exit the chapel. Sometimes small coins are also tossed for the children to gather. At the reception, the couple customarily uses a toasting cup called a Coupe de Mariage. The origin of giving this toast began in France, when a small piece of toast was literally dropped into the couple's wine to ensure a healthy life. The couple would lift their glass to "a toast", as is common in Western culture today. In south west France it is customary to serve spit roast wild boar (or sanglier in French) as the wedding breakfast, a local delicacy. Some couples choose to serve a croquembouche instead of a wedding cake. This dessert is a pyramid of crème-filled pastry puffs, drizzled with a caramel glaze. At more boisterous weddings, tradition involves continuing the celebration until very late at night. In many regions of France, wedding rituals continue late into the night after the official ceremonies and party. In some regions after the reception, those invited to the wedding will gather outside the newlyweds' window and bang pots and pans; this is called a 'charivari'. They are then invited into the house for some more drinks in the couple's honor, after which the couple is finally allowed to be alone for their first night together as husband and wife. In the rural Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, a post-wedding ritual called la rôtie involves a gang of unmarried men and women finding the bride and groom who have escaped from the reception, tipping them out of their bed, and serving them a concoction of champagne and chocolate served in a chamber pot, which will be passed around and drank by everyone. Afterwards, the whole group will enjoy an onion soup. The heavily scatological and sexual implications and off-putting appearance of this ritual is supposed to symbolize the day-to-day intimacy of married life, deeply connected to the rural nature of the area. La rôtie is an alternative ceremony outside the official ceremonies that the youth can be involved in, and create humor by making something that "tastes good but is in bad taste". The commensal quality of the ritual is a symbol for the bridge between youth and adulthood that the couple becomes in marriage, as well as the community's involvement in the new couple's married life. Similar rituals are widespread across rural France, though perhaps with different foods and containers. German customs Friends of the bride "kidnap"