Visions of boots danced in our heads

I thought I'd start the wedding blogs by explaining to everyone what Joshua and I had envisioned for a wedding before we were ever engaged. I don't think this is a big surprise to anyone but we love good beer. We love it a lot. The Germans to us have really got the beer culture down. German is the only heritage this Irish/Swiss/Scottish girl and that Dutch boy have in common. I'm not sure if that is what secretly motivated our dreams or just fueled them. I know it started when we went to Essen Haus in Madison a couple of years ago. We had both separately been in German restaurants and drank from boots before but I believe that was the first night we had gone together. The Essen Haus is known in Madison for its 2 Liter boots of beer. Not only is it fun to drink that much beer out of a glass boot but what makes it even better is the rules that go along with it. You pass the boot around the table taking turns drinking it. If the person who takes the boot from you finishes the beer, you buy the next round. When it looked like someone was about the finish the boot the entire restaurant, I don't exaggerate, does a drum roll with their hands until the boot is finished. Where am I going with this? Many couples today look for new twists on the clanking of glasses. Our vision was instead of clanking glasses we would have boots passed around the table and we wouldn't kiss until a boot was finished, drum rolls included. It didn't stop there, we wanted Schnitzel and Polka. I even thought that Edelweiss would make a terrific first dance waltz. When I pictured our wedding I pictured long tables with benches that people sat at. I basically pictured the wedding like a night at any self respecting German-American bar.


There are several reasons why this just won't work out. The most serious and obvious is that there would be a helluva lot of drinking at our wedding which wouldn't be very family friendly and could be potentially dangerous. Also, the restaurant we wanted to provide the schnitzel doesn't have a good area to host a 250 person wedding. While I intend to have some polka music played, I sadly don't feel there is practical room in the budget to hire a polka band. We may not be having that wedding but we do plan on having plenty of details referencing our German heritage, along with the Irish and Dutch. Our guests will also see several allusions to our love of beer.