Wedding Planning|Wedding Planning & Wedding Advice

Today we start a new continuing feature here at weddingsetups.com: a look at wedding traditions from around the world. You can use these articles to honor your family’s heritage during your wedding ceremony, wherever it takes place. Or, you can celebrate the bride or groom’s culture during a pre-wedding party (an article with ideas for these parties will follow).

German Wedding Traditions

Festive Felony

In the smaller villages, the bride may be ‘kidnapped’. The groom looks for her in the local pubs, often picking up the tab for all of the customers or inviting them along in the search.

Housewrecker

There is a house party before the wedding that ends with all of the dishes getting smashed for good luck. The “lucky” bride and groom have to clean up the mess.

German Wedding Food

The bride and groom snack on bread when they first arrive at their home after the wedding, to symbolize that they will never go hungry.

Wedding Cake

The traditional wedding cake is Baumkuchen, which is often made in stacked rings but can also come in the shape of a rectangular cake or small squares. The one below is from konditorei-werner.de, warning: if you visit this site it will make you want to fly to Germany for some dessert!

German Wedding Attire

Tasty Accessories

Traditionally, the bride carries bread and salt to symbolize a good harvest and the groom carries grain, which is a symbol for good luck and health. This is also an aspect of traditional Polish Weddings, to read all about them please visit polishwedding.blogspot.com – a very useful and informative source. Photo: Polishwedding.blogspot.com.

Yes, but how far can you throw it?

In Germany the bride passes her veil on to the next woman to be married, rather than throwing the bouquet.

German Wedding Decorations

Sharing a Cup

Another tradition is for the bride and groom to drink from a special cup that lets them both drink at the same time. This is based on the “Legend of the Maiden Bridal Cup” and you can buy one of the beautiful cups at mayhemltd.com.This cup would also make a thoughful gift to the bride from the groom. The cup, and it’s beautiful story could also be used to propose!

Flower Horse Power

In Germany, real flowers are used to decorate the cars, rather than the ribbons, bows, and plastic flowers often used in North America.

Important German Words

Wedding: Hochzeit

Bride: Braut

Groom: Brautigam

Flower Motifs in Wedding Decorations

Fresh flower arrangements, bouquets, and boutonnieres – flowers play a big role in your wedding (and, possibly, your budget!). However, a Spring or Summer wedding can also include flowers in other decorating ideas as well.

Tips: Pick one type of flower and stick with it. If you do this, the flower can become a symbol for your big day and a subtle theme for all aspects of your wedding. Do not mix and match different flowers unless they are from the same group (i.e. wildflowers), and even then be very careful.

White Rose Fabric

Consider using the flower as a subtle design on some decorations – a raised pattern of white roses on a white background would be the kind of elelgant detail that people notice. For example, use a print like this one from cloaksofireland.com for the table linens (if the rose has a slight sheen to it and the background fabric is matte, it will be more noticeable.)

White Rose Petals

Use flower petals to decorate the church or reception hall. You can use fresh petals or purchase fabric petals, like these from wholesaleflowerandsupplies.com.

White Rose Stamps

You can include rose motifs right down to the smallest details, like using these stamps from zazzle.com on your invitations.

The Bride and Bloom

Tip: Keep in mind that even a white rose can have very different looks. Try to stick with the same shade of white and the same style so that your wedding doesn’t start to look unorganized.

Rose Wedding Favor

This delicate looking rose candle holder from hotref.com is made from resin and clear rhinestones (it includes the candle).

White Chocolate Rose Wedding Cake

A delicious and delightful white chocolate cake adorned with roses, from justscrumptious.co.uk.

DIY Delicious

You can make your own white roses from modeling chocolate, instructions at pastrychef.com. Leave them at each place setting as an edible decoration, or nestle each delicate rose in a favor box and send the guests home with one. Apparently, you can make them months ahead of time as long as you store them in a cool, dry location.

Get Crafty!

Add some activities to a bridal shower to make it more fun. If you give everyone something to do with their hands you’ll have less awkward small talk and more fun overall – particularly if your guest list is made up of a bunch of people who won’t know each other very well. These ideas could work at a bachelorette party too, depending on the tone of the event.

Ring Fling

Provide an assortment of materials and let guests craft their own engagement ring. Offer prizes for the most outrageous, most realistic, etc. Raid your craft supplies – if you’re not a big craft nerd like me, you can also go to a dollar store or craft store and pick up: metallic-colored pipe cleaners, large beads, ribbons, glitter glue, and whatever else you see that will work.

