service the Champagne by pouring it into the top glass of a pyramid of Champagne flutes to a techno re-mix of the theme from Pirates of the Caribbean. I didn't dance much because the DJ only played French hits from the 70's and 80's (Claude François, Dalida, etc) and when I asked him for Counting Stars by OneRepublic he didn't know who they were...
Seven days later, B and I were up in Loire-Atlantic for the last wedding of the summer. After almost forgetting my fascinator at the hotel, I was surprised to discover outside the city hall that I was again the only woman wearing anything resembling a hat (so maybe it's only a southern thing?). Again, there were too many guests for the small room, so they opened the windows and some guests looked in from the outside. The groom's mother is an Adjoint-Maire, so she did the ceremony and let them personalize it to a great extent. A godson and 4 different witnesses/friends either spoke or helped out in the ceremony. The bride's mother said a few words as well. The couple didn't do any religious ceremony, so it was nice to see that the wedding wasn't just the mayor reciting the laws relating to marriage. The vin d'honneur and reception were on the grounds of a chatêau near Guérande. During the meal the friends and siblings of the couple presented slide-shows/Power Point about the bride and groom growing up and then meeting each other. There was also a trivia game made up by some of the groom's friends. Before serving the dessert, the DJ had the bride and groom come forward to pour Champagne into the top flute of a pyramid of flutes. B and I were surprised to see the same animation when the DJ started playing a techno re-mix of the theme from Pirates of the Caribbean! French weddings have similarities of course, but we were flabbergasted to see the exact same Champagne ceremony with the exact same music hundreds of kilometers away. The DJ played practically the exact same playlist as the previous week, so B and I felt a bit "been there, done that...". We carpooled with some friends during the wedding weekend, so we waited it out till 3am when the others wanted to leave. Sunday we returned to the chatêau for "brunch" (which turned out to be pain au chocolat and coffee followed by various cold salads and sliced roast beef; I was a bit disappointed there were no omelets or fruit salads).
Some general observations about American and French weddings:
- Americans seem to let the professional photographers do their work. During the ceremony few people took pictures with their phones or personal cameras. Both French weddings had professional photographers but lots of guests were clicking away anyway, even following the couple with the photographer to their post-ceremony photo shoot in a garden in Pornichet.
- All men had ties and all women were in dresses for the American wedding. Both French weddings had some guests tie-less (and even in short sleeves or non dress-shirts) or women in pants (more capris, not at all pant-suits).
- I don't want to say Americans don't like to party, but they either feel they would be imposing if they stayed late or they feel uncomfortable stepping out of their regular schedule to party late into the night. I had great fun at the Seattle wedding mainly because the Lebanese friends kept the momentum to keep partying.
- Both French weddings provided babysitters and areas for young children to play and then sleep at the reception.
- French parents didn't go home early because they came with kids. I saw families at the Toulouse wedding with kids still awake at 2am. I assume their Sunday was rather rough and the kids pretty grumpy, but they didn't let it stop them from having a good time.
- Still related to kids, during both French wedding ceremonies kids made noise or cried and no parents rushed out the back to hush the child. Some of the kids were kind of obnoxious at times (rolling around on the floor, running around, whining, etc) but hiring a baby-sitter for the 3 year old was clearly not a necessity for French parents. The only young child related to the Seattle wedding (son of the matron of honor) was not seen at all at the wedding.
- Both French couples have already purchased a house together and one of the brides is 4 months pregnant. The American couple lived together for just more than 6 months before the wedding but are renting.
But I would hate to put together a fun event and for my American friends to go home at 9pm. And the idea of trying to get a party going with my dad's family, my mom's family, family friends and my personal friends would require so much hostessing and schmoozing on my part that I wouldn't have much fun, and there's no point having a second reception I don't enjoy. Retaining complete artistic control of the event (i.e. footing the bill) is important to me since I couldn't control things my in-laws or my parents were paying for during the original reception, but this would mean setting aside an amount of money that could otherwise be used for a piano, a trip to Japan, or part of a down payment.
Maybe instead of a do-over wedding reception I can convince a group of friends to vacation with us in the Caribbean...
3 comments:
I'm often quite surprised by the way people dress for French weddings. Jeans seem to be quite common, and standing outside the mairie the other day, I saw a wedding guest come out wearing flip-flops!
I too was surprised by the early finish at the American wedding I went to this summer, though the younger guests continued at a bar after the venue closed. I warned my brother that French weddings last till around 4 am (if not later) and he said, "Oh I'll just go to bed earlier." Why on earth would you come all that way if you're not going to milk the experience??
It's funny how once you get used to the later evening events here, things seem so short and early in the states. But I also like sleep, and I get so cranky when I'm up late, sometimes it's better for me to leave early rather than being grumpy with everyone.
At our wedding, the American guests all stayed until after 2. The DJ was totally on fire though, so that helped I think. I had made it very clear to him we would NOT be wanting the standard "1970s French Wedding Mix" lol.
We didn't cut the cake until 1 I think (to "Pour some sugar on me," now I wonder if people were expecting Pirates, haha), and I had told people before when to expect the cake, so they could go home right after if they wanted. My parents did, as did a few people who had further to drive home.
We had a few events (=going to bars and eating pizza) the days before the wedding to get the Americans and French people together, so "trying to get a party going" wasn't really an issue. So don't give up on the idea if that's what you're worried about! The good DJ definitely helped a lot on that front too though, as did a verrry carefully planned seating chart. French friends drove the Americans from the mairie to the venue, so even more franco-american bonding time.
I sometimes think about how what we spent on the wedding could have been for something else, but the memories are seriously so awesome, and it was a chance for my friends to make some of their own with a trip to Europe, so I think it was totally worth it.
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