August 9, 2007
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What should I wear to a wedding in Germany?
As previously posted, Mr. Apple and I planned to postpone our honeymoon 3 months after our wedding in order to attend a good friends wedding in Germany. The bride and I have been friends for almost 10 years and she met her German fiancee in Med School. It’s coming up next week and I’m clueless as to what I should wear.
Here are the stats:
Catholic German wedding held in a cathedral
I am her Maid of Honor
This will be our honeymoon tripAfternoon Ceremony held here:
photo found on www.ipernity.com
www.klosterladen-birnau.deChampagne Reception Preceeding Dinner here: (hotel used to be a former Dominican Monastery)
photo via World HotelsInitially my friend (the bride) had asked me to be her MOH way before she even began to start planning her wedding. Later, she found out there is no such thing as a “wedding party” in a German wedding. A lot of the American traditions focus on having a MOH, 3 bridesmaids, 1 BM, 3 groomsmen, flower girl, ringbearers, etc but the German focus more on the bride and groom. She informed me that I won’t need to prepare for any rehearsals or prepare to walk down the aisle – basically we’ll be a regular guest. So we won’t need to do anything except relax and enjoy the day. I’m cool with that. -)
So here’s the dilemnia, I asked her if she would prefer me to wear anything – a certain color, style, length since I still sort of am her MOH and they will also still have a BM. She really liked my MOH’s dress at my wedding in May. So we agreed, i’d wear that.
It wasn’t until today that I realized umm…is it appropriate? The dress is by no means risque but I will be attending a German Catholic wedding. My shoulders and back will be exposed, the dress is low in the front, and the material is somewhat sheer in daylight. I don’t want to be disrespectful to Almighty God or any of the guests. I was trying to research, but with little success, some German Weddings online. I noticed that most of the guests were very conservatively dressed, as in even the women are wearing dark suit jackets with skirts. These websites maybe dated but i’m a little concerned.
We’re also really trying to pack light since we’ll be doing day trips for two weeks, traveling by train every 2 days. So, if i could and to be safe, i’d bring 2-3 different dresses with matching sandels/heels but that’s just not feasible. I have a couple of more simple dresses (one eyelit white and one striped grey and white) that I could wear on my honeymoon just in case we go to a nice dinner. So I was thinking about wearing one of those to the wedding but is it appropriate to wear white to a German wedding if you’re not the bride?
My questions from this post. How formal/conservative are German weddings? Which dress would be more appropriate? Do they do TOASTS? Should I prepare one?
Aghhhhh help, If there are German Weddingbee readers out there, HELP! I’ve had no luck finding any information! -)
Grey and white Gap Dress (makes me look pregnant but I still like it)
White Eyelet dress similar to this Lily Pulitzer one
MOH dress photo by Huy
Comments (8)
i love the 2nd and 3rd one.
I can’t really help but you look great in the dresses, and I’m sure you’ll look lovely in the MOH dress too. I’m guessing that if the Groom & the Bride is the focus, then what you wear isn’t that important and you should probably err on the side of conservative elegance.
I mean you look great in the first dress, but it looks too casual for a wedding
i like 2 and 3 but can you wear white to a wedding?
I wouldn’t wear white to any wedding except my own- you don’t want to detract from her pictures by having another white outfit to compete with. If she likes the MOH dress from your wedding, I’d go for it and maybe wear a wrap/shawl in a similar or contrasting color to the dress that you can wrap around your shoulders to provide more coverage.
I would add a shrug to your MOH dress. That should be fine.
ryc: your cousin is such a party animal.
ryc: thank ya very much!