When I was hanging out in Thunder Bay during my Lake Superior circle tour, my girlfriend texted me and asked me if I was available to go to a wedding with her. As you know with my travels and way of doing things, I really don't plan anything. I knew the weekend would be free, so I told her yes. I figured it would be interesting seeing how a Texas wedding is done compared to a Wisconsin wedding.
This was going to be the first wedding I went to without really knowing anyone. I guess it would give me an opportunity to really observe things. We hit the road and eventually made it to the Holiday Inn Express.
The room was a standard room like I've grown accustomed to on my travels.
The wedding was an outdoor wedding.
The wedding started at 5:30pm. This was one of the first main differences I noticed. Wisconsin weddings usually start in the early afternoon like 2pm. Then, there is a couple hour gap between the wedding and reception. This is usually to take pictures and then the bride and groom go bar hopping before the reception. After a wedding in Texas, everyone filed to the reception area right away.
There was a little gap between eating. I'm assuming this was so the couple could take pictures, but it was nowhere used to the couple hours I'm used to. Another thing I found out is people are either invited to the whole wedding, meal, and reception or not invited at all. In Wisconsin, you will invite family and close friends to the ceremony, meal, and reception and a lot more people just to the reception.
They had these decorative under plates for the plates on the table.
The food was set up in a buffet-style fashion, but they had people serving it.
It consisted of chicken and a few other things and was pretty good.
I was the designated driver, so I did not drink. Another major difference is they have a bar where they were giving out bottles of beer or glasses of wine. I'm used to pitchers being lined up across the bar and constantly being filled. The weird thing is there were 2 constables and a sheriff's deputy there also.
The music was set up outside. They definitely did play a lot more two-stepping sort of music. In Wisconsin, I guess it's polka music instead for that sort of dancing. My girlfriend tried to get me to two-step, but I'm one of the most uncoordinated people ever, so that didn't go too well when I tried.
At the end of the night, they did a “send off” of the couple with sparklers. I remember them doing something similar at my cousin's wedding in Louisiana, but this isn't common in Wisconsin.
Some other things I noticed were, they had the father and bride and mother and groom dances, but they didn't have a grand march. They didn't ding the glasses when they want the bridge and groom to kiss. I also noticed there really weren't any visibly drunk people at the end of the night. It was definitely interesting seeing the differences 1300 miles will make when it comes to traditions like a wedding.