Food is a good one! You could also incorporate wedding customs from each different country, for example, my Malay best friend and her Spanish husband exchanged odd numbers of gifts on their wedding day, as is the custom in Malaysia. It'd be a good idea to talk to older family members and see what they suggest.

x

Hi there,

How about seeing what the different cultures do themselves at weddings? I know the Portuguese have things in slightly different orders and have a big fanfare, perhaps others do the same?

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Gone to bumpnbabe.co.uk...!

Hello! I was very glad to see your post in here. I am portuguese and my fiance is english. even though our wedding wont be till 2012 I was kinda struggling on that matter was well. Having order of services in portuguese is a really good idea and the music is great as well. However, you should give some thought to guests that are not english speakers. Just make sure that they are all in the same table and have someone to talk to and make sure they are not lost, especially when it comes to speeches. You could give them a translated copy of the speeches. I am sure they would appreciate that. You could also offer as favours little bottles of port (portuguese drink). you could put flag of the countries up or on the venue make 3 separate buffet sectons: an oriental one, portuguese one, and an english one. My last idea is, you could name your tables after portuguese cities and on each table include a laminated sheet with information about each one of them and pictures. I can garantee guests will be walking around to find out what other tables are.

let me know how u get on
sara

Shereen! What a fantastic post!

Sara, like you i'm portuguese and my H2B is english (from yorkshire).

We were thinking of incorporating things from yorkshire (possibly yorkshire pudding for the wedding breakfast) and portuguese bits (such as a portuguese buffet in the evening) for our wedding - we felt it important to mix the 2. We also thought of the men having little bottles of port or beirao as the favours, struggling on a ladies favour at the mo! and i believe H2B wants to do part of his speech in portuguese!

I know there are several portuguese traditions but one that's good fun is passing around the bride's shoe whilst everyone is dancing and it is filled with money for the bride and groom!
Shereen, have you thought of seeing if there are any ways of incorporating the different cultures into your entertainment? Fado is very popular in portugal, and i'm sure arabic dancers would go down really well too :0)

Sara your ideas are fantastic, thank you for those :0)  - best of luck all with your planning! xx

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