Wedding in
Cologne

The Cathedral is so monumentally, aggressively Gothic that standing in front of it makes you feel geologically tiny. The Rhine runs past it carrying barges and ancient history, and the city splits across both banks in a tangle of medieval streets, Renaissance buildings, and modern intervention that somehow works.

Weddings favour the river-side in May and September, when the light bounces off the water at the angle that makes people cry without meaning to. Cologne is famous for its eau de cologne, which smells like success and flowers. The restaurants are excellent without being pretentious. The beer culture is proud and serious. The city is compact enough to navigate without maps, dense enough with history that every street has three stories.