🇩🇪 Germany · wedding
Polterabend — Germany's noisy pre-wedding tradition
The pre-wedding evening where guests smash porcelain for good luck — and the bride and groom sweep it up together. Captured in photos that usually nobody collects.
Polterabend is the evening Germans break dishes. Not out of anger — out of superstition. Shards bring luck, the saying goes, and the bride and groom sweep them up together as a symbolic rehearsal for marriage.
What happens
Guests bring old porcelain. No glasses, no mirrors — only porcelain, because glass brings bad luck. They throw it onto a stone slab in front of the door or in the yard. It crashes, everyone laughs, someone starts filming.
Then the couple grab a broom and dustpan and sweep together. Whoever laughs most or runs out of patience first hints at who in the marriage will tidy up more often.
Why the photos get lost
Polterabend isn't the actual wedding day. Nobody hired a photographer. Aunt Heike takes 80 phone photos and promises to send them — never does. The uncle films the sweeping in vertical video and forgets it in his camera roll.
In the end the bride has three pictures from her sister's WhatsApp story. The rest is scattered across 14 different phones that will get an iOS update in two months and delete the whole album.
How Galeira helps
One QR code printed on an A5 sheet, taped to the front door. Every guest scans it, opens the page — no download, no signup — and picks their Polterabend photos.
Photos land in your gallery at full resolution. If you've set up Google Drive or Dropbox mirroring, they auto-mirror there too.
Before the evening
Create a Galeira event a week ahead. Print the QR at three sizes: A5 for the front door, A6 for the buffet table, A4 for the wall inside. When the shards fly, everyone has a reminder in their pocket where the QR is.
After
The next morning — usually with a slight headache — you open the gallery. You see your parents' faces breaking dishes. You see yourself with the broom, laughing. You see the moments that blur in memory, in full sharpness.
You download everything at once, or keep the Galeira gallery for your plan's archive period — approved originals mirror to your connected Google Drive or Dropbox, with status you can verify. Galeira is free to start.
Frequently asked
What is Polterabend?
The German pre-wedding tradition where friends and neighbours arrive at the couple's home with old porcelain and smash it on the ground outside the front door for luck.
Why only porcelain — never glass?
Scherben bringen Glück ('shards bring luck') applies to porcelain only. Glass is associated with funerals; smashing glass is bad luck. Mirrors are very bad luck.
When does Polterabend happen?
The evening before the civil-ceremony wedding day. After the chaos, the couple sweeps up the shards together as a symbolic team test.
Is Polterabend invitation-only?
No — it's informal. Friends, family, and neighbours simply show up between 6 and 9 pm with their porcelain. The couple greets each arrival and opens beer or Schnaps.
Other cultures in the series
- 🇮🇩 IndonesiaSiraman, akad, resepsi — three Indonesian wedding moments that produce three photo collections
- 🇰🇷 South KoreaPyebaek — the Korean wedding ceremony where families bow, throw dates, and trade photos
- 🇹🇭 ThailandRod nam sang — the Thai water-pouring blessing that turns a wedding into a shared photo album
Hosting your own Germany wedding?
Galeira gives you one QR code that turns every guest's phone into a camera and mirrors approved photos to a cloud you already own once it's connected. Free to start.
Create your album →