Vegan Wedding Special
Planning a Vegan Wedding in Vienna
A Vegan Wedding in Vienna – The Day Of
Vegan Wedding Food
Cruelty-Free, Vegan Wedding Hair and Make-Up
How I Made My Own Wedding Dress
The Vegan Groom
A Vegan Wedding in Graz
When I think back on our wedding day, all I can think about is “what a day of love.”
Never in my life have I felt so loved and supported by everyone around me.
Being a perfectionist, I planned and prepared for every little detail but on the days leading up to our wedding, I vowed to myself to go with the flow on the day of.
I was surprised by how relaxed I actually was that day. Even when things went missing, or when we realized, we’d forgotten some things at home.
Honestly, nothing could shake me that day.
(Okay, I was nervous about one thing: Falling on the way down the aisle.)
The Order of Events
If you want to have your civil wedding in Vienna outside of the registry office, there are three slots to choose from. 10:00, 12:00 and 14:00.
Unfortunately, 14:00 was already booked that day, so we had to start our wedding day early. Which in the end was great, because we didn’t want the day to end!
Against tradition, we chose to serve our wedding cake in the afternoon instead of the last event later in the evening.
The reasons for this were that we didn’t want our guests to get hungry or tired (hence the coffee) and that it really gave our cake a time to shine.
Another out of the ordinary idea we had for our program were the two open stage slots. You can read more about it under “Entertainment” in this post.
11:00 – Arrival of Guests
12:00 – Wedding Ceremony
13:00 – Reception and Appetizers
14:00 – Free Time, Lawn Games (Bride and Groom Photo Shoot)
15:00 – Wedding Cake and Coffee
16:00 – Bouquet Toss
16:30 – Open Stage
18:30 – Dinner
20:00 – Open Stage
21:00 – Party
Bridesmaids and Flower Girls
Having bridesmaids and groomsmen is not a traditional part of an Austrian wedding. However, we both really liked the idea of having a small squad of loved ones with different skillsets around us, to help us out when we needed it.
I initially considered buying one of those multiway dresses for my bridesmaids, so they would match but all had a different way of styling the dress. But then we decided against it because they would likely not have the chance to wear that dress ever again, so that wouldn’t have been very sustainable.
In the end, I only expressed my wish that they all wear something green and they were all so beautiful together!
Three out of four of the bridesmaids are mothers to the most adorable, saucy little ladies, so I absolutely had to give them a special job at our wedding.
I designed a simple white dress for them, which were sewn by one of the bridesmaids. I had our florist make some olive leaf and waxflower crowns and fill their baskets with olive leaves and white rose petals.
The Ceremony
We kept our ceremony short and simple for the most part but still managed to make it our own.
The registrar told the story of how we met and what unites us, my sister read a beautiful text and my husband’s choir Schmusechor sang songs that mean a lot to us.
Extras for the Guests
The Heat
Setting our date on August 10th and planning to spend most of the day outside, we had to be prepared for heat.
Here’s what we supplied our guests with to deal with sun and heat:
- Paper fans
- Paper parasols
- Refreshing peppermint tea sprays (homemade and with labels in our design)
- Sunscreen
The fans and the spray bottles we found pre-owned but unused on Willhaben. I think the parasols we actually got off Amazon. If you only need a small amount or start collecting earlier in the planning process than we did, you can definitely find them second hand as well.
After the wedding, we cleaned up all the fans and parasols, mended the ones that were broken, and also re-sold them!
We also ended up buying a basket of flip flops for our guests to change into later in the night for dancing, but only one pair got used. Again, we bought them pre-owned and re-sold the ones that weren’t used.
Emergency Kits
Something that is already quite common is preparing little care packages or emergency kits for your guests in the bathrooms.
I absolutely love the idea, because you want your guests to feel comfortable and stay at your party as long as possible.
We had one basket per bathroom including the following items:
- Pads and Tampons
- Hairspray
- Deodorant
- Condoms
- Sunscreen
- Mosquito repellant and mosquito bite treatment
- Hand cream
- Textile stain remover
- Band-aids / Plaster
- Blister plaster
- Gum
- Blotting paper
- Tissues
- Make-up wipes
- Bobby pins
- Nail file
- Lint rollers
- Safety pins
- Aspirin and Ibuprofen
The Entertainment
Afternoon Playlist
Since our wedding started pretty early and we would be spending most of the day chilling outside, I put together a playlist full of old classics and easy-going alternative and indie tracks. To this day, I play this playlist whenever I have a larger audience to entertain, since there’s something for everyone in it, while still making great background music.
