Wedding Day Schedule

Accomodations

Things to do

Registry

Welcome to our wedding web site. We hope that you will be able to share our Big Day with us and we look forward to seeing you in Leuven! This web site provides some information to assist you with your planning. Please let us know if you feel any information is missing. You can reach Siska by email at phlips@berkeley.edu, and Carlo at carlocloet@sbcglobal.net

The wedding ceremony will take place in Leuven, a picturesque university town about 30 kilometers east of Brussels. Leuven is the city where Siska was born and where Carlo studied at the KUL, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, before moving to California.

The wedding reception will take place in Bierbeek, a small town near Leuven where Siska grew up.

We planned our wedding day as follows:

11:00 - 12:00	Wedding Ceremony Sint Lambertuskapel Kapel, Arenberg Park, Heverlee, Leuven. The chapel is on the Arenberg Park campus of KUL located just outside Leuven about 1 km south-southwest of the Leuven ring road. For detailed drivng directions, please click here.
12:00 - 12:30	Photos
12:30 - 14:00	Lunch for immediate family members Oude Kantien Restaurant, Heverlee
17:30 - 01:00	Wedding Celebration Berkenhof, Bierbeek. Bierbeek is about a 15 minute drive from Leuven. For detailed driving directions, please click here.
	17:30	Welcome Reception
	18:30	Dinner
	20:30	Cutting the Cake
	21:30	Dancing until 01:00

Staying in Leuven

Here are some hotels in Leuven:

• Klooster Hotel, Leuven. * * * * Central location just off the Brusselsestraat, ~200 m. to the main center, nearby parking, very elegant Hotel, opened 2003.
• Begijnhof Congress Hotel, Leuven. * * * * Near Begijnhof and just off the Leuven ring road, ~100 m. to Begijnhof, ~600 m. to main center, good location and a very nice hotel.
• Hotel Holiday Inn Garden Court, Leuven. * * * ~200 m. to main center, comfortable and quiet, very central location in Leuven, includes parking.
• Lodge Hotel. * * * Located in Heverlee, just south of the Leuven city center.
• Hotel F1. Located in Holsbeek, about 3 miles from Leuven. An affordable, but clean option.

Here is a list of all Hotels in Leuven, which includes the above and lots of other options. In addition, here are some Bed & Breakfast accommodations.

If you need any help to find accomodations, please let us know.

Things to See and Do in Leuven

June coincides with the period for final exams at the KUL, so Leuven may not be as vibrant as during other times of the year, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. June is typically the nicest month of the year weather-wise in Belgium, so there should be plenty of opportunities to visit the medieval downtown or enjoy a Belgian beer on one of the outdoor terraces.

Here are some links to key Leuven attractions:

• Official Stad Leuven Website, mostly in Dutch, but it has an English section.
• General Leuven Website, commercial site, some material English, much more in Dutch.
• Restaurants in Leuven, there are almost two hundred restaurants ranging from four-star to student cafeteria. This list includes some of the ~50 cafe's that circle the Oude Markt (see below).
• Oude Markt (Old Market), with 33 cafes, 8 restaurants, 1 pharmacy, and the KUL's historic headquarters building.
• Review [in English] of some of Leuven's Cafes.
• KUL Founded in 1425, it is the oldest Catholic University in the world and the oldest University in the Low Countries (Benelux). The KUL website is mostly in Dutch but has an English-language subsection.
• Stadhuis
• Sint Pieters Kerk (St. Peter's Church)
• Introducing Leuven, has a very good overview and summary of Leuven history.

Organized Activities

We plan to organize some site-seeing tours for our international visitors:

• Walking Tour of Antwerp on Friday, June 24
  Plantijn-Moretus Museum, Rubens house, Cathedral, Carrillon tour, Fashion Museum, and more.

• Walking Tour of Leuven, Saturday afternoon (25 June) starting around 2:00 pm
  Grote Markt, Oude Markt, Begijnhof, Stadhuis, Sint-Pieters Kerk, American Library, Cafe Cambrinus, Cafe Metropol, Cafe Erasmus, more.

If you are interested in joining any of these tours, please contact Rita Bral (mother of the bride) at ritabral@yahoo.com

Wedding Registry

It will not be easy to take any gifts back home to San Francisco, so we decided to also provide a wedding account option as well as a wedding registry.

• Wedding registry: These links will bring you to our gift registries at www.amazon.com/wedding and at www.crateandbarrel.com
• Wedding account in Belgium: account number KBC 422-0076271-91 c/o Rita Bral. Please mention Siska & Carlo.
  International: we are registered with www.paypal.com as carlocloet@sbcglobal.net

 

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Edward for hosting this site and for providing the url!