In much of the English-speaking world, the high point of a wedding (or low point, depending on your perspective) is the speeches.
In Germany, on the other hand, there isn’t really an equivalent tradition.
No father-of-the bride-speech, which is the one meant to make people cry.
No groom’s speech, usually the slightly boring one in which the poor man has to spend ten minutes thanking everyone from his grandma to the florist, before remembering to say that his new wife is the most beautiful woman in the world and – crucially – has made him want to be a better man.
And no best man’s speech, which is meant to make people laugh and usually succeeds for all the wrong reasons.
Instead of speeches, Germany tends to double-down on a frankly bizarre variety of “games”.
READ ALSO: What rights do I have if I'm married to a German citizen?
My German wife warned me this might happen before our wedding. I naively assumed she meant the kind of games guests play at an English wedding to pass the time: betting on the length of the speeches, for example, or agreeing to drink a finger of wine whenever a certain word like “love” or “wife” crops up.
So I was taken completely by surprise when my new sister-in-law hauled me and my bride onto a makeshift stage, then presented us with a very professional-looking spade and a treasure map.
The map was incomplete. We had to earn the missing pieces by answering a series of excruciatingly personal questions. My English family and friends looked on in bewildered horror. Twelve years later, some of them claim they’re still traumatised by the revelations.
The treasure map eventually led us outside to a nearby strip of scrubland. My wife handed me the spade and I began to dig, eventually uncovering a beautifully decorated box containing half a dozen bottles of wine.
The wine was welcome. If I’d have known, though, I probably wouldn’t have spent quite so much money on a brand-new shirt, as soft as a cloud and as white as the driven snow.
Having attended several weddings in Germany since, I've been able to establish that this wasn’t a plot conceived and planned specifically with me in mind.
“Games”, featuring the bride and groom, have a long tradition at German weddings – and they're often a lot more challenging than a simple, albeit shirt-destroying treasure hunt.
Here are a few of my favourites.
Log sawing (Baumstamm sägen)
Another one certain to ruin suits and dresses. A log is produced (I’ve seen one the width of a loo seat) and the happy couple are given a long, two-handled saw. Intended to represent the sense of co-operation the bride and groom will strive for in their marriage, they have to pull and push together to prevent the saw from jamming.
This game takes forever and is almost guaranteed to initiate the bride and groom’s first argument as a married couple.
Cutting a wedding heart out of a blanket (Hochzeitsherz ausschneiden)
Another well-established and (metaphorically) blood-thirsty game involves the bride and groom cutting a heart out of a blanket or bedsheet. On the one occasion I’ve seen this game in action, the couple were both given a pair of nail scissors to make it even more challenging. The game descended almost immediately into a frantic race to see who could finish their half first.
READ ALSO: The rules foreigners should know about German church weddings
The bride’s friends went wild when their champion won, which I think might have been against the intended spirit of the game.
Pencil-in-the-bottle (Bleistift-in-die-Flasche)
One string is tied around the groom’s waist and another around the bride’s waist, with a pencil dangling from the end so it hangs behind them. The goal is to squat, sway and wiggle until the pencil drops straight down into the opening of a glass bottle on the floor beneath the participants.
There are other traditions, of course – underwear is burned in Münster, wreaths are woven in East Frisia, hay is strewn in Goethe’s Faust, and brides are kidnapped in Bavaria – but these are the ones I’ve seen with my own eyes.
Oddly, the games seem stranger described like this than they do in real life. They may lack the elegance of a well-turned phrase, and leave the participants sweaty, red-faced, and out for blood, but they still serve much the same purpose as speeches at a wedding in the English-speaking world.
A chance for friends and family to tease the bride and groom, and for the bride and groom to show they don’t take themselves too seriously. And a chance for the happy couple to get up in front of all their guests and feel the love (armed with a metre-long saw in one hand and a tiny pair of scissors in the other).
READ ALSO: 10 things you need to know about German weddingsÂ
Comments