One more day until the church wedding – but yesterday we already went to the registry office and had the civil wedding there (don’t ask – in Germany it’s the civil wedding that counts and you can’t have it together with the church wedding). Heidi Kraft is no more… she’s now Heidi Rabbach.

It’s a bit strange to think that for many people, the little ceremony at the registry office is all they have for a wedding. 20 minutes and it’s all over; nothing but a few nice words. For us, the (legally unimportant) ceremony in our church on Saturday is what’s really important and the “real” wedding because we want to start our marriage under God’s blessing. If the civil ceremony had been all we have, something would really be missing.

In a bit, we’ll start setting up the church and church hall for our wedding service and evening reception. Hopefully it will all go a bit better than yesterday’s work on the wedding cake, which took twice as long as expected. Well, it will all work out in the end. And as much as we’re looking forward to the special day tomorrow, we’re even more looking forward to “normal life”, which starts on Sunday.