-- First of all, sorry for all this time without video!!! I really apologize, I had a lot of work to do, but I'm back on Youtube 🙂 In this video, I tell you about the proposal of Mathieu, my fiancé. It's a good opportunity to see the vocabulary regarding this theme.

Transcript of the video

Hello everyone, I hope you're well. It's been a long, long time since I've had a video.

First of all, I would like to apologize to you, in fact I have a job next to this YouTube channel and I had a lot of work.

I haven't had time to make any new videos at all, but the good news is that I quit that job and so now I'll have a lot more time to devote to this YouTube channel.

And here we go again with at least one video a week. But I think there will be even more. I have a lot of new formats to offer you. I think I'm going to do live videos too. I'm going to do shorter videos with one phrase. I'm also going to offer to do games together.

So here we go again for this channel. A lot of you have written me messages to ask me if I was stopping the channel.

Not at all. Now I'll really have more time, so here we go again.

Today, I'm going to talk about a theme that is very close to my heart. It will be an opportunity to learn new vocabulary on this theme, but also to learn more about the culture in France.

So the big news today, already, is that the channel is starting up again. I'm going to start the videos on the channel again, but more importantly... I'm getting married.

So, here we go, today we're going to talk about this theme of marriage. I'm going to divide the video into several parts, so first, I'm going to explain the proposal.

After that, we'll talk about the preparations for the wedding and finally the D-day of the wedding. I will try to put some vocabulary in the video.

This will help you to see the important words to remember about this topic. As usual, you have the French subtitles to help you understand the video better, so don't hesitate to activate them.

It helps you both to understand the video better, but also to better remember all the new expressions we're going to see together today. I hope you're comfortable and we're off.

I think I already told you about Mathieu, my companion, my lover... because he helps me a lot to make this YouTube channel.

He helps me a lot in the videos. You have never seen him because he is not on the screen, for now, but maybe soon we will make videos together.

But here he is, helping me a lot on the channel. Last June, he proposed to me. How it happened, we were on vacation in Lanzarote. It's an island in the Canary Islands, I'll put a little map for you so you can see where it is, and he surprised me. We were doing a hike. Lanzarote is an island where there are a lot of volcanoes. It's really a setting, volcanic landscapes.

It feels a bit like we are on Mars. I'm going to put some pictures so you can see what it looks like if you don't know. And during a hike, so, it was very beautiful, we went up on a volcano and around the volcano, there were vineyards. The vines are... they're the grapes that we grow to make wine.

It's beautiful. We were going up. There were the vineyards and also well it's an island, so it's surrounded by water, so you could see the sea, so it was very beautiful and above the volcano, he opened his bag and he took out an engagement ring in a little box. So, this ring and he proposed to me.

Of course, I said yes and... and voila, we ended up engaged. So, we say "engaged" and for a boy and "fiancée" for a woman. So that's what we call each other before we get married.

When we are between the period when we got engaged, when we proposed and when we got married. Once we are married, we say husband and wife or husband and wife. So, for now, we are engaged. Once we came back to France, we had to start the preparations. So we go to part 2 of the video. When we came back, of course, first we announced the good news to our families, to our friends.

Everyone was very happy and then we started the preparations for the wedding. So that's the hardest part, the most complicated part. I don't know if you got married or if you're getting married soon, but if you are, you must know what I'm talking about. The first thing we did was to look for a place to organize the wedding reception, the wedding party. We wanted to get married in the south of France because Mathieu is from the Marseille area, Aix-en-Provence.

So it was very important to us to get married in this region. Moreover, it is very beautiful. There are fields of lavender, there is sunshine all the time. It's really a beautiful region to get married in. I really wanted to get married outside, in a garden. So we started looking for a place with a beautiful garden where we could have the ceremony and the party. We started by visiting places.

Once we found the place we liked. As I was saying, we wanted to get married in a garden, but then, there are many places to get married. You can get married in a castle, you can't get married in a village hall, so it's often places that belong to the city. Where we can, we can organize parties. So there you have it, everyone gets married in the setting that they like.

If you are married, feel free to tell me in comments where you got married. How did it go? And above all, it's a good exercise for the vocabulary we're going to see. It's a way to use the vocabulary we're going to see in this video. So don't hesitate to tell me in comments your wedding.

