It was a whirlwind trip!

I will post soon about us having finally selected and booked two venues to hold our wedding, both in Vienna…

…but for now to get in the spirit, try out the new “Klimt yourself” photo editor.

It’s T-minus 400 days. Four hundred days to find venues. Four hundred days to wrangle the necessary legal documents. Four hundred days to choose menus. To design cakes. To book hotels. To get 80 people from five countries (maybe more) to a single location to watch two people stand up and promise to keep feeling what we now feel, forever.

We spent last weekend in Vienna. Nominally the purpose of the trip was to visit some potential venues, and to try out one of the hotels with which we want to get a group rate for our guests. We also had a lot of restaurants to visit (so many we couldn’t even eat at all of them) and a cake shop to check out. We had a lot to cram into the three days we were there, especially given that the whole place shuts down like a rural Irish town on Sundays. But we still managed to find the time to cycle a few (tens of) kilometers along the Danube, and to visit some of the local vinyards along the way.

Come to think of it, vinyards were a pretty significant theme of the trip. The place we’re hoping to hold the ceremony is a vinyard that overlooks the city from the north. We visited it on Saturday so that we could see it in person before making up our minds about booking it. Having seen it, I think it’s safe to declare our minds made up. The vinyard itself is beautiful, and it has a view over the entire city. If the weather is anything like it was for us this weekend it will be absolutely stunning.

We spent Sunday mostly riding bikes (which one should ideally do every day) and drinking wine. That probably sounds like a poor choice of activities to mix, but they actually came as a package deal: a bike tour of the wine-producing region along the banks of the Danube just north of the city, with tastings along the way. Yeah, I thought it was weird too. When I asked the guide if it was safe he said, “No, but that’s why we have a waiver.” Still, we came out of it unharmed, and with a nice case of Grüner Veltliner on its way to us in the post.

I won’t give away the venue we visited on Monday. It’s a place that we’re considering for the reception, but as we haven’t made a final decision I don’t want to say what it is, except to say that it’s definitely not the first place you’d think of when planning a wedding reception.

I’ll leave you with this photo of a dress we saw in a shop window on Saturday evening. In fact it’s not a dress at all; it’s a cake. The shoes, flowers and chandelier are all cakes too.

I’m not sure about the specific items on this list—the ice-pick in particular struck me as a little strange and more than a little sinister—but I like the general idea.

“We sent a handwritten note with our invitations,” she explains. The note read: “We decided to create a wish list of things we would like to have for our wedding, if you choose to participate. If not, we love you the same. Please enjoy the spirit of this list.”

Among the items they asked for?

• “A blues album by someone you think we should hear.”

• “A vintage ice pick, preferably from the ’30s, but the ’40s or ’50s would be fine too.”

• “An old musical instrument, not necessarily of any value, that you think we should learn to play.”

Making a House a Home Through a Wedding Registry | Apartment Therapy

This bears very little resemblance to how I asked Eileen to marry me. I mean, for one thing I wasn’t allowed to take a knee because New York is apparently “too dirty”. Also I believe the verbal exchange was a little different.

Apparently I got in just under the wire with my proposal. It can’t be long before women will no longer settle for a so-called “diamond” ring that’s made mostly of gold. The new hotness is to make the entire ring out of diamond:

I thought I had found the perfect wedding shoes for Eileen, this comfortable looking Aliens-inspired design by Alexander McQueen. They meet all of the requirements: they look cool, they’re suitably geeky, they would give Eileen an excuse to sit down and demand people bring her things instead of going to get them herself (because they would clearly be impossible to walk in), and they don’t show up in infra-red.

Unfortunately when I showed her the shoe, Eileen concluded that they could transform into the alien xenomorph pictured with them. Upon discovering that they don’t, I was curtly informed, “They have to be able to transform.”

The search goes on.

Via Canadian Pacific on flickr

Vienna here we come!