Check out this impressive looking ring from craftbits.com (visit the site for a tutorial).

Garter Fun

Everyone makes their own garter and then make all the guests wear it out on the stagette, if you like! Or everyone could make one and then the bride picks which one she will actually wear at the wedding.There’s a tutorial at applebride.com. Another option, buy simple and inexpensive garters for every guest and then ask them to decorate them instead. This is a quick and easy activity that could start off a fun evening. Garters should include the guests name or role in the wedding and the decorations will serve as an icebreaker when everyone is mingling at the party. It’s also a cheeky way to identify everyone in the group if you are heading downtown for the second half of the evening.

A plain white garter at koyalwholesale.com is only $2.99 (while on sale). Ideas for decorations: feathers, flowers, felt hearts (or other shapes), beads, gems, lace, ribbons, charms, etc. Also consider buying some fabric pens or self-applicating paint.

The garter pictured below is from mypromstyle.com.

Tampon Brides

Each guest makes a bride from a tampon for a fun craft activity that promotes lots of laughter and female bonding. Provide the following materials: tampons, glue gun, paint, pipe cleaners, yarn, embroidery thread, cardboard, glitter glue, beads, etc. This craft was inspired by the infamous Tampon Angel – I was pleasantly suprised to find a whole website dedicated to tampon crafts (tamponcrafts.com- their angel is pictured below).

Here are some great ideas for wedding favors that you can make yourself! A great way to set your wedding apart from the rest – when you make your own favors they can be truly unique and customized to your character as a wedding couple. You can also save a lot of money!

Sweet Deals

Check online for stores that sell wholesale chocolate and buy your candy favors in bulk. For example, you can get a 6 pound box of delicious almond bark at candywarehouse.com. Available in white, dark, or milk chocolate – if you need more than one box, mix it up so that you can offer a selection to each guest.

You can buy favor bags and boxes online as well, or check out your local dollar store, craft store, or discount department store for sales. Sandscripts.com offers a wide variety of fabric bags, gift bags, and gift boxes. You can also order customized ribbon for your event for a very reasonable price.

Cookie Cutter Wedding

Another idea – invite a few of your friends over for a cookie crafternoon. Bake the cookies beforehand if possible, and then get together to decorate and package the goods with your friend (ask them to bring over some bottles of wine to get the creative juices really flowing). Check out sweetopia for instructions for these beautiful butterfly cookies, as well as lots of general tips and links to other online resources for cookie decoration.

If you’re not confident about your cookie skills – bake and decorate simple cookies instead and then focus on presentation, instead.

Or, buy cookie cutters in bulk, attach your favorite recipe and your wedding date with a beautiful ribbon, and you’re done (no baking required!). Tip: buy the cookie cutters from an online cookie cutter store rather than a specialty wedding store for better prices! Check out cookiecutter.com for lots of options: flowers for a spring wedding, hearts, brides and grooms, etc.

I was recently in a candy store that had an old collection of PEZ dispensers on display and saw a PEZ version of a bride and groom, which I thought would make an excellent wedding cake topper for the couple with a sweet tooth.

Here is an example of a bride and groom PEZ couple.

Good luck getting this one on your cake, the original sells for about $3500 now according to an article at money.cnn.com.

You can get re-issues of this PEZ design – check ebay or pezcollectors.com – as of writing this article they both had a set available for around $20.00.

In fact an entire sweet theme, would be kind of – well, sweet.

Set up a candy station

You can select candies that match your wedding colors and let guests fill up their own goodie bags as tasty wedding favors!

Visit ohnuts.com for great tips for how to set up your own candy station.

ohnuts.com

Personalized Sweets

An Australian company will make you personalized candy (the candy below says Ben ‘hearts’ Renee).

sticky.com.au

Or use candy as the centerpieces for your tables instead of flowers

www.wanderfuls.com

Check out this candy wedding cake

The perfect foundation for a sweet wedding cake topper, from the very talented people at Cakelava. Check out their blog for a taste of all the great cakes they make!

Favor everyone with a kiss

Another wedding favor idea – a large Hershey’s Kiss at each place setting. At under 30 dollars for eighteen kisses, this is a very affordable wedding favor.

candywarehouse.com

Another option from Hershey’s…

wrappedhersheys.com

Gifts for the wedding party

Dylan’s Candy Bar has yummy jewelry at their online store. Here are just two examples to whet your appetite.

dylanscandybar.com

dylanscandybar.com