Our DIY Wedding in Denmark

The beige waiting room was like something out of a modern fairy tale.

It's the morning of our wedding and I'm picking wild flowers in a field an island in the Baltic Sea. The flowers are for Kata's floral hair arrangement and my lapel. In less than an hour, we will walk to Aersokobing's town hall and stand before the registrar to be married.

It wasn't an easy journey to this field on Aero island. We took a plane to Amsterdam, another plane to Bilund (of Lego Land fame), then a bus to Vejle, a train to Odense, a local train to Svendborg, and finally a ferry to Aeroskobing.

But the journey began months earlier when we walked into Düsseldorf's city marriage office and saw the couples lined up out of the waiting room, into the hallway, down a flight of stairs and into the lobby. As if that wasn't enough, a newly married couple and their wedding guests were navigating through this snarl of waiting not-so-nearly weds.

We'd later learn that couple, if they were both foreigners like us, would have spent hours talking to bureaucrats in their embassies and the German government, gathering important documents from their homeland, getting them translated and certified, and then waited a year for the honour of pushing their way through a crowded government building to be allowed to the privilege of being married.

We wanted none of that.

One alternative was Denmark, the Las Vegas of Europe, because of the ease of getting married. Especially for a couple of foreigners living in Germany who had neither the time, patience, nor inclination to gather their required papers and wait months for an appointment to find out more papers would be needed before they could get on an eternal waiting list. There's a baby on the way, after all.

We found one of several businesses whose sole purpose is applying for a marriage on your behalf in either Copenhagen or Aero Island. In a matter of weeks, we had an appointment to get married.

We weren't the only couple running to Denmark for a quick and easy town hall wedding. After our comically long journey to Aeroskobing, we saw couples everywhere. Some were mixed race couples – an obvious sign of two people from different countries dodging huge document requirements and embassy visits, like us. We'd see others strolling the old town, the women with noticeable baby bumps, also like us. There was also a young-ish, extremely grumpy couple staying at our hotel, who we'd see later at the town hall just after their wedding, still looking miserable, unlike us.

So, ours was not a unique decision. The staff at the town hall knew the drill. When we arrived to confirm our marriage and get a time for the next day, the elderly lady behind the desk made copies of everything and gave us our appointment quickly and efficiently. A rarity for city government.

The old town of Aeroskobing.

So, the next morning, after picking our flowers, I return to our little cottage in the compound we share with mostly Danish retirees. It starts to rain as we finish getting ready – a few attempts with my tie for me and Kata fixing her hair – and return to the town hall, a little wet, but punctual.

We wait in the little grey, government-issue waiting area and watch one young couple come out, with their parents and a few others, and watch another young couple pace impatiently around the town hall office. Kata gets up to the bathroom, maybe because she's nervous and maybe because she's pregnant, and while she's away they call our name. I wait at the door of the office for Kata to finish up and she rounds the corner directly down the hall from the office. So, I whistle "Here comes the bride..." and Kata walks down the aisle... well the hallway.

There are three elderly ladies in the room. One is the registrar, who will marry us, and the other two are our witnesses, who will, you guessed it, witness the ceremony and snap photos with Kata's phone. The whole thing will last fifteen minutes. After a bit of small talk, the registrar reads a prepared statement, asks us do we, which we do. We put on the rings and we're married. There's a kiss, papers to sign, and a quick toast. Then we're outside in the rain, which we've been told is good luck in Denmark – these marriage office people know their stuff.

When the rain clears up, we spend the afternoon with Kata's nice camera and a tripod, DIY-style, snapping photos around the island's famous beach houses. We eat a steak dinner at a local restaurant. We spend the next two days exploring the island. We mentioned our plan to the registrar, who was surprised because people don't spend any more time here than is necessary to get married. They get in and get out. That is a shame.

Aero island is beautiful!

The old town is lovely, with its 200-year-old houses and post offices and stores and restaurants, but a walk away reveals so much more. The Danish islanders grow lovely gardens filled with neat rows of blooming flowers and apple trees. The entire island is covered with long, golden grass that swishes around in a sea breeze that rarely stops.

The place is clean, and not the German-style of clean where it gets dirty and workers clean up the mess at dawn, but clean in a way that it doesn't get dirty because people take care of it. We saw very little litter. Most people rode their bikes. And they smiled and waved as we took our wedding photos on the beach, totally at ease with marriage tourists wandering their shores.

Like any island, the pace is relaxed. We found ourselves getting into that groove. Our only tasks was breakfast and then one errand (registering at the town hall one day, getting married the next, mailing documents another day). The rest of the day was spent visiting the beaches, another town at one end of the island, eating freshly smoked salmon, or cooking in our cottage and watching TV where the English isn't dubbed, but subtitled so we can enjoy it without straining.

Yes, it would have been fine to get in, get married, and get out, but lingering here turned it into a mini-honeymoon with a wedding in the middle of it. We missed our family and friends. We wished our loved ones could have been here for it. But in the end, it was just the two of us, and that's all we needed to make it perfect.

Newly weds.