Welcome to the wedding between
Jessica & Oscar
Saturday, June 15, 2024
Information & registration
Since both of us, though especially Oscar, have large extended families with many aunts, cousins, and more, we have sent two types of invitations. All our guests are warmly invited to the wedding and subsequent mingling with light refreshments. However, in order to make the wedding dinner a bit more intimate, we have decided to prioritize the closest family, friends and international friends. Unsurprisingly, anyone who receives an English invitation falls into that latter group and is welcome to join us in all the wedding celebrations.
Click here to register for the wedding, no later than March 31.
Dress code
We have chosen not to have any of the Swedish classic dress codes mörk kostym (dark suit) or kavaj (jacket), because we think it is boring not to allow, for example, light coloured suits, patterned shirts or long dresses. Instead, we ask our guests to be smartly dressed, because we think most people have a good idea of what this means.
But to be extra clear: it is not forbidden to wear dark coloured suits, white shirts, national costume/uniform, knee- or tea-length dresses, rather it is also permitted to have light/clear colors and patterns on suits and shirts, long dresses, pantsuits, or a blouse plus skirt/slacks.
Extra international notice: according to a quick online search, the dress codes are quite different in English, and there are also more of them, compared to in Sweden. But as you hopefully understand, our dress code is very free. However, if you still feel unsure about what to wear, or just want to be on the safe side, opt for cocktail attire.
Toastmasters
If you wish to give a speech, sing a song, or perform something else, we want you to send an email to our toastmasters Emil and Lisa Palm, to emilpalm@live.se. Please write what you wish to do, estimated time duration, and any requests/aids. Please notify the toastmasters in good time, but no later than May 25.
Wish list
Our biggest wish is for you to join us and celebrate our wedding day, but if you would also like to give us a gift, we have here put together a wish list of things we would appreciate. We promise not to look at the list now that it is published! Please fill in the column "paxat" if you buy something (with quantity), so that duplicates can be avoided. Unfortunately, the wish list is only available in Swedish, but we believe that you are all intelligent enough to figure out how it works ;)
Children
Children of all ages are welcome to attend the wedding ceremony and subsequent mingling, but if you want to bring your children, we would like you to register them as well in the form above. This way we know how many people are coming, as well as any special dietary needs.
We believe that a wedding dinner, often lasting several hours, would be longwinded for most children. Therefore, we wish that the children can be somewhere else during the dinner. The exception is babies, who must of course be allowed to be with their parents. If you have your baby with you, however, we would like you to tell us so that we can take this into account for the table placement.
Sleeping area
At approximately five minutes' walking distance from the party site, there are seven cottages that we have already pre-booked for our guests. All cabins have six beds each, in various combinations of single and bunk beds. More information is available at https://atransturist.se/en/accommodation. If you want a place to sleep in one of these cabins, it will be at cost price, the price per cabin is SEK 1,350.
Contact us if you are interested, no later than March 31. If you don't want to rent an entire cabin yourself, we can put you together with other guests.
There is room for tents, motorhomes, and caravans at or nearby Sjöviken. If you want to camp, please contact us so we can direct you where to park.
Dancing
After the wedding dinner we will dance to music played by the band Dur X. This means that we will dance the traditional Swedish couple dances called Gammaldans (old-dance), Bugg, and Foxtrot. For our Swedish guests we have described the dances to encourage the guests to learn (or refresh the memory off) the dances for our wedding. We do not expect everyone to be great dancers, we only wish for as many as possible to be brave enough to go up on the dance floor, and we believe this courage often comes from knowing what to do.
We know that opportunities to learn our typical Swedish couple dances are very limited for our international guests, and we do not expect you to learn them. However, maybe reading about the dances and knowing that to expect could encourage a few of you up on the dance floor? Or you might just enjoy reading about the dances, and learning a little bit of Swedish dance history? We’re therefore decided to translate our texts about the dances, and add some extra trivia or descriptions here and there.
Foxtrot
This is the easiest dance to learn, at least as far as the basics. Take a friend, embrace this friend, and move around slowly together, preferably in time with the music. Doesn’t sound that hard, right?
If you think this sounds just like typical old slow dancing, maybe it is very basic, but that is enough. At least if you combine the dancing with some pleasant conversation! (Which, by the way, is the best way to compensate for lacking dancing skills, according to the father of the bride)
Trivia
The more traditional way to dance Foxtrot is to follow a specific pattern of two slow steps, two quick steps, two slow steps, two quick steps, etcetera. This is the way everyone danced Foxtrot when our parents and grandparents were young. The slow-slow-quick-quick is also the way that most Swedes are taught in school, but not how the most dedicated dancers do these days. The new way of dancing the foxtrot is by arbitrarily combining slow and quick steps, and sometimes even stopping for a few beats. Moreover, today the dance is often called just Fox, which Jessica personally believes is because of this “new” way of dancing the dance.
Bugg
The vast majority of Swedes have had to learn Bugg at school. For those of you that have completely forgotten about this, it doesn’t matter much, because in our experience, the quality of the Bugg tuition in school isn’t the best. But if you do remember the Bugg from school, and don't want to look like you're dancing what we tend to call school-Bugg, here's a tip from the "experts": Bugg is preferably not danced with straight arms...
Joking aside, if you're interested in rehearsing/learning to dance Bugg, there are courses to find in almost every town of Sweden. If you instead feel like practicing a bit at home in the living room, there is plenty of help available online, and here is just one of many clips on Youtube.
Unfortunately though, all these instruction videos are in English. However, for those who have never seen the Bugg, it’s probably more interesting to see what the dance looks like, so here is a clip from Västerhagen, our favorite summer dancing place, and the place we first met!
Gammaldans
This is probably the dance that is completely new to most guests. Gammaldans is actually not only one dance, but a collective name for six different dances; Snoa, Schottis, Polka, Vals (Waltz), Hambo and Mazurka, where the first three are in four beats and the last three in three beats. These six dances are sometimes called the elementary dances, as there are tons of variations that can be done within each dance. When you dance variations, it is called Gillesdans, and these can differ quite a lot from different places in Sweden. We have therefore chosen to put together a small list of dances, in a recommended learning order based on simplicity and fun. Learn as many or as few as you want!
If you feel that this was not enough, or that you would rather learn to dance Gammaldans at a course, we can recommend you to check out gammaldanssidan.com (especially if you, like us, live in the west part of Sweden). Or ask us for tips, we might even be able to dance together sometime during the winter!
Is Gammaldans Swedish folk dance?
Oscar sometimes describes Gammaldans as Swedish folk dance, and since there are many similarities between the two, this is a quick and easy description to get a rough picture of what the dance looks like. However, the two are not really the same. Jessica has tried Swedish folk dance a couple of times and though some of the dances she learned dancing Gammaldans appeared, they were danced in another way. The folk dance also had more dances than the six dances of Gammaldans, and another difference was that not all folk dances were danced in pairs.
The most important difference might however be in which contexts the dances are danced. Swedish folk dance is often practiced in a set group and performed for an audience in traditional folk costumes, while Gammaldans typically has a more social setting and is more commonly what we do when we “go out and dance”.
Why is it called "Gammal"dans ("old"-dance)?
Gammaldans got its name in the 1930s when jazz music made other dances, especially foxtrot, popular. What's interesting though, is that Gammaldans by that time weren't particularly old. The dances of Gammaldans became popular during the second half of the 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s. Of great significance for this development was the mass production of accordions, and a repertoire of music for Gammaldans were created, customized for the possibilities and limitations of accordions.