Not the Typical Thursday

I went to my boss's wedding today in lieu of work. And it was lovely (they had fantastic luck with the weather -- nicest day of the week). But I found it amusing how the German attendees were completely unable to answer any question I had about what should happen at a typical German wedding: what should I wear? what sort of gift might be appropriate? what do people usually do?

Maybe their absolute cluelessness has to do with a lack of experience with weddings (although I can think of a few other equally likely hypotheses). According to Wikipedia, the average age at first marriage for men in the U.S. is 27.5 and for women is 25.9, while in Germany those numbers are 32.6 and 29.6 (2006). By the way, I assumed that the numbers for Canada would be similar to those of the U.S., but they are 34.3 for men and 31.7 for women. Wow. (There's got to be an "appropriate" Canada joke to put here. Go ahead and fill in the blank in the comments.)

I asked my officemate (a couple years younger than me) if it was the first wedding he had attended. He said it was. I said that the dress I was wearing had been to at least two weddings (and, hey, I've now been to weddings on three different continents!).