On the seventh of July this year, we participated in the global lucky-number wedding boom by attending Gerhild and Reinhard’s wedding in Berlin. Here are some photos, which are only of interest if you like weddings or modern Lutheran ecclesiastical architecture.
It was a mainstream Lutheran church (they say “Evangelical” to distinguish it from Catholic) in a nice neighborhood; kind of austere for my taste, but nice enough, and with a first-rate organ.
When they stood to take their vows, the ring-bearer was Gerry’s daughter Jana, holding one-year-old Joel, Gerry’s grandson; which I found moving.
Music was provided by a genuine gospel choir. Their harmonies were exquisite.
Here’s a shot of the general chaos on the church steps after; about like any wedding anywhere.
We had taken the bus to the service, but were offered a lift to the reception. I ended up sitting in the front of the main car, which is probably the only time I’ll be in a Berlin bridal motorcade with twenty or so tin cans dragging behind; the sound is entirely unique. You get lots of smiles from strangers.
The reception was a blast; the kids charged all over and raised a ruckus, and there was lots of food and wine, all good. I had to take the baby home before the dancing started, but it was well into 08/07/07 before things wound down.
Best of luck to Gerry and Reinhard!
Comment feed for ongoing:
From: John Cowan (Jul 13 2007, at 07:08)
Nag, nag, nag, yet another overwide box. Aren't you tired of reading about this yet? It makes it hard to review the content, too, and make sure I'm not making silly mistaeks.
I thought I'd point out an interesting feature of German displayed prominently in the first photograph. Although German long ago gave up marking case (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative) on its nouns, with the exception of -s in the genitive (English has that too) and -n in the dative, the nouns *Jesus* and *Christus* still show full Latin inflection, which accounts for the prominent "JESUM CHRISTUM" at the top of the stone. It's accusative; the genitive is "Jesu Christi", the dative "Jesu Christo", and the vocative (German doesn't have separate vocative forms anywhere else) is "Jesu Christe".
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