BRYLLAUPSFESTEN
The Wedding

A bride and groom with the pastor in front of a church

or "how to have a traditional, old-country
Norwegian and Scottish wedding in Silicon Valley..."

Welcome to a virtual village that became a reality for four days of festivities!

We hope you will enjoy reading about this wedding, learning about courtship and wedding traditions in the "old country" and discovering the many ways that couples can integrate their culture of heritage into this special celebration.

In Norway, the bedamann ("bidding man") went from house to house inviting the guests and delivering all the pertinent information about the arrangements. The bridal pair sent out handmade invitations, which many of guests have now framed. However, they also used the Internet to put a modern twist on the old tradition of the bedamann, by directing the guests to a web site to find out more abou their plans.

As one friend said, "Wow, you're going to have to start writing program notes!" Those "program notes", which appeared in the wedding service bulletin, form the basis of this web site. The site also includes a lot of information about Norwegian and northern European wedding traditions, as well as links to helpful web sites.It's our hope to build this site into the most comprehensive English language source of information on Norwegian courtship and wedding traditions. If you have comments, suggestions, recommendations for resources -- or if you were one of our guests, please contact us.

The celebrations exceeded all the expectations the bridal pair had of how special this celebration could be. We have heard about the wedding and the web site:

• On a dance floor in Wisconsin
• From an operating recovery room nurse coming out of anesthesia after surgery.(really!)
• From folk musicians in Germany
• At the inaugural luncheon for a college president
• Featured in or at:
• The St. Olaf College alumni magazine
• San Jose Mercury News columnist, Sue Hutchison - June 1999
• San Jose Mercury News wedding section - August 1999
• Lutheran Brotherhood's Bond™ Magazine.- Nov/Dec 2000
• Sons of Norway Viking Magazine - June 2001
• The Twin Cities Friends of Vesterheim Museum 2002 festivities