Wedding Registry

1001 Listes

1001 listes is where we have registered for the wedding. There is a little "English" link on the upper right hand corner of that page. Where prompted, enter "Komaransky" for the name of the wedding. Do not be surprised if I have a couple of dots over the E in Michael.

If you have trouble using the site, let me know. So far the French guests have found it pretty easy.

Thanks!

Twin Cities

I just discovered on Wikipedia that Montpellier is twin cities with Lakewood, Ohio.

Driving times

Continuing to refine the search:

Driving times to Montpellier:

Barcelona - 4 hours
Marseille - 2 hours
Nice - 4 hours
Nimes - 45 minutes
Paris - 8.5 hours
Toulouse - 3 hours

Wedding Announcement

Dear friends and family,

This is the blog where you will find important information about Sophie and my wedding. Click on all the blue underlined words. If you're having trouble viewing some of the links, make sure to email me at mkomaransky@drwuk.com.

Our wedding will occur in three parts, starting on the afternoon of September 1, 2007 in the small town of Maugio, a suburb of Montpellier, France. The first portion is the civil ceremony to be conducted by the mayor of Maugio at the Hotel de Ville. Here the mayor will register us in his wedding book as required by French law. I am told he was once an English teacher in a nearby school, so he will be able to please the entire crowd. Click on this website to see a picture of the Hotel de Ville and the mayor. After this short ceremony, we will walk about 100 yards across the town square to the church for our marriage. The priest is a lovely man, and the church is unlike anything you've seen in the States, so we're expecting a fantastic mass for both sides of the aisle.

Guests will have an hour or two after the mass to return to their hotels before they head to the reception. Sophie and I have chosen the wonderful Chateau d'Assas for the reception. The small castle is on top of a hill looking out over vineyards, pine trees and the Mediterranean in the distance. Here are four tiny pictures of the exterior of the castle. I can't give away too much for those people who are coming, so no more pictures of the reception!

Click on this cool map to find where exactly in France this is. A little blinking section of the map should catch your eye. This is Herault, the department (kind of like a county) of France where everything is taking place. Click on the blinking Herault to be taken further into the department. One more click on the blinking section and you will finally see the town of Assas. Click on this for a more detailed driving map.

Finally, we've reserved several rooms at the Victoria Garden Suites in Clapiers, about 5 minutes away from the reception. The rooms are reserved from August 30th until September 3rd. The rooms will be paid for for the night of September 1st., and the other nights are 90 Euros. Two of the rooms are large enough for four people. With a Rugby World Cup tournament in town, I expect the other hotels in the area to be nearly full, so hurry up and get back to me if you're interested!

Please check the updates posted at komaransky.blogspot.com! We're going to post new information including flight deals, car rentals and wedding updates on this blog, so make sure to visit occasionally. Why not leave a comment while you're here?

Thanks,
Mike and Sophie

From your house to Montpellier

Undoubetdly there will be no direct flights from your city in the United States to Montpellier, France. This means you will need to find the best two or three-legged fare to get there, and that's not always easy.

There are many different possibilities, but only a handful of good ones. Your first thought would probably be to go through Paris and connect to Montpellier. Although this is the fastest way to Montpellier, it is rarely the cheapest option especially near Labor Day weekend. If you can find this trip under 1000 dollars, then book it. If you fancy a nice train ride, the TGV (Really Fast Train) can make the trip to Montpellier in 2.5 hours with some scenic flare, but again, the airfare to Paris might leave you without a spare cent to buy a croque monsieur.

For the cheapest option I've seen to date, you'll need to get to London Stansted or Frankfurt and then fly Ryanair to Montpellier. The upside is that your second flight will cost no more than 80 dollars round-trip. Ryanair is what they call a low-cost airline here in Europe, and you will see that they offer the Frankfurt-Montpellier leg for only 4.99 Euros! The downside is that Ryanair flies one flight per day to MPL from London Stansted and one from Frankfurt Hahn at rather inconvenient times. The London flight leaves at 6AM from Stansted, and the Frankfurt flight leaves at 7PM. This means a flight from the US to London would arrive three hours too late to catch the STN-MPL flight, and the US to Frankfurt flight would leave you a long time to eat bockwurst and sauerkraut in Germany.

As far as the first leg is concerned, I hope something good pops up (especially to Frankfurt or Paris). I'll include a few links here at the bottom. I like to use Kayak to search for flights because of its ease of use. If you still like Orbitz and Travelocity, I've included those too. They all have nice "FareWatch" functionality where you will be alerted by email or text if a cheap fare pops up. There has been a recent push by Virgin Atlantic to connect the US and London for cheap, particularly New York and Chicago, although currently the flight is still not the best. That link is below as well.

So far I have found a Northwest flight from Cleveland to Frankfurt arriving at 1:20PM, and a 7:00PM Ryanair flight from Frankfurt to Montpellier for under 800 dollars using the links below.

Airfare Links

KAYAK
- Cleveland to Paris
- Cleveland to Montpellier
- Cleveland to London
- Cleveland to Frankfurt


RYANAIR
- London Stansted to Montpellier (Usually 80 dollars round trip)
- Frankfurt to Montpellier (Usually 60 dollars round trip)

ORBITZ

TRAVELOCITY
VIRGIN ATLANTIC
- Cleveland to London
- Chicago to London

TGV
- Paris to Montpellier