The Wedding

2 weeks ago we were invited to Ben's brother's wedding. It was really different for me as Australia has different rules at a wedding than Austria. Ben was part of the bridal party a thing we don't have in Austria. It doesn't matter what kind of dress you are wearing in Austria, the maid of honor or the bridesmaids can wear whatever they feel like. Well here it is different. You have the bridal party which means the groom has the best man and 3 other friends he chooses to be his groomsmen. They all wear the same suit. The bride has her maid of honor and 3 bridesmaids who all wear the same dress provided by the bride. These 8 people will stand next to the bride and the groom during the ceremony.

Since Ben was a groomsman we didn't go to the church together. He was there way before I was. It was kind of a difficult situation for me because I don't know many people in his family. So I was just sitting by myself during the ceremony. The service was really short and over in only 30 minutes. The bride was just stunning and I adored her dress. Afterwards I did not get a chance to be with Ben either. He had to leave with the bridal party for photos for about 2 hours. Until I saw him again I went to a pub with Ben's uncle and his cousins. It was a good 2 hours, where we had a few drinks and chatted about all my experiences in Australia. Finally at 6 pm it was time to go to the restaurant. The view was amazing and the food was outstanding. I enjoyed the speeches as we don't have anything like that in my home country. It is a good way to get to know the bridal pair and it was really funny at times. What I did not like as much was that I wasn't even sitting next to my partner. He was seated at the bridal table with his brother and his new wife. He came over as much as he could, but I would have rather sat next to him. I don't really like the rule of having the bridal party which obviously had an advantage on some things (they were able to choose their food out of a menu, got food between the photoshoot and the reception). Because then you have the partners of the people in the bridal party that most of the times don't know anyone at the wedding and are left on their own devices (and sit by themselves with people they have never seen before). I had the advantage that I knew Ben's cousins and was sitting with them. So if I ever have a wedding some time then I will exclude that rule and just have Austrian customs.

New for me was also that the wedding finished at 11.30pm. In Austria you celebrate until the next day, no one goes home before 4am. You have lots of games and where everyone can take part and you dance to a band that plays everything starting from rockn'roll, modern music over to polka and waltz. In this case we danced to Britney Spears and LMFAO. The older people did obviously not really know how to dance to "I'm sexy and I know it". So it was more entertaining for the younger crowd. I really enjoyed my night and I had lots of fun. I wish I was with my boy a lot more times but we did the best we could.