Now that we have our destination, it is time to look at venues, meet with potential suppliers and sort out as much as possible in person next month.

We just booked our Vienna flights and hotel this weekend. Flights were not a difficult decision — flying with Ryanair to Bratislava, as we did last time, or flying with easyjet to Vienna airport.

Via Frollein2007 on Flickr

Now, flying via Bratislava does mean taking the bus, and the bus in Vienna city does depart from a giant parking lot, at which there is a very delicious sausage shack. I could detour the post here to go into the amazing-ness of Austrian/Bavarian sausages, but I plan to riff at length on Austrian cuisine in future posts. One word: Käsekrainer. *drool

We decided to fly easyjet this time, the slightly more dignified option. Much like Gatwick airport, Vienna airport has two train services going to the same station. Again like Gatwick, one service is more expensive than the other, and slightly faster. Gatwick Express is 30 min at £19 to Victoria, while Southern Rail is 45 min at £13 to Victoria and £10 to London Bridge. In Vienna, the CAT train is 16 min at €10, while the S-bahn is 30 min at €4. If you figure 15 minutes times 4 times the saved amount, our time has to be worth more than that per hour net to justify taking the faster train. We are trying to save money towards the wedding anyway, so we’ll compromise and use the slower service.

I found two design hotels near the £100/€120 per night mark which we had set as the maximum amount affordable for the wedding party. We are also looking for rooms with air conditioning since the wedding is likely to be beginning of June. The idea is to try out the hotel and see if we can negotiate a better group rate while there.

The first hotel we are considering is Pakat Suites, which appears to be new, with few ratings. The rooms look really cool, with elements that look like they slide around, which makes me think of the tiny modular rooms that fit entire households — kitchen, living area, sleeping area — everything you need snaps or slides out of the walls.

The second hotel we are considering is Hotel am Konzerthaus, which is highly rated on TripAdvisor (12 out of 355). The rooms have a Klimt theme and the hotel is Art Nouveau styled. I am a big fan of Art Nouveau — the engagement ring Rory and I had designed in Greystones at Amoc jewellers intentionally has naturalistic lines to it, like a flower.

Via Malenkov in Exile on Flickr

We looked at the map, and both hotels are close to the city centre and to the Belvedere castle, but the train from Vienna airport gets into Landstraße Wien-Mitte, which is closer to Hotel am Konzerthaus than to Pakat Suites, so we booked into Hotel am Konzerthaus, well within budget.

The next steps are to make contact with some back-up venues and some potential suppliers.

It’s a perfect spring day in London to open the windows and enjoy the sunshine while researching online. Looking forward to April!

Via Airnews

Via Aires Dos Santos on Fotopedia

Vienna!

Since we’ve both been there, since the suppliers are so transparent and easy to deal with, since I speak the language, since we’d actually be able to get legally married there, since the prices are right and since everything looks in good repair, Vienna won out over all our other options.

What’s next? We are heading to Vienna next month to go visit our potential venues. Top of the list is the vineyard owned by the City of Vienna (free wine tasting!) and the Vienna Zoo (free zoo admission!). We will be trying out a four star hotel that’s under £100 per night and will look to negotiate a group deal to get it even cheaper, and look at other hotels to recommend to our guests. We will be speaking to cake shops about the possibility of a “nerd cake”. We will be working out logistics for the duration of our wedding weekend. We will be getting inspiration for themes and schemes. We might even talk to a florist or a DJ.

There will also be bureaucracy involved — we will be looking for an official translator for our documents so we can submit them to the Austrian government in December to gain permission to marry. We may need to negotiate and sign some contracts before we get to the most important contract next year.

Right now, it’s looking like the first weekend of June next year, but we will need to get confirmation from our venues before we can send out save the dates (after we make sure their photos weren’t photoshopped and they really are that nice!).

It is quite exciting to finally have a place to focus on — looking forward to a Kaffee Verkehrt (cafe au lait) brought to me on a silver tray this April!