Wedding Map

If you haven't already, take a few minutes and check out Our Wedding Map:



We've recently added things like the reception hall, the Church where the wedding will take place, and some cool sites for those who'd like to see the "real" Slovakia on their travels--places like Kat's grandparents' village, where Grandpa makes his own wine, and the place where her Mom grew up, which has some cool Ice Caves to see:

These alone are worth the trip to Liptovsky Mikulas.

M

Kamila Hotel - The Reception Site

Hi Everyone!

So, as you all know, we've had to update the actual date of the wedding. Now it's June 14, 2008, since that was the only weekend available for the reception hall. We hope, however, that when you see this place, it will become abundantly clear why we chose the Kamila Hotel.
Not 100% sure how old this place is, but apparently Kamila, the woman who runs it, is an actress who spent years and a small fortune making it look like it did when it was originally built.

It is kind of fairy-taleish, since it looks like this is how we arrive at the reception:

Kat is excited because one of the traditions we're going to have at the reception involves a folk-dancing singing group who sort of "welcome" her into married life around midnight (when we will have a second dinner!) with a small ritual (?) wherein they remove her veil and give her a crown-like hat to wear and follow this with a traditional Slovak wedding song-and-dance. An American-Slovak guy has written about it like this:

The most important part of the Redovy ceremony came before the dancing. It was the removal of the bride's Parte, the headpiece denoting her as an girl ready for marriage.

The parte was removed by her mother, god-mother and grandmothers. All of her female relatives and friends were there as well. After removing the Parte, the mother and godmother braided her hair into a single plait and then tied it into a bun. Up until this time, the girl could wear her hair in 2 plaits or loose, as was the custom for children.

The grandmothers then placed the Cepec or marriage cap on her head. She never left her home without the cepec on her head after that. This was the most important step in a young woman's life. It symbolized her move from childhood to adulthood. Giving up her girlhood play to become a contributing member of the village community.

In this country, they used to have the mother of the bride remove the wedding veil as her last official act as mother of the bride. The bride was becoming an adult and would have her own home and soon children.

The capping is still carried out at many Slovak weddings, especially the village ones. At midnight the bridal pair appear in full folk dress and the bride's flowered wreath is taken off and replaced with a matron's cap.

Beautiful songs are sung - her transition to being a wife. Sometimes her par'ta or maiden's wreath is carried around by the best man on the point of a saber after he asks her for it three times - there was something magical about three times, just like the old fairy tales.

http://www.iarelative.com/wedding/slovakcapping.htm

The "cap" and dancers look something like this:

Although they will probably look more like this:

Which looks like even more fun anyway.

The reception promises to be beautiful:

We hope to see everyone there!

More posts this week, as I have time.
Cheers,
Matthew

New Date - JUNE 14, 2008

Hey everyone, I am sorry that it took us this long to make another entry to our wedding blog. It has been very busy around here - work and school schedule keep me away from the home computer. We made some entries to the google group so I will try to catch up on this wedding blog now.

The first important thing is that we changed the wedding date. It has been pushed to Saturday JUNE 14th, 2008. We had to push it since my mom found the right place for our reception but they did not have our original date opened anymore. Here is the place that we have chosen. This place is about 35 minute drive from Bratislava. I have never been there but it definitely looks stunning and my mom loves it.

Another topic of the google group discussion was lodging possiblity in downtown Bratislava. To my suprise, it is not cheap anymore. The euro vs dollar foreign exchange is not really favorable to the US dollar and most of the hotel prices are at about $150/night. But I will definitelity look into more opportunities with my parents help so we can list some good resources for everyone.

Please post any questions to either this blog or to the google group.

Who's coming?

So now that we've got some traction on the group, there are about 20 people or so over there (by the way, take a minute, post a note, introduce yourself to the group!) it's time to figure out who is thinking about coming along on this adventure.

I can't figure out how to post a survey on the blog, so if people would kindly post a note to the group, I've started a thread over there called "Attending?" and people can post responses to that thread.

Thanks, and have a great week!
Matthew

Mark Your Calendars!

My dad made a good point over on the Group--the requested vacation time Calendar over at his bank fills up very quickly, so he'd really appreciate having a more solid date around which to plan his vacation. This makes sense, so we're announcing the "preferred date" of:

Saturday June 7th 2008

So start marking up those calendars and vacation requests, and meet us for a nice little wedding in Bratislava, Slovakia!

Site News

Over the next couple of days, I'm going to come up with a plan for things to post.

I want to make this Blog be as useful as possible to as many people as it can be. I know this whole wedding/trip/vacation thing is a really large undertaking, and there will be many details to work out.

I think one way to make that happen is for people to utilize the Google Group we've set up. If you're not already a member, please check it out. A Blog is a great place to put information out there, but it is rather one-sided, and while we love comments, I think the Group will be a good place for people to start threads and have running dialogues, share hints, tips, etc. That will be a bit more community-oriented.

