zefrenchpeople

 A while back, on Gilmore Girls, Lorelai and Chris went to France and randomly got married which was absolutely impossible and I wondered how many people would think France is like Las Vegas trying to fly there and get married.

Getting married in France is not an easy thing to do. A Las Vegas type of wedding, where you just show up, is not possible. For a couple to get married in France, one person MUST satisfy the forty-day residence requirement. There is no way around this rule. Also, the marriage needs to be announced ten days before it is to take place, usually by an ad in a local newspaper or by a public bulletin posted in the town or village where the wedding is to take place.

Required Documents
U.S. passport or a French residence permit (carte de sejour)
Certified copy of birth certificate (extrait d’acte de naissance)
Affidavit of marital status or certificate of celibacy (declaration en vue de mariage)
Affidavit of law (certificat de coutume)
Medical certificate (certificat medical prenuptial)

Civil Ceremony

In France there is first a civil ceremony that takes place at the local Marie (Town Hall). If the couple is also having a religious ceremony, the civil ceremony acts as a private family wedding. The mayor of the town where the wedding is taking place usually performs the civil ceremony. Once the civil ceremony is complete, the couple will receive a livret de famille, the French marriage certificate. This is an official document and, should the couple have children, each child’s birth will be recorded in the livret de famille. There is no cost to get married civilly in France.

Religious Ceremony

If the couple chooses to have a religious ceremony, it will take place after the civil ceremony and acts as kind of public wedding. The religious ceremony MUST take place after the civil one. Whomever performs the religious ceremony will be required to see the couple’s livret de famille - as proof of a civil ceremony, before the religious ceremony can take place.

Tradition

Both ceremonies will take place on the same day, one right after the other. After the religious ceremony there will be a vin d’honneur, this acts as a public reception. Then there will be a private family dinner and celebration.
The idea behind having two ceremonies is that the civil one acts as a declaration before man, and the religious one, a declaration before God of the couple’s love.

Cake

We traditionally serve “une pièce montée” or ” croquembouche” (It is a high cone of profiteroles -choux filled with pastry cream- bound with caramel) which is also eaten for baptisms and communions.   You can make a lot of shapes with the “nougatine“.

Wedding in the World

http://www.americansinfrance.net/

I decided not to “Disco Tuesday” today mainly because there’s enough videos on this page for a few posts, I don’t want to overload it.

Instead, I will share a very strange yet useful information.  In France, we have something I have yet to see here which is scented toilet paper.  I’m not kidding!  “Le Trèfle” and “Lotus” are a couple of the main brands that carry it, as well as store brands usually.  It comes in different colored scented paper: you can find lavender, lilacs, aloe, grapefruit, peach… and many other kind.

Don’t believe it? check it out here!

As a side note, I recently found out that in Annecy-le-Vieux  you can see this:

It is a machine that dispenses fresh unpasteurized milk direct from a local dairy farm.  The idea is that the dairy farmer can go directly to the consumer and the consumer can buy fresh milk that is only filtered, thus “drinking directly from the cow.”  The cost is 1€ for a liter of milk that is advertised to last up to three days.

I was thinking about a few things which are totally random but need to be mentioned.

The first one is that, in France, it’s “No right turn on Red” ever… if you go when it’s red, you’ll be in trouble anytime!

The second is that the lights at the intersections are on the right side of the road next to the stop line, not across the intersection.

The third thing I wanted to say is that schools are for schoolers and nobody else, if the school is closed and you want to let your kids play on the premises on Sunday, someone will call the cops on you… it’s private property or something.  It’s like breaking in… there actually is a gate and fences.

Most of houses in France are fenced all around.  You will rarely find opened lawn houses like here.

You will most likely find milk in “boxes” like Parmalat milk which is undrinkable… bad taste… The only decent milk to be drunk (or so I’ve heard from Americans since I don’t like milk) is the Candia brand in plastic bottles.  The main reason is that most of the time we don’t just pasteurize it, we have U.H.T milk which means we super-pasteurize it.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the Front National, is in the spotlight today once again.

As a European Deputy, along with his daughter Marine, he is thought to be the next “Doyen” of the assembly if re-elected to said statute.  Why would this be a problem?  Well, the “Doyen” of the Parliament gets the right to preside the first session.

Le Pen is well-known for his racist comments, and more recently for reaffirming his statement on gas chambers which for him were just a “mere detail” of WWII.

He was the runner up during the Presidential Elections of 2002.

Insulting the Socialists and the Environmentalists on a fairly regular basis in the European Parliament, there is a lot of tensions around him.  He now says that he is a victim of “Francophobic racism” from the German Parliament side. Although he has a spot in the European one, he has no seat in the French Parliament.

He will be 81 years old on June 20…

In 2007, the Front National counted more than 75 000 adherents.

Le Pen sparks Holocaust row at EU parliament

16 minutes ago

STRASBOURG (AFP) — French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen caused a storm in the EU parliament on Wednesday by repeating comments belittling the Nazi Holocaust of World War II.

Already at the centre of controversy over the possibility of the veteran MEP presiding over the chamber’s next inaugural session, Le Pen said he was the victim of “inflammatory accusations” by the parliamentary socialist group head, German euro MP Martin Schulz, who had branded him a Holocaust denier.

“I just said that the gas chambers were a detail of second world war history, which is clear,” he told a sitting of the European parliament in Strasbourg.

 AFP

For some reason, France is some kind of “farfelus” singers’ Heaven.

Belgian, Portuguese born pop singer Wanda Maria Ribeiro Furtado Tavares de Vasconcelos aka Lio is someone you should know.  She’s still very often on TV in France.  She is a very hot, voluptuous, energetic woman who very often making sexual connotations about pretty much anything… she kinda breathe hotness but in a good way!

So here is a first single, when she was 17, called “Banana Split“… and I’m sure you can figure her style after that video:

Another very famous song of hers is “Les Brunes comptent pas pour des prunes” (Brunettes don’t count for nothing):

Then another one about “Revenge is a dish served cold”  (“La vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid”) calles “Fallait pas commencer“:

And here is a sweet video of her and France Gall singing “Be my Baby”… just watch it!  The French “Baby” is cute!