Then, once we had place, the second very important thing to find, it is a caterer. So the caterer, it is the person or in any case, it is the company, the company which is going to organize all the meal of the marriage.

So, in France, food is very important, so it's very important to choose the right caterer. So we've already found that. So we are in the middle of the preparations, so we are progressing little by little. We have also already found the DJ. So, the DJ is the person who is going to put the music at the wedding, who is going to create the atmosphere of the wedding, the festive atmosphere. Then, what to do...

What else do you need for a wedding? We need a photographer. If we want to take pictures of the party. We also found a videographer. This is the person who will make a video. It is not in all weddings. There is not necessarily someone who makes the video. We wanted someone who makes videos so that we can keep a memory of this day where, it is a little more dynamic, we see the movement, we see more the atmosphere than on the photos.

So it was very important for us.

It is also necessary to find a hairdresser during the preparations. If you want to for the D-day. A make-up artist, the person who will do the make-up. So I think that I will not take a make-up artist. I make myself up. But it's a service provider that you can look for when you get married.

We didn't take any, but there are people who also use a wedding planner.

So it's the same word as in English. It's a person, in fact, who will help the bride and groom to find a DJ, a caterer... We decided to organize everything by ourselves because I like to organize. And also, it is true that it is very expensive.

Another very important point when you get married, especially for me, when you are a woman, is to find your wedding dress. So, I did a lot of fittings. I think I went to five different stores. I did some fittings with my parents, others with friends to find the dress of my dreams.

I'm going to put you some small pictures of the fittings. I don't put you the dress I chose because they say it's bad luck to show the dress. Bad luck, it means that we have the impression that if we show our wedding dress, especially to our future husband, we will have... we will have bad luck, we will have bad things happen to us. That's when you are superstitious. So superstitious, it is when we think that if, for example, we pass behind a ladder, it is going to happen to us misfortunes.

If we break a mirror, bad things will happen to us. It's when we are a little, we are afraid... there are certain things, if we do them, that will happen to us bad things. There, it is good. I found my wedding dress. It's true that it takes a really long time, but for everything, with a wedding, you have to plan very, very far in advance. Almost a year in advance to organize everything.

But it's also mainly because people book... book caterers, photographers, DJs very far in advance. So, you have to... you have to get in early to be able to have great providers.

So, for example, I ordered my dress in September and it will only arrive in April, whereas our wedding is planned for June. So, you see, you really have to do it very early in advance.

So when we know the preparations for the wedding, there are also the rings to plan. So the rings, it is in fact the ring that we will put and the husband and wife that shows in fact the commitment. Often, the classic wedding rings. I will put a picture of it. It is a yellow gold ring, it is golden. And inside, you can have them engraved. So, we find the wedding rings in a jewelry store. It's the place where we sell jewels, watches, rings, necklaces, bracelets...

You order the rings there and you can have them engraved. So we've already done that... We've done it really early. And inside, they often put the date of the wedding and we put the first name. So, in my wedding ring, it's Matthew's first name and Matthew's wedding ring is Elisabeth. But we can also write, for example, a quote, we can just put the first names, just the date... Everyone does a little bit as he wants. So, I think I've told you everything about the preparations.

There is also the decoration to foresee. We can use a florist who will make, who will make decorations with flowers. We rented small lamps as it is in a garden so that it is pretty. On the decoration, each one makes... each one makes a little what he likes.

 Let's move on to the third part of the video. On the D-day, I will explain you how the wedding day is done in France.

Afterwards, there are as many weddings as there are couples who get married, but I'll tell you a little bit about how it traditionally happens in France. First of all, you have to know that in France, for a marriage to be validated, there has to be a civil marriage, and that the civil marriage is the one that is done at the town hall. It is the only one that has a value in the eyes of the law, so it is the recognition of the state of your marriage.

You get married in a town hall. It has to be either at the town hall where you live, or at the town hall of one of your parents. We will get married in the south, in the city where Mathieu grew up and where his father lives. When we get married at the town hall, we need witnesses. So, these are the people who will attest to the love of the couple, who are there to say I testify to this marriage.

I was a witness. I can attest. We can take four for the couple. We only took two. We took one each. Mathieu took his best friend and I took my best friend. Once that... so that's the civil marriage. But we can also do, if we want, it's not obligatory, a religious wedding or a secular wedding. So, for me, religious weddings, I was. It was always in churches, it was catholic weddings.

