Incorporating Culture: Austrian Style
January 19, 2012
You probably know by now that my fiancé is Austrian but I bet you didn’t know that I am actually half Austrian! Because of this, it’s very important to me to make references to our heritage and incorporate a bit of the culture in to our wedding…without conjuring up too many images of this infamous movie:
(credit)
In one of my early discussions with our wedding coordinator, she excitedly suggested that our favors could be displayed on a table with a sign saying “These are a few of our favorite things” and that the packaging could be brown paper and strings. Get it? Well, I as the American did but the Austrian did not. In fact, he has never seen The Sound of Music and neither have any of his family or friends. We clearly had to scratch that idea but this is what I imagine our packaging could have looked like:
With that idea shelved, I thought about using Lebkuchenherzen (gingerbread hearts) as escort cards. They’re usually displayed in the below fashion and if we personalized them with guests’ names and their assigned table numbers for a seating chart, it could create some very interesting visual impact.
They could also be used as place settings and/or double as favors for the guests to take home:
(credits)
The problem with the hearts is that they are usually rock hard and don’t taste that great so they could really only be used for the looks. Christian isn’t a huge fan of the idea of using them because he said it reminds him too much of the countryside (he’s from the city), so I’ve also put this idea aside.
Another idea we tossed around was asking all of our Austrian guests to wear their Dirndl and Lederhosen to the wedding. Don’t know what drindl or lederhosen are? Check out this picture of Christian’s family and me from a summer party last year. Cute, right? The hills are alive….
(personal photo)
However, we once again decided not to execute this idea because a) we don’t want the Austrian guests to feel like we’re asking them to wear the clothes just to amuse the other guests (this was Christian’s main concern as they would normally never wear dirndl and lederhosen to a wedding in Vienna) and b) dirndl and lederhosen can be very heavy and I didn’t want to “force” anyone in to packing them with the risk of having to leave other things behind (or not be able to shop as much).
You might be asking yourself what we actually have decided on doing. I will leave those details as a surprise but I can assure you that we have some very fun things planned. I can’t wait to share them with you in less than 3 months! :) Are there any multi-culti brides out there? How did you incorporate different cultures in to your celebration?
When I got married this past August, we incorporated our Italian and his Scottish heritage. As favors, we gave homemade scottish shortbread cookies and we had many Italian dishes at our cocktail hour, in addition to our first song being in Italian, Italian after dinner drinks and sodas served and also had Italian desserts. My husband is also part French so we incorporated a cheese course as a dessert option into the menu.
I have an idea…why not. serve a traditional Austrian salad or dish made or drizzled with steirisches kürbiskernöl, pumpkin seed oil,or also known as “Green Gold.” I am part Austrian myself and the oil is so delicious. It’s funny, I had never heard of it until a friend from Austria gave me some (his family owns a pumpkin farm).
I’d love to hear what you decide!! Also, I LOVE the Sound of Music, it is my favorite film!!
3 months?! That is SO SOON! Exciting : )
Wow, it sounds like you have some amazing ideas that you two have tossed around. I am sure that you and Christian will surprise and impress all your guests with whatever you decide!
I also tried to incorporate heritage into our wedding, with Tony being 100% Greek and me being 50% Italian and 50% Persian. We incorporated this through music, food and favors. Our food consisted of Persian, Italian and Greek food (salads, pasta, kabobs, etc) set up at food stations. We did a few traditional Greek dances, as well as some Persian dances. One of our favors was Greek candies in addition to some other things that expressed our personality. We were not extremely creative with how we incorporated our heritages, but I do feel they were with us through food and music!
Good luck!!
@ Vanessa- I love that you used food and drinks to highlight your diverse heritage! I’ll give you a little hint, we’re also using food as one way to showcase ours :) PS: Pumpkin seed oil is the best, isnt it?!
@ Keri- OMG I know!!! Exciting and scary too (only scary bcs time flies by so fast)!
@ Roushan- I would have loved to see the dances! I bet they were amazing!!! What you did sounds creative enough to me, it sounds fabulous! xxx
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I think the best way to incorporate other cultures at a wedding is through the food! At my mom’s birthday party last year, we threw a Polish feast to celebrate our heritage, and we were a little nervous that people wouldn’t like some of the more unusual items. Turns out, people raved about it! They loved the opportunity to try something new, and it really made the party unique. :)