How to Have a Traditional German Wedding Reception

Arranging for a traditional German wedding reception can be a fun way to honor and preserve your family's heritage while giving your guests an unusual and memorable experience. Following are some steps to help you put together a wedding reception rich with old-world German tradition.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Guests' old dinnerware
• Ribbon

1. Request that your guests bring their old dishes. They will break their old dishes in front of the reception party.
2. Clean all of the broken pieces as the new bride and groom. Make sure the guests don't help you. This is meant to bring you good luck, symbolizing that nothing will ever be broken in your house again.
3. Play "kidnap the bride." The best man will "steal" the bride and take her to a local pub. The groom must find her and pay for the drinks that she and the best man drank while he searched for her.
4. Have both the bride's and groom's fathers offer words of praise for the wedding couple.
5. Dance the waltz as the first dance of the evening. This is only to be done by the bride and groom. The second dance is then reserved for a bride and her father, groom and his mother, and bride's mother with the groom's father.
6. Do the money or veil dance. Guests pay money to dance with the bride or groom, which sends the bridal couple off on their honeymoon with some pocket money.
7. Block off the exit with a ribbon. The newlyweds must pay a toll to have it removed. This toll is made as a promise to have a party in the future.
8. Create your own tradition. German weddings have many "traditions" but also there is a tradition for the individual wedding to become unique in itself.

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