So this weekend was full of fun and firsts! I went to a friends wedding in Holland. The wedding was in The Hague. I have been to Holland a few times but only to Amsterdam….doing the usual stag do type things and so had never been anywhere else in Holland.
The wedding was a dual nationality wedding with my friend, Chris, being English and the bride to be, Tanya, being Dutch.
The Church service and the speeches were pretty much split 50/50 in Dutch and English. This was probably a better deal for the Dutch than the English as our laziness (and the fact that every other bugger learns out language) means that we rely on others speaking English.
They do have a few different customs to us. There is normally a civil ceremony, which happens the day before the actual wedding and a lot of the time the Groom actually goes to pick up the Bride! So because it’s a bit of a 2 day thing it would explain why we saw about 5 or 6 weddings going on.
We stayed in a suburb of The Hague, called Delft. It was a lovely place very much like a pretty version of Amsterdam without the stag-do’s and red light district!
Of all the places I have been to in Europe I think the Dutch may be the friendliest.
The whole thing was summed up quite nicely in a thankyou email for one of my friends that I travelled with:
“Interesting ceremony with the Dutch/English mix, great food which kept coming all day, a bit of eye candy on our table, entertaining speeches and award winning film productions, a disco that played Wham, free booze all day (that must have cost a fortune), Jagermeister at the bar and I woke up to find my trousers on the floor with the legs rolled up to the knees which is always a good measure of a quality evening.”
……..and yes at one point we did have our ties around our heads!
Next time I’m in Holland I’m taking my clubs!
neal granville golf 