From Katy Garnier, Producer:

I live a pretty pastoral life up here in remote Western Massachusetts, but back at the dawn of time (the early 90s), it was a different story. As a broke but adventurous undergraduate student at NYU, I could be convinced to do just about anything, as long as it was free and didn't get me arrested. This summer, I managed to catch a little of that old thrill. Doug and Krystl, my two main collaborators in collegiate mischief, finally decided to get married after ten years of blissfully living in sin. Seeing as how their lifestyles haven't really changed that much since our glory days, there would be no little New England chapel and three-tiered wedding cake for them. They were going to tie the knot at the Love Parade.

Ever heard of it? Neither had I. Here's the history: Back in 1988, just a few months after the toppling of the Berlin Wall, a small group of techno music-lovin' freaks paraded through the newly unified city with a VW bus blasting party beats, promoting "friede, freude, eierkuchen" (peace, happiness, and pancakes). This "Love Parade" became an annual phenomenon, and has grown into a massive event, with DJs and ravers traveling from all corners of the globe to dance in the sun.

My friends' original concept was to gather a group of close friends, travel en masse to Berlin, attend the parade like any number of the unwashed masses, and somewhere among the chaos, perform a little nuptial ceremony. But some party promoters got wind of their plans and offered to turn things up a notch. Surprisingly, no one had ever thought to get married at the Parade before, and the promoters were pretty excited by the prospect.

Of course, I knew very little of this before getting on a plane to Berlin. I came pretty close to not going at all. The impracticality (and expense!) of jumping off to another country for all of four days in the middle of ten million Tripod projects was weighing pretty heavily on my mind. But a week before the Parade I had a "once in a lifetime" epiphany — I scored a true deal and found myself a cheap plane ticket on the Net.

The madness started as soon as I hit Berlin. It was morning, and rather than sleep (which I knew would throw me off for the rest of the weekend), I elected to be dragged around on the happy couple's itinerary. Our hosts, Marian and Richard, a middle-aged pair who looked more like burnt-out hippies than ravers, picked us up. My introduction to Berlin was a nauseating BMW ride through the city's streets. First stop: The offices of the Berliner Morgenpost, and a quick interview with a perplexed reporter. Next, back into the car for a tour of the parade route. Then, a strategic planning session (and the first food of the day) at an outdoor cafŽ, to map out the next day's events.

After a relatively mellow evening (and a few hours sleep), we woke up early and donned our party gear. Krystl's one concession to bridal style was her dress — a white contraption that looked fairly traditional until you inspected it up close. It was constructed of T-shirt material and had sparkly things hot-glued on. The day was shaping up to be sunny and in the high 90s, so the rest of us opted to wear as little as possible.

Out in the city, people were already gathering at the parade route, where the crowd of wild-haired and scantily clad youth got ever thicker, and a thousand different techno beats throbbed faintly in the air. We met up with our crew and boarded our parade float near the historic Brandenburg gate.

The float was really nothing more than a semi with a sound stage built onto it. And we were to be the decoration! We cued up behind other trucks and waited for a sweaty hour and a half for the kickoff. Then the float's DJ started spinning, and we moved out into the throng. What a crowd it was! All I could see in any direction were bobbing, gyrating kids with orange, pink, blue, green, and you-name-it hair. The attire of choice seemed to be sunflower-adorned string bikini tops and hot pants. Assault weapons of choice were whistles and super-soakers, with which the bearers obligingly cooled us off, whether we wanted it or not. People were packed into the street like sardines. It took a cadre of friendly but firm security guards around the perimeter of our float to keep them from overrunning us.

We spent the next hour or so dancing for, and gawking at, the masses. The float then stopped at the small side stage where the ceremony was to be performed, and we were all hustled off. In the confusion, I left my shoes behind, which I had removed to dance. Bad idea!

Doug and Krystl took their places on the stage. A genuine opera singer was enlisted to serenade the couple with "Ave Maria." This didn't go over all that well with the techno crowd, but I thought it was a nice touch. Their friend Karen performed a short and appropriately cosmic ceremony (she got her ministry over the Internet), and we all got a little teary-eyed. A brief photo session followed, and we prepared to get back on the float.

The only problem was, they had neglected to tell us that the float had moved on without us, and if we wanted to get back on, the only thing to do was ford the crowd to reach it — without shoes, I might add.

Fortunately, our officiant Karen was also something of a den mother, and had a pair of thick socks in her bag. I donned them and let her lead me while I tried to avoid the numerous shards of broken glass, bottle caps, and the like. We tried at first to take the most direct route to the float, right along the parade route, but that proved to be impossible. We swung wider, into a park, and found ourselves in a party-refugee camp. All those who had found the throbbing crowd a little too much to deal with had retreated, and were just sitting dazedly amongst the trees. The going was much faster now, and there was much less glass on the ground. We were able to come abreast of the float in fairly short order and make a final push through the crowd. We were handed up to the float like returning royalty, and my feet escaped intact. Whew!

We got on the float moments before the climax of the parade, when all of the floats form a circle in the middle of the route, around a massive tower topped with a gilded angel. Up to that point, each float had been blasting its own music, but now they all tuned in to a single DJ in the tower. The sound was pretty incredible. I'm not a big fan of techno, but for that day I saw the light. And when I looked over at my beaming, newly married friends, I didn't want to be anywhere else.

I later found out there were 1.5 million people at the Love Parade this year. And in all that, there were only two arrests, and, sadly, two deaths. (But those are better statistics than your average British football game.) Doug and Krystl's wedding was covered in all the German newspapers, and folks back at home even heard a mention on National Public Radio.

Love, peace, and pancakes.