I wasn't raised Catholic, so never participated in the ashes on the forehead thing. Every spring, at the pediatric office in which I worked for nearly 25 years, I'd be puzzled by mothers and kids coming in with what looked like bruises on their forehead. It would take a few patients before I'd remember the Ash Wednesday ritual.

Most of the time, what had been a cross had become just smudges and really did look like bruises. Had the criss-cross shape been detectable, I'd probably have caught on sooner.

and mostly Catholic city. I was used to seeing kids and teachers at school with ashes on their foreheads. My siblings and I stood out among our peers with our clean foreheads because Lutherans did not do ashes in those days.

is not high church... communion assistants no longer wear "robes"... no railing to kneel at (this allows older people and people with disabilities to get communion without being the only ones standing while everyone else is kneeling around the altar)...
pastor wears a robe and simple stole unlike high churches that wear chasubles, etc... we use pottery for the communion ware vs. silver except for holy days... so yes, there are Lutheran churches that are less formal...

Missouri Synod and other conservative synods are not high church; but they are too conservative for me.

and we have communion weekly and do ashes on Ash Wednesday...

In general the services have gotten a lot less formal over the years. I don't remember my high school Missouri Synod doing the ashes. It seems to vary by ELCA church now.

as a child because it was a German congregation and my German born great aunt lived with us until I was 11 years old. No ashes. No weekly communion. By the standards of a Methodist or Baptist church it would have seemed formal because the service was more liturgical than those churches. But compared with a Catholic or Anglican mass, it was simpler.

From age 11 onward I belonged to an LCA church, was confirmed there and married there. No ashes, no weekly communion. Generally, the atmosphere was more friendly than the MS church and not as narrow and literal as the MS church.