Their wedding was on Ice(land)

As far as weddings go, the wedding of Zach and CiCi Gengler of Caledonia was more unusual than most.

Destination weddings are not unusual, but one to Iceland? In October?

From a drink chip to the first date

It all began about three and a half years ago when Gengler was at the Blue Moon with some Army friends. Zach went up to the bar to get a drink and ended up talking with another Army fellow he had deployed with years before and then the bartender handed him a drink chip. "Where is this from," Zach asked and was told it was from the lady at the end of the bar. Zach found the source of the drink chip and, "She gave me the bright eyes and a smile, so I gave her a smile back. I thought about what to do. My heart was racing a bit, so I wrapped the wooden nickel in a napkin with my phone number written on it." Zach tried to give her the chip back, saying it was he who should buy a drink for her, but she said, "I bought this for you." He said, no, that he wanted to buy the drink for her, and it went back and forth until CiCi’s friend finally snatched the chip for himself.

Now, armed with a phone number, the texting back and forth began. "Her texts got more and more amusing as the night went on," Zach smiled. "All this led to the first date, which led to the first kiss."

"Everywhere we go, we find his Army buddies," CiCi said. On the first date, "We went to Buzzard Billy’s, then to the Bodega, where we found more Army buddies." These Army friends were insistent on taking Zach and CiCi’s picture, a little embarrassing on a first date. "Which now is awesome to have," CiCi said. "How many people have a picture of their first date?"

The couple dated for about three years. "He was gone more than he was home during those three years," CiCi said. Zach has been on many months-long deployments to Kuwait and Iraq in 2005; then again to Iraq, Kuwait and then Afghanistan in 2010; and the most recent of which was to Afghanistan in 2013 during the second year of their relationship.

"During our relationship when we first started dating, I was working towards becoming a warrant officer," Gengler said. "She supported me during candidate school, technical school and when done with that, I was deployed that following fall for a year. So, in the middle of our relationship, I went to the Middle East." Even during the six weeks of candidate school in Alabama, there was no communication allowed for five weeks. "It was good practice for when he was deployed. We talked over the phone only a handful of times, though emailed and i-messaged more often," CiCi said.

How an Icelandic wedding happened

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It was a joint idea between the two Genglers to get married in Iceland. Zach had always wanted to go there and the wedding there stemmed from wanting a destination wedding. "It was something we thought was way cooler than a big white wedding," Gengler said. "In 2010, I wanted to go there for mid-tour leave because I heard it was good." He had everything booked, then the EyjafjallajÖkull volcano erupted, disrupting all transportation to Iceland for weeks. Gengler ended up going to Germany instead to stay with his cousin Paul Denstad in the small town of Meisberg near Spangdahlem Air Base then to stay his last night with Thomas Stauder at his home near Frankfurt. Ever since then, Gengler wanted to go to Iceland and on his last tour, he hoped he could accomplish that with CiCi joining him there. The Army changed the rules, however and took away mid-tour leaves for nine month deployments. "When I got back, I said to CiCi, ‘Let’s go to Iceland in January for a vacation." January was CiCi’s only break during grad school and a trip to Iceland in January didn’t sound like much of a vacation to her, so the couple enjoyed a trip to Cozumel instead. "As soon as I finish grad school, then you can take me to Iceland," CiCi told Gengler. CiCi now has her Masters in clinical exercise physiology. She is originally from La Crosse.

"It’s not a huge relocation but it’s quite different living in a small town," she said. I had never lived in a small town before nor had I any desire to.

"He ended up proposing and we talked about what we wanted to do," CiCi said. "His brother had a destination wedding to Hawaii and that would have been amazing but we’re both pretty adventurous and sitting on the beach wasn’t what we wanted. We wanted to do things and see things we had never experienced before so we decided to get married in Iceland."

Hours on volcanic ash roads

"We saw a lot," CiCi said, "But 85 percent of the time was driving. We had seven other people with us. We wanted to do 10 or more days but the rest of the group couldn’t go that long. First, we were going to stay in hostels but then looking up scheduling, we didn’t get to go until October." "This worked great to see the northern lights," Gengler added. "But most everything shuts down there because October is not prime season. Only half the hostels were open and in the northeast, there was nothing open.

"So, we rented RVs and campers so we could stay and go wherever we wanted to. We had a caravan of RVs, the whole wedding party along with photographers. We went place to place, driving six hours a day, but we saw tons. We went to the Blue Lagoon; went to some black sand beaches; checked out some fishing villages; drove through some mountains; saw an orange lighthouse; saw a mountain that looked like a pyramid; went to Lake Myvatn in the north and saw the waterfalls, Godafoss and Dettifoss; we saw lots of waterfalls." The Blue Lagoon is a hot spring right outside of Reykjavik. Myvatn, situated in an area of active volcanism, is also a hot spring with sulfur fields and geyser. "We had the best shower when we stayed at the geyser hotel. Probably because we hadn’t had showers in days!" CiCi said.

Rotten shark and skyr

"We went to Icewear in Reykjavik where they make all the wool sweaters," CiCi said. "I ate some rotten shark," Gengler said. Hákarl, usually an acquired taste, has a very particular ammonia-rich smell. It’s an Icelandic national dish of rotten basking shark and some say it has a putrid smell and a horrifying taste. The basking shark is poisonous when fresh, so it undergoes fermentation and drying before it can be consumed. Gengler managed to get through it just fine. Something else he thoroughly enjoyed was the Icelandic salt cod. The fish is salted and dried for storage, and rehydrated so it can be eaten. To cook salted cod, they soak it in a generous measure of water for 12 hours, changing the water 2-3 times. It is then cooked in fresh water for 10-20 minutes, depending on the thickness of the pieces. It is traditionally served with boiled potatoes and turnips, and butter or tallow (with cracklings).

