Weddingbee Blog

As I’m completely internet dependent, I first turned to the web for help when I got engaged, and a whole new world opened for me. The ideas and the inspiration available to brides nowadays are endless there is one more beautiful than the other. I started saving anything that grabbed my attention. When I ended up spending hours per day checking out wedding inspiration and saving thousands of photos / bookmarks, I realised I had to snap out of it and give some structure to my ideas.

Even though in Italy it is not common to have a theme, I was drawn to the concept and I thought it would be a big help for me in narrowing down ideas and finally start making some wedding décor decisions. It was also a way to add an American touch to the wedding.

PRO NR. 1: Setting a theme can help narrow down ideas and provide cohesion
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Mr. Caro* and I decided upfront that we wanted our wedding to be in September. Since the proposal came in May 2010, it was not feasible to plan it for 2010—so September 2011 it was!

Source

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Nowadays it is very easy to share ideas and gather wedding inspiration from all over the world. However, regardless of the style and design choices, wedding customs and conventions are still very much local. (Yes, even weddings have gone glocal.)

At our wedding there will be guests from different countries and continents. They will all have different wedding expectations and will compare our wedding to what they are used to. Here is a small overview of what kind of expectations we might be dealing with:

Northern Europe

From what I’ve seen, in Northern Europe proposals and marriages are very underrated. There is not much pressure to get married to begin with, as many couples never get married at all. Engagement rings are often simple bands and the ceremony is a private affair where only close family participates. All the friends join later on in the evening (or even the day after) for a dinner plus disco-style dancing, which often goes on till the wee hours of the morning.
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In today’s globalized world it is more and more common for couples to be international. I think that having a partner who is from a different country is a great way to expand your horizons and to get to know different cultures. However, there are many drawbacks, like having to choose where to live, what language to raise your kids in, and…where to hold your wedding.

This was the first not so easy planning decision we had to make. I am a half-American/half-Italian living in Germany. He is from Belgium, living in Germany with me. We nixed the idea of having separate receptions in each country and considered each option.

1. Germany

Germany would be the most convenient option, both logistically and for the budget. But dealing with German vendors is very difficult for us because of our limited knowledge of the German language and because they are in general not very flexible. Plus, neither of us is from Germany. We decided this was not the right country for us.

If we had decided to remain in Germany for the wedding, we would have probably gone for the Schloss Gartrop as our venue and with Katja Heil as our photographer. See both in action below and here—so lovely!

Source photo 1 and 3, Source photo 2

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When I first got engaged I was completely clueless regarding weddings. I had always known I wanted to get married: I simply never pictured my wedding day. I never role-played a bride when I was a little girl. I never looked at wedding dresses imagining myself in one. I never wondered what kind of reception or ceremony I would want.

This is why at first I was totally lost and didn’t know where to start.

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In my real life, I am a product manager. This job fits me very well because I get to lead and coordinate projects, thus making the most of my natural predisposition toward planning, analysing, and organizing. In return, this job has helped me transform these traits into skills.

Since I’ve started planning my wedding, I’ve had enough time to regret that I didn’t choose to become a graphic designer, or stylist, or florist, or any other artsy professional whose skills would have really come in handy in the past few months…Still, some of my job tools can be useful for the organization and planning part.

In my experience, projects can easily become unmanageable: they tend to change and evolve in a way that the final result might be far from the desired result.

Source

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I’ll admit it: before that night in Germany when Mr. Carousel proposed, I never pictured myself wearing an engagement ring. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure if I wanted one.

Before you start thinking I’m so above it all, that all changed about five minutes after the proposal when Mr. Carousel asked me, “Shall we pick a ring together?” and I answered “Yes—tomorrow!” Suddenly I could hardly wait to have a ring on my finger. (My transformation into a wedding-obsessed bride-to-be was starting…)

During our crazy drive to Amsterdam to get ourselves an engagement ring, Mr. Carousel and I discussed my ring preferences. All I knew was that I wanted something elegant with a diamond, but I reassured Mr. Carousel that there would be no need to break the bank! We agreed that we would start by looking for something equal to half or less of Mr. Carousel’s monthly salary.

We started at the Diamond Museum (neither of us knew anything about diamonds, so we figured it was a good place to begin), and that’s where we found the perfect ring: elegant, classy, sweet, beautiful, and…modest.

Please excuse the clumsiness of the pics. We’re totally amateurs.

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I knew Mr. Carousel was getting around the concept of marriage when he started mentioning how much sense it would make tax wise to make our relationship “official.” But the proposal itself was very romantic, sweet, and spontaneous.

We decided to celebrate my birthday by spending the weekend in a beautiful resort in Sauerland, an area in Germany famous for forests, lakes, and protected wildlife areas.

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At least is was for us! But it wasn’t love at first sight. We met at work in 2007, but in the beginning we were just colleagues who barely knew each other. I don’t even remember the first time we met! At the time I was still working in Milan and he was in Brussels.

But when I got promoted and relocated to Germany, suddenly we were working together a lot more! That was when I became infatuated with Mr. Carousel. I realised that he was not only an excellent worker, but also a sweet, funny, and good person.

However, I was trying hard to hide my crush since I didn’t want to come off as unprofessional. And, as any good developer, Mr. Carousel was so focused on his tasks that he didn’t notice a thing. (Me becoming as red as a tomato every time he’d catch me looking at him? Nothing. My thoughts wandering every time we’d have a conversation and having to ask him multiple times to repeat himself? He thought he was bad at explaining things.)

And then came the night that changed our lives: Mr. Carousel was in Germany for work and asked some colleagues out for dinner. As fate would have it, everyone else had plans, so it was only him and me. Our work dinner turned out to be the best first date either of us had: we had such a great time that it came naturally to end the evening with a kiss.

We then started dating and after a magical weekend in Amsterdam we were totally in love with each other. We have been together since February 2009 and, tired of the back and forth our long-distance relationship entailed, we moved in together in November 2009. He proposed in May 2010, but that’s another story. 

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Hello everyone! Greetings from Germany! I am so happy and still a bit amazed to be here.

The other night Mr. Carousel and I were just getting ready to go to bed when, by habit, I checked my mail for the last time of the day. Well, what do you know—there was an email from a Weddingbee email address! A million thoughts went through my mind, so I just opened it and had to read it at least three times before realizing it was an acceptance letter!!

I sort of gasped, and then started giggling and hugging my FI: it had been a LONG time since I’d been that giddy! It took me about another 20 minutes to actually read through the whole email and respond to Mrs. Penguin that I would be happy and honoured to be Miss Carousel.

Why Miss Carousel? Lots of reasons, but mainly because:
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