One thing we've done to keep things easy is to link this Blog to the Group. Once a new post is published, it gets mailed to the Group, and the group notifies everyone that a new post is up.

Hopefully, this weekend we'll be putting stuff up about starting to make plans. I know it's still more than a year away, but it's never too early to start planning something this big, right?

Cheers,
Matthew

Slovensko sa pripaja / Slovakia is connected

Chcela by som privitat aj slovenku polovicu rodiny a priatelov na nas blog, ktorym by sme vas chceli oboznamovat o nasich svadobnych pripravach. Svadba je naplanovana na buduci rok (dufam bud v poslednu sobotu v maji alebo prvu sobotu v juni), no chceli by sme tymto blogom priblizit obidva kontinenty. Mozte prispievat svoje napady a rady, my to radi privitame (miesto, hotely, restauracia, transportation....Hani urcite budes moj velky zdroj informacii). Kazdy vas napad a dotaz nam pomoze, kedze planovanie svadby cez ocean je trocha zlozitejsie, no moja maminka sa zatial nestrachuje. Na jazyku/reci nezalezi (ale ak mozte tak anglictina je vitana), ja sa budem co najviac snazit prekladat, i ked s mojim pracovnym vytazenim a skole (pre tych co nevedia - som opat v skole aby som mohla dorobit certificat na uctovnictvo - CPA) to moze byt obcas tazke.

Rada by som ukazala Americkej casti hosti nase krasne male Slovensko a mesta v okoli ako Praha a Vieden. Matus uz zacal postupne oboznamovat na blogu co sa da vidiet. Obidvaja sa tesime, kedze je to miesto kde sme sa zoznamili a chceli by sme to ukazat a priatelom spoza oceana.

Hey everyone, this note is to welcome my family and friends at home to this blog. I asked everyone for comments and suggestions how to make this wedding and trip over the ocean to my beatiful Slovakia work. I asked them if possible to post in English but I will try my best to translate in some spare time. I mean between times when I am not at work or school or studying.

Katarina

Bratislava! Capital of Slovakia

So far, Prague gets all the attention from people travelling to Central Europe. But as a few of you know, Bratislava really deserves more attention. A nice mix of old and new, where you can still see the remnants of communism without going into really hardcore Soviet-bloc countries like Romania or far eastern Poland. Bratislava was the western border of the iron curtain, and as such, it had a little more exposure than insulated cities and entire countries. When Kat was little, Radio Free Europe could be heard, broadcast from Vienna, which is a mere 85km 60km away. She was allowed to accompany her father on a trip to Germany at one point, when she was still very small, (she got lost looking at Barbie dolls, but I'll let her tell that story later) and TV signals could also be picked up from "western" Austria.

Having once been the a capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Bratislava has some fantastic older architecture, and some rather cutting-edge modern architecture, too. During the Communist occupation and control, however, utilitarian themes ruled, and thus we have Petrzalka, which succeeds in housing as many people as possible (4,410 per sq. Km!) in as little space as is necessary.

The New York Times seems to agree that Bratislava is in a unique place, straddling both the past and embracing the future. Since Slovakia is one of the next countries to adopt the Euro, it will be exciting to see how things will change over the next few decades. For those of us going next year, it may one of the last chances to see what Bratislava is 'really' like before it succumbs to the intense westernization of Prague.

Prague in the NY Times

Just to whet everyone's appetite for the traveling that is to come, I suggest checking out the article "36 Hours in Prague" on NYTimes.com. It's full of pictures and suggestions for things to do in grand old Praha.

Cool. Now I know how to make HTML tags on here, so I can embed links!

I should have started a blog years ago.

MK

Welcome

Hey everyone!

Welcome to our new blog on the web. I know, many of you are saying to yourselves, "It's about time! I figured Kraft would be one of the first to get a blog!" So, finally, here I am. Or rather, here WE are--this is going to be the central place for communicating about our upcoming wedding!

As of today, we're thinking the date for the wedding is either the last weekend of May or first weekend of June, 2008, in Slovakia. Probably Bratislava, but it may be in an outlying town somewhere close by.

This place will be for everyone who's invited to discuss logistics, talk about things to do, meet each other, make some plans, exchange email addresses, and generally plan for what will (hopefully) turn out to be one of the best vacations everyone has ever had.

In that spirit, welcome! We'll have lots more information for you in the upcoming months. PLEASE POST RESPONSES so we can start to get a feel for how many are coming, whose plans we've totally ruined, etc. :)

Love,

M&K

PS--for those of your who have RSS or XML feed readers in your browsers (yay lucky Mac users!) use the link below to syndicate this blog. Over the next couple of days, I'll figure out how to send out email alerts when new stuff comes up.