Colin and Claudia's Wedding

The wedding day! (20th September)

First off, my birthday was the day before Colin and Claudia's wedding. My parents and my sister Josje and her husband Jeroen were all invited to the wedding also, and had booked a motel thingee just across the dutch border of where the wedding was being held. This was a pretty unique occasion for the whole of my family to be together for anything, let alone my birthday, since Josje and Mum live in Steenbergen, and Dad and I live in New Zealand.

(let me just add that I am writing this from New Zealand, where I am relaxing with my feet up on my lazy boy armchair, with my new university laptop plugged into the TV, with wireless keyboard and mouse. Technology at its finest)

Colin was also with us for my birthday, which made it extra cool. We celebrated with Jagermeister, and drawing up big cards for the wedding, which I will explain shortly.

I like wearing suits. Therefore, I like all occasions that require me to wear a suit. I felt I looked quite dashing with my lime green shirt and light blue tie, and black with blue pinstripe suit (hmmm, it actually sounds hideous, but I assure you, my Mum said I looked great!).

I’m not sure about all continental European countries, but it’s true of at least Holland and Germany, marriages don’t have best men or bridesmaids. Instead they have designated people as ‘Witnesses’, whose job it is to sign their name on the official marriage documents. I was Colin’s witness. The ceremony was quite different from what we have in NZ, be it a church or a garden location – in Germany it was all done in a room that felt like a conference centre inside the town hall. I can testify, that as far as I know, Colin and Claudia did indeed get married, and I can only assume many kind words were spoken by the state official guy. I can’t really be sure, because everything was in German that I couldn’t understand. I dutifully signed on the dotted line when I was asked – and I hope that I haven’t inadvertently signed away my liver or kidneys.

The wedding party then moved to Claudia’s parents’ house where the reception was being held. The weather for the day was turning out absolutely perfect – lots of sunshine, hardly any wind, but not too hot. We were being served lunch and later on, dinner, in a big tent set up in the back yard, and Claire and I had the privilege of sitting at the top table with Colin and Claudia, their parents, and the other witness (also called Claudia) and her partner.

One feature of the reception that I thought was particularly cool was a canvas that had been set up with a grid of rectangles on it. These cool watercolour pencil/painting things were provided for the guests to draw little things in the rectangles, kind of like a guest book of small paintings.

During dinner there were many speeches from pretty much all of the important people. I was semi prepared, having some thoughts stored away in my memory, but nowhere near as prepared as everyone else. Claudia gave a powerpoint presentation of their romance, with lots of photos from their time in Brisbane, and then more recently in Heitel with Sophia (their daughter, for those not in the know) (I should also mention that this is the same Colin, Claudia and Sophia we have a link to on the right hand side of our blog).

After much discussion and stress about what languages the speeches should be in (English, Dutch and German were all represented), Colin had a solution. While he was presenting his speech in English, Claire and I were standing either side of him with huge pages of subtitles in Dutch and German. Colin is well known over there for his rugged understanding of the German language, so it was quite comical. Big thanks to Josje, Jeroen and Mum for the dutch translation and their tidy handwriting.

Each of Colin’s and Claudia’s mothers gave powerpoint presentations about their children growing up, etc. Many cute baby photos were shown, and it was particularly interesting drawing parallels between some of Colin and Claudia’s baby moments and those of Sophia.

I was pretty much last to say anything, and while it was brief, it was heart felt enough to get Claire in tears, but that’s hardly an achievement. =P

All in all, an excellent day. Well worth a trip around the world.

Congratulations Colin and Claudia!