And the secular wedding, that's what we will do. In fact, we make a ceremony a little bit like we want. So, it is ourselves who will build it. And someone, sometimes, it can be a secular ceremony officiant, so it's someone that you will pay to do this service. Or we're going to do that. We chose a friend, a friend of Mathieu's, who is an actor, who is used to acting in the theater.

He is very comfortable speaking in public. He's going to be conducting this secular ceremony. I'm going to see pictures of a secular ceremony if you're not familiar with it, so you can see what it might look like. And so basically, he's going to speak and the different people make speeches. Our families, our witnesses and us too, we will exchange our vows. I'm going to make a speech to Mathieu and Mathieu is going to make a speech to me, where we're going to talk about each other, about the love we have for each other and we're going to exchange rings.

So, as I was saying, it is the ring that symbolizes the marriage. We can also exchange the rings at the town hall, if we want to, during the civil wedding. We will rather do it during the secular wedding because it is a more romantic ceremony, with more emotions. The wedding at the town hall lasts 15 minutes. It's really very, very fast. There is not much emotion, it is really more to be married in the eyes of the law.

I talked about the ceremonies... afterwards, in general in France, after the ceremony, there will be what we call a vin d'honneur. So, it's a bit... in fact, it's a bit of an aperitif. It's what we have before the meal, so we often drink champagne, but it can be another sparkling wine. It can be what we want, but traditionally, it's more champagne and we'll eat little appetizers. So it's a bit, it's really the aperitif, but said in a nicer way for a wedding, it's called the wine of honor.

After the wine of honor, usually comes the meal. So here, everything will be outside, we will have a meal under the stars. But often, it's true that it's more in rooms. It depends on the place of reception that you have chosen. The meal can be a buffet. There can be tables with food and people come and help themselves or it can be served at the table. That's what we'll do.

There is a menu, there are waiters who come and serve the people at the table with the meal. There will be a starter, a main course, cheese and dessert. In France, it is quite important to have a cheese dish. So... we'll eat that with bread. Then the dessert is usually a big cake, a wedding cake, so it's the same word as in English. And often, it can also be a cake with little choux, I'll put a picture so you can see what it looks like.

Then, again, it's not mandatory at all. I was at a wedding a... a few weeks ago where it wasn't like that at all. It was small desserts, you could go and help yourself. And here we are... I don't really like big cakes like that. So, we too, will make a dessert that we like a little bit better. Once the meal is finished, the tradition wants that to open the ball, to open the dance party, there is a first dance.

So the first dance, actually, is the dance between the bride and groom. So, often, it's quite romantic music. It can be a slow dance. A slow dance is a rather slow music where we dance a little embraced. But again, there's no... there's no rules, so I've been to weddings where the bride and groom were choreographing to more dynamic, more modern music. There are no real rules, but it's true that very often, there is this first dance to open the ball.

And afterwards, everyone dances, everyone parties all night long, until the early morning.

Another tradition in France. We won't do it, but it's more our parents who did it. But it's true that it can still be done, it's to offer almonds. So the sugared almonds, it's a bit like little candies, it's a bit... it's a bit oval like that. I'll also put a picture of it.

It can be colored, but often it's white or light pink or light blue. And there's a layer of sugar. And inside, there's chocolate or it can be an almond. And often, we offer it in a little... either in a little... like a little... a little square of fabric that we close with a ribbon or... or in a little pouch and we offer our dragees as a souvenir of the wedding. But it's true that it's a bit of a dated tradition.

Our parents used to do this earlier, as I told you. We will also plan small gifts for the guests, but things a little more modern. For example, there is a wedding where I went two years ago. They had planned mini bottles of rum. They also had goblets. It's like plastic glasses, with the date of the wedding, the name of the bride and groom, an illustration, so a drawing with the face of the bride and groom.

So, each one, it's a little bit like he wants. I think that we have been through a lot of traditions on a wedding in France.

Don't hesitate to comment on the wedding traditions in your country or to tell me about your wedding or your future wedding, it's a very, very good exercise to learn the vocabulary of the video and to practice French. I hope you enjoyed this video and that you are ready for all the new videos I will post on the channel.

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