Open Stage
We had two “open stage” slots. Firstly because it’s common for guests to surprise the bride and groom with games they came up with, and secondly because both my husband and I have very talented musicians in our friend group. This way there was a fixed time in the day, where all our guests could take the stage.
Our bridesmaids and groomsmen took on the task of organizing who would perform so that we wouldn’t know what was going to come.
Some of the speeches were also held at the later open stage and it was an amazing experience to see all the time and effort put into putting on a show for us. It was very touching and I can totally recommend you do this!
The later Open Stage slot also made for a perfect transition from dinner to party.
Entertainment Tip:
Have an “Open Stage” time slot on your wedding day, so all the games, speeches, and guest performances are grouped together.
Fun and Games
For entertainment in the afternoon, especially while we were out taking photos, we prepared a wedding bingo, so our guests could get to know each other a little better.
The sheets contained tasks such as:
- Find someone who went to school with the Bride
- Find someone who has more than three children
- Find someone who has been on holiday with the Groom
- Etc.
It was a great conversation starter and helped our guests who didn’t know each other find common interests.
My sister, who is a pedagogue and mother of two, organized care packages and lawn games for the kids.
Choir
My husband sings in a choir called Schmusechor and they rehearsed some songs specifically to perform at our ceremony. They put their blood, sweat and tears in it and it made our ceremony very special.
They later performed a small set at one of the open stage slots and even sang a birthday medley for one of the bridesmaids.
Party
For the party, we booked one of my Husband’s choir colleagues who works as a DJane. We also made a playlist to give her a direction for the mix of classics, New Wave, and 90s and 2000s trash we wanted to dance to with our guests.
We really had a blast and I can’t remember the last time we danced this hard!
Party Tip:
If your venue has a projector available, play a medley of famous movie dance scenes (without the sound, of course) in the background.
It doubles as a light show and really encourages your guests to dance along!
The Photos
Our phots were taken by Steffi of Freynoi. We met with her a few months before our wedding and discussed what we wanted for our wedding photos (Natural, intimate portraits) and what we didn’t want (Goofy jumping group pictures.).
On the day of the wedding, she arrived with an assistant about an hour and a half before the ceremony to take pictures of us getting ready.
They took beautiful photos of the venue, the guests, and all the details.
After the ceremony and before serving the cake, we took a walk into the woods to take our couple portraits.
At our wedding in Graz, which took place in the afternoon, so we had our couple photos done before the guests arrived, which in my opinion, was much more relaxed. For our Vienna wedding, it wasn’t possible because it was much earlier in the day. This way at least, we got the classic “bride walks down the aisle”- first look shots at the ceremony!
Photo Tip:
If possible, take your couple shots BEFORE the wedding starts. It takes a lot of pressure out of it and you’re the freshest you’ll be all day!
Photo Booth
I feel like a photo booth is almost a must at weddings nowadays. And it should! They’re so much fun.
We got ours from Kruu, and it was super easy. You don’t even have to pick it up, they send you a box with all the equipment per mail and after the event, you can just send it back. You can even design what your photo strips will look like!
As props, we bought downloadable vintage masks from Etsy, printed them on cardboard, and glued them to chopsticks or attached elastic to them.
We set up the photo booth right next to our guest book. We also supplied different colors of calligraphy pens, stamps, washi tape and stickers with floral motifs so our guests could get really creative when writing in our guest book!
Wedding Video
Markus of Videomat was actually a wedding guest and his video documentation was a wedding present from him and his partner.
Having a video of this amazing day really is priceless. He managed to catch all the emotion, the love and the atmosphere so beautifully.
It’s a cliché when people say, their wedding is the most beautiful day of their lives. For us, it really was.
But our life has only just begun and there are so many more beautiful days to have and I couldn’t be happier to be spending it with my husband!
You can find lots more detailed posts about our vegan wedding by clicking here!
Photos by Freynoi
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If you choose to buy using one of the above links, I make a small cut and I’m forever grateful!
lisa
such a beautiful day (in fact, also one of the most perfect days i had! we were able to use game time to take a nap after cake, so hello?!). thank you so much for having us! can’t wait to have you two at our wedding some day <3
Mitzi
Thank you, babe! <3 We cannot wait for yours someday!