Cauliflower soup was the best thing CiCi ate. She also really liked the thick Icelandic yogurt called skyr. Skyr was brought from Norway to Iceland more than 1,100 years ago, and though the tradition mostly died out in the rest of Scandinavia, it lived on as a part of Icelandic culture. "They have really good seafood, and beer made out of glacier water, named after Vatnajökull," Gengler said. Vatnajökull is the largest and most voluminous ice cap in Iceland and one of the largest in the world. "Everyone had lobster every time we could," CiCi added.

The wedding

"We ended up getting married in Búdir," CiCi said. "Búdir is not actually a city, just a hotel and a church in the middle of nowhere." Búdir is a small hamlet in Búðahraun lava fields in Staðarsveit, which is in the western region of Iceland, on the westernmost tip of the Snaefellsnes peninsula where Hraunhafnará falls to the sea.

"There’s a little story our priest, Pall Agust, told us," Gengler said. "He said that the reason the church is kind of a novelty is that it had burned down once and was rebuilt. The church was rebuilt using the same specifications, lumber, artwork and original pictures exactly to the historical original and then it was preserved by the historical society. Now that it’s on the national registry, in order to do repairs they have to take samples of the paint to make sure everything is exactly the way it was, same with glass and everything. The church is only open for weddings and funerals, not even mass anymore."

"At one time, it was a law in Iceland that there had to be a church within walking distance of everyone in Iceland," CiCi said. "There are random churches popping up everywhere. There are over 1,000 churches in Iceland, but not that many priests. It’s a gorgeous church. The outside is black and it’s tiny, with white doors with a little white picket fence. Inside it’s very colorful with turquoise, peaches and gold. before we went, we had never seen the inside of the church." "CiCi picked turquoise for her color, not having any idea there was turquois in the church," Gengler said.

"There was no rehearsal," CiCi said. "It was a catastrophy that day. No one knew what anyone else was doing. It was the worst weather day, no peep of sunshine and raining. The priest emailed two hours before asking to push it back, which was good because we were late too and the girls were real late."

"We had some whiskey before the wedding and offered the pastor a shot of it too," Gengler said. "He said that usually he would party with us all night, but he had to pick up his kids after the wedding."

"Finally, the girls got to the church, but no one had spoken to the pastor and knew what to do," CiCi said. Cici went inside the RV while everyone else went ahead into the church and she waited for a signal for when she should arrive. After waiting and waiting for a signal that never came, she finally went in anyway. There was no music and no cues. When she walked in everyone said, okay, let’s go!

Everyone stayed at the hotel that night and they had a big party. CiCi wanted a waterfall wedding photo, so everyone piled into their RV and they had to drive an hour away on a dirt mud road before they finally found a little waterfall – more of a trickle, really. "It was petite," Gengler said. That had to do because they had to get back. After turning around to return on the way back, they could see a huge waterfall that was not visible coming from the other way. "It was kind of far from the road but we had to get to that waterfall," CiCi said. "It’s not even on the map and probably has no name, but we got our waterfall picture. It was probably on someone’s private property." "There are very few fences," Gengler said. "Not even for their sheep. If you hit a sheep you have to settle up with the farmer. How you find that farmer is another question."

When they got back to the hotel, they had really good food for their dinner, "Really good fish," they said.

Super nice people

"They were super nice people, all really nice and all speak really good English," Gengler said. "There are some big dudes there; they’re all really big!

The honeymoon

"After we traveled around Iceland, we went on a honeymoon to Paris," CiCi said. "It was like the least romantic trip we’ve ever been on. I think going to stay at Ft. Leonard Wood was more romantic. We stayed in someone’s tiny flat two minutes away from the Eiffel Tower."

The flat was so tiny and CiCi spent most of her time being sick and stuck inside. "But, we saw half of what was on our list to do," she said. The French people were really nice. We only ate at one really touristy place; they were very nice and no one was rude. In our little neighborhood, all the little restaurants were so sweet to us, even if they barely spoke English."

"We rented a car and went to Luxemburg. We went to Esch-sur-Sûre; that’s where Zach’s family came from in Luxenburg, eating at the only place that was open and the people spoke zero English. We went to the castle of Esch and went to the cemetery there and took some pictures of Gengler gravestones. That was the best part of the French trip."

CiCi felt the best while they were in Luxemburg. "Paris stinks!" CiCi said. "Everything was dirty and stinky and already when you’re super nauseous, it wasn’t good." "Their French fries weren’t really all that great," Gengler smiled.

Sno-Pac and Army

Gengler is a big part of Sno-Pac Foods in Caledonia, carrying on a Gengler tradition.

He has four more years in the Army before getting his 20-year letter. " If my position at Sno Pac requires it, I will retire from the Army. I do intend to stay affiliated with the Army regardless in the Individual Ready Reserve until my mandatory retirement date, go to my yearly physical and do some training or some professional military education."

A surprise

Zach and CiCi Gengler are expecting their first baby around May 15. When asked if they knew if they were having a boy or girl, CiCi said, "We’re having a surprise."

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