A Danish Wedding

Yesterday was the reason for this trip - the wedding of S's brother. 

The wedding was held in Frederiksborg Castle Church.  The castle is a Danish royal castle and the church is still one used by the royal family, in fact the younger of the two Danish princes married his first wife there.  As you can imagine, it isn't the easiest place to get married in, but the bride's family is from the local village and she was baptised there, so she could get married there.  And to be honest, if you could get married in a stunning royal church, wouldn't you?

It is the first time I've attended a wedding in another country and it was really interesting to see the differences.  The ceremony was quite similar and apart from the hymns was conducted in English for the benefit of the Australians.  The main difference was where people sat/stood at various points and that the couple only said the word "yes", not "I do" or repeated any vows etc.

After the wedding we wandered the grounds of the castle but it was pretty cold so we headed for the reception in a restaurant attached to the church.  It was there that we found out more of the Danish wedding traditions.  When the guests bang their cutlery on the plate the bride and groom had to stand on their chairs and kiss.  When everyone stomped their feet they had to kiss under the table.  If the bride left the room then all the female guests could kiss the groom and vice versa.  And finally at the end of the night, all the women tore bits off the bride's veil for good luck (all I could think was I hope it wasn't expensive - it wasn't, she made it herself) and the guys cut the toes off the grooms socks which apparently the bride is meant to sew on in a year's time.

The other outstanding thing about the wedding was the amount of food and dancing.  Drinks were accompanied by nibblies of puff pastry type normal things and bacon.  Yup, big bits of dry, crispy (cold) bacon.  It was delicious.

Entree was cod with a mustard cream sauce.  Main was venison en croute with red cabbage, spinach tart, potatoes and gravy.  Once you finished your plate they came around with more venison etc for seconds!  Dessert was a strawberry tart with mascapone icecream and then there was the wedding cake.  It was a cornucopia of almond pastry filled with biscuits and chocolates.  Delicious.  But it didn't end there.  At about 1am when the dancing had been going strong (more on that in a sec) a whole range of bread, cold cuts, terrines and cheese was brought out for people to make the traditional open faced sandwiches known as smorgesbrot.  We were super full by the end of the night.

Speeches were made throughout dinner and they were all lovely.  After dessert, we all got up from the tables and moved into the next room for the cutting of the cake.  During that time, the whole reception room was cleared, turning it into a dace floor and the dancing started, hours and hours of it.  Remember that I said the supper was at 1am, well it was after 2am when the bride and groom left!  Now that is a party.

It really was a brilliant thing to be a part of.