Where are my clogs?: Swedish wedding

Last weekend (2nd Sept) we went to Tomas and Jessica's wedding in Uppsala, Sweden. Tomas worked with Nico in London for a while and then the four of us became friends. Like Nico and I, they lived in London for two years, from about mid 2004 to mid 2006. They now live back in their flat in Uppsala with their 2 very fluffy (and 'chubby') cats. To the right is a picture of them just after the ceremony, while the guests were still throwing 'rice' at them!

Some traditions are the same as what I have seen in other weddings, such as throwing the bouquet to all the unmarried women (guess whose hands that landed in!) and throwing the garter to all the unmarried men.

Other things were quite unique...but I don't know if this was all very 'Swedish' or all very 'Jessica and Tomas' or a combination of both.

The bride and groom walk up the aisle together...no giving away of the bride. Thank you oh forward thinking Swedes!!
At everyone's place at the table there was a kind of booklet. In the booklet it had songs to be sung at the reception as well as a brief description of everyone at the wedding. Thank you Jessica for translating everything into English in all the non-Swedish speakers' booklets!
They played a game where Tomas and Jessica sat with their backs to each other. They both had a shoe of his and a shoe of hers. The MC's asked a bunch of questions which they had to answer by raising either the shoe of Tomas or of Jessica. An example was 'Who would get up if they had a baby and it was crying at 3 in the morning?' The aim was of course to see how many they answered the same. They got 14 out of 23! Thank you very much to their 2 friends at our table who interpreted every question for the 7 non-Swedish guests!
Every time Jessica went to the toilet all the girls had to go and kiss Tomas, and when Tomas went, all the guys had to kiss Jessica. I remember Tomas commenting that this was his favourite tradition...
The next day we went back to where they had the reception and they opened all the presents and read all the cards! Like the day before, there was so much good food and, this time, lots of strong coffee!! Thank you to Tomas and Jessica's family who prepared all of this for all the guests!

One more thing that I have to mention about this day was the fantastic job the MC's did. They were two friends of Tomas and Jessica; one guy, one girl. They were really entertaining and informative. And of course they went out of their way to translate everything for us.

While we were waiting for the bridal party after the ceremony we had some champagne and they then did something in English which was mainly for our benefit. They told us about different Swedish wedding tradtions from different parts of the country. A few I remember were:

The bride couldn't sew her own dress because the number of stitches would represent the number of tears she would cry during her married life.
The father of the bride used to have the power to marry a couple.
The wedding party used to follow the bride and groom into the bedroom to check that they slept together!
A man could pay for his wife to prevent her from being stolen by another man, but that would happen anyway, so the original guy had to pay another sum to get her back.
In the part of Sweden we were in, a few drops of rain on the bride's veil was good luck.
The person who says 'I do' the loudest is the one that will call the shots in the future...I only heard Jessica's 'ja' in the church???

It was a really great weekend and the ceremony and reception were really beautiful.

The bridal party