Wedding Spotlight:

Kristen & Jochen

Little did I know that one day the work colleague I had been exchanging emails with was the man I was going to marry.

Jochen and I were both working to complete our MBA’s, but I was living in America and he was living in his home country of Germany. I decided to participate on an exchange trip with my fellow American MBA students to study with the German MBA students. Jochen and I ended up having a lot of the same professors.

Previously, Jochen and I had been e-mailing each other and we were a bit shocked when we met and realized who each other was. We felt an instant attraction to each other, but kept things casual between us. We continued to secretly hope the other was interested, and flirted a little with crossing any lines. After the program was over in Germany, I flew back to the US and Jochen also had to fly to the US to finish the remainder of his final course.

Together in the US we had more opportunities to get to know each other better. We had many intellectual conversations that increased our interest in each other. It was exciting to speak with someone who shared the same educational, family, political, and values views. One his last night in Pensacola, we spent the entire night talking and confessed our attraction to each other. He even asked me if I would marry him that night. I thought that he was crazy.

We spoke about seeing each other again, but were afraid that it was not going to happen. While he was back in Germany, we continued to communicate through email and over the phone. We continued to grow closer and closer and two months later I decided to take a crazy chance and fly to Europe alone to see Jochen. At this point we became ‘official’.

I was able to fly back and forth to Germany every two months. It became clear that we were the ones for each other. After about a year he asked my parents permission to marry me, but he had still not proposed to me. I told him that I wanted to be completely surprised.

Somehow Jochen was able to plan an surprise trip for us to Paris, France. We toured Paris and one night we went up the entire Eiffel Tower, even though I am scared of heights. He decided not to propose atop the Tower because it was extremely windy and I was white with fear from the heights. After we went down and were under the Eiffel Tower he got down on one knee and told me that I was the most important thing in his life and promised to love and treat me like a princess for the rest of his life.

We decided to have two weddings, one in Pensacola, Florida and one in Rheinzabern, Germany (his hometown). The one in Pensacola was a more traditional American wedding on the beach. It was a small wedding with a relaxed, casual atmosphere.

The second wedding was a traditional German Catholic Wedding in the church that my husband and his family had attended for generations. We began the day early in the morning with pictures before the ceremony in the gardens of Schwetzingen Castle. We then continued with a gathering at his parents house where his family and close friends walked with us to the church where other town members were waiting. The ceremony was completely in German and lasted for about an hour. We then had a gathering outside the church with Champaign and pretzels with people from his home town. Afterwards, we and all of our guests headed to the reception site, Limburgerhof Gästehaus, in the traditional German procession. The cars that followed behind us were decorated with white ribbon. Everyone drove very slow and repeatedly honked their horns. Many people would come outside to see the procession.

At the reception, we had many special and traditional German surprises planned for us. Our reception lasted until the next morning. It was exhausting but wonderful.