Andreas and Laura are married!! This August, my husband, mom, dad, and brother all traveled East to Europe to do two weeks of touristy sight-seeing and to see our former foreign exchange student, Andy, get married. Even though I don’t normally take wedding pictures, when Andy and Laura asked if I would take pictures for their wedding, I couldn’t refuse.
And I couldn’t have asked for a more picture perfect location or a couple more in love than Andreas and Laura. I can still see the smile on his face when he saw Laura for the first time and I can still hear the excitement in his voice when he said how beautiful she looked. And he was right, Laura was just stunning. She is a natural beauty, and her makeup artist and hairstylist only accentuated that fact. Andy was looking pretty handsome as well.
We started the day taking a few pictures together at the wedding ceremony/reception site. (As a side note, if anyone wants to build a building/atmosphere like this around our area I wouldn’t mind one bit!) After some pictures there, we traveled to one of Laura’s friends’ houses to finish up the pictures of the two of them.
Then it was on to the courthouse for their civil ceremony. After their official wedding ceremony, we headed back to the reception site to have an informal ceremony. Unfortunately, almost everything was in either French (Laura’s native language) or German (Andreas’ native language). There were a few things in English though, so we weren’t totally lost!
They exchanged rings, did a sand mixing, had another “first kiss”, and were celebrated out by a confetti shower. That might be where my pictures end, but the party had just begun. If you ever get invited to a wedding in France, be prepared to never sleep! My husband and I were up until 4:30 AM dancing, and the party was still going strong when we went to bed. Andy told us the next morning that they were up till about 6 that morning! Word on the street is that is very normal for French weddings, which was quite a surprise from the typical in-bed-by-midnight American weddings we have. They threw one heck of party, and I’m so excited that I was able to not only witness their marriage, but be a part of their day. Congratulations Andy and Laura, we can’t wait to come back to visit!
