Castle Wedding!

Martin's office mate just got married at Schloss Lichtenberg, which is located just south of Frankfurt in the village of Fischbachtal. So we got to attend our first wedding in a castle! It was, unfortunately, pouring rain with a bit of gusty winds the entire time we were at the wedding (all 10.5 hours, gotta love German weddings that go all night) so we didn't get many nice pictures outside. We also didn't take a tour of the inside of the castle, so, we are also lacking indoor pictures. But I took a few!

Here we are standing outside of the castle before the wedding began. This was the best we could do in the wind.



And a pic of the awesome weather from the room the wedding reception was in in the castle:



The bride rode up to the castle in an Aston Martin. Not caring the least about cars, I didn't even include the whole thing in this picture (sorry, was focused on the bride and groom) but I've been told the car was really nice. I think the wedding started late because they had to wait for a break in the rain before they could drive up with the top down...



The bride and groom walking down the aisle together.



After a brief ceremony in a small room of the castle, we were treated to a lot of Sekt, both alone and mixed with various juices, plus this lovely little table of goodies. These got us through the ~3 hours between the wedding ceremony and the reception.



Here we are enjoying this 3-hour break. It was actually really nice - we had several friends at the wedding, plenty to eat and drink, and a castle to enjoy.



The bride and groom were given many gifts and speeches and presentations throughout the evening. Here is the cousin of the groom gifting them with beach chairs and beachy drinks for their honeymoon to Cuba and The Bahamas. Germans are extremely creative with their gifts. Every gift we saw put every gift we've ever given for a wedding to shame.



Here, look at this creative gift:



The mother, aunt, and cousin of the bride put together a slide show complete with rhyming commentary interspersed with singing and piano playing (the mother and aunt sang while the cousin played the piano). It was a full half hour long and a) they had really nice voices and b) at the end, the parents of the groom and father of the bride joined them as well and they sang to the couple and it was really beautiful. Germans have so many thoughtful things like this in their weddings. There's always at least a few singing performances from friends and family.  There was a singing "flash mob" at this wedding as well, but I didn't get that on video since everybody had to participate in it.

There was a photo booth and a few other little entertaining things to do throughout the evening.



And the cake! To be honest, the icing was a bit too much especially after we had eaten so much throughout the afternoon and evening.  Every course, including dessert, had been a buffet so naturally we had overdone it with the eating by the time the cake was cut.  But look how big the pieces they were cutting were!



And finally, a picture looking back up to the castle that we took as we were talking out to the car around midnight (we left before the dancing had even begun!):