view 360° Mondo WEDDINGS ARE MEMORABLE FOR MANY REASONS. THESE ARE UNFORGETTABLE. WEDDINGS Photo: Barcroft Media CHINESE BRIDE WOWS GROOM WITH HER GOWN CHOICE This Chinese bride could give lessons on how to make your groom’s first vision of you in your wedding dress render him speechless! Li Kuo went to great lengths to impress her groom, Xie Tao. According to The Daily Mail, the bride ordered a stunning gown with a 520 metre-long train in secret, noting, “I wanted to give him a surprise and to make the wedding really special”. In their local dialect the numbers five, two and zero sound like ‘I Love You’, her reason for choosing that exact length of train. It took seamstresses in Beijing more than three months to create the gown, which weighed just under 50 kilos. Twenty young bridesmaids carried the train. The groom, who works in an art museum in Wuhan, China, must be no stranger to bold artistic statements but his first view of his bride in her gown had to be shockingly surprising. Mission accomplished, Li Kuo....but will your new husband be afraid whenever you tell him you’re going shopping for a new dress and want to surprise him with your choice? TWO WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL What bride doesn’t spend hours and hours imagining myriad “what-if ” scenarios for her wedding day, trying to anticipate any possible glitches that could occur? No amount of pre-wedding planning could have prepared for a very sad happening at a recent wedding in Germany. Munich’s Merkur newspaper reported a tragic occurrence at a wedding in the historic St. Lambert Abbey Chapel at Seeon Monastery in Bavaria. The Benedictine Monastery was founded in 994 A.D. and has many claims to fame, including music composed by Mozart for the monastery. The Roman Catholic priest, who had been feeling unwell, suffered a heart attack and fell to the stone floor while delivering a prayer as he performed the wedding ceremony. He later died. Shocked participants gave first aid to the priest and comforted the distraught bride. Out of consideration for their guests who had travelled great distances to be in attendance, the couple decided to continue with the wedding in a different venue, a few hours later. Another priest stepped in to marry the German bride and her Italian groom in a nearby church at a ceremony that began with a prayer for the recently-departed priest. 14 Wedding Essentials 2013