Today on the blog we’re introducing our 1st gorgeous bride from our crop of 2020 Real Jewish Brides! Please give a warm welcome to Naomi, who will be marrying Daniel on 18th March 2020 at Beth Torah Benny Rok Campus in Aventura, Florida, USA.
THREE FACTS: (1) British bride Naomi has just moved to Florida to join her Venezuelan fiance Daniel, who she met at a wedding in Israel – talk about an international couple! (2) Naomi and Daniel were long distance for 3.5 years, until this July. (3) Naomi is a member of Smashing The Glass’s Brides Club!
Who we are
My name is Naomi and my fiance, Daniel, and I got engaged a few months ago, in April 2019. We will be getting married in March 2020, at the Beth Torah Benny Rok Campus in Miami, Florida.
Why Miami? Well, Daniel grew up in Venezuela but moved to Miami a few years ago, due to the very unstable political situation in his home country. And finally, after 3 and a half years of long distance, this gal from Leeds has moved her life across the world to party in the USA!
I decided to join the Smashing the Glass’ blogging brides group because, amidst the sometimes rather stressful process of wedding planning, I thought a bit of a writing release would do some good.
So, a little bit about us…
How we met
Daniel and I have had a bit of a whirlwind of a love story, actually beginning at my own sister’s wedding in Israel almost 6 years ago. The week before the wedding, my sister told me all about her husband-to-be’s good friend Daniel and how she couldn’t wait for me to meet him as he was JUST my type.
As I stood under the chuppah with my whole family, celebrating my big sister and our new bro with happy tears streaming down my face, I caught sight of him in the crowd and unashamedly stared at him for most of the remainder of the ceremony!
By the time the night came to a close, after an introductory salsa class on the dance floor (nice moves, Daniel), the wedding guests were piling into the coaches my family had put on to take everybody from the venue back to the hotel where we were staying… and Daniel and I got left behind chatting, as both buses assumed I was on the other bus!
Luckily, our famously late family friends hadn’t left the wedding yet by the time I realised I was stranded, and gave me a ride back to the hotel where I was greeted with very embarrassing applause from my family and a shrug from my dad who said “that’s what you get for frolicking around with South American boys”!
After that night, Daniel and I went our separate ways and didn’t speak for almost two years. However, we had added each other on Facebook.
And after two years…
Almost two years later, Daniel was on holiday in Israel and met up with my brother in law and sister for dinner.
He asked after me and after some winking and nudging from my sister (along the lines of, “How is she? Well, she’s single!”), I received a Facebook message from him with a picture of the three of them.
One thing led to another and we messaged, then voicenoted, then Skyped for seven whole months before Daniel decided he wanted to come to England and see if we were truly right for each other. We were both incredibly nervous and still get shivers when we think back to that first meeting at Heathrow airport!
So, Daniel had finally arrived and we had the absolute best time together. A few days into his trip, we had the talk and agreed to give things a real shot – ¿porque no? The catch was, he was flying straight from England to his family holiday in the Dominican Republic.
We felt like we just hadn’t had enough time together, and so Daniel asked me to come along with him and use his air miles for a free flight! It was crazy but after much encouragement from friends and family, I said yes, and we booked a flight for me that was set to arrive 5 minutes after his, with various stopovers. Flash forward to me in an American airport on my final stopover, and I get a call from Daniel, who is supposed to be on a plane himself.
Bad news – the airplane had to turn back because there was a technological fault, and Daniel isn’t going to make it to the Dominican Republic until tomorrow… I’m about to board the plane, to arrive at his family holiday with 18 Spanish-speaking family members whom I’ve never met before… and it’s New Year’s Eve!!
Meeting Daniel’s family
I told him it was fine, called my sister and had a quick mini breakdown, updated my uni friends WhatsApp group (where they all were killing themselves laughing) and hopped on the flight, to be greeted at the other end by the handpicked selection of the best English speakers of Daniel’s family, who had been telling everyone they met about what had happened.
After being thrown in the deep end with his wonderfully warm and outgoing family, over 24 hours later, Daniel finally arrived in the Dominican Republic to the sight of me holding his brother’s baby – welcome to the family!
Things have been much more normal ever since then, and we have been happily together for 3 and a half years. I’ve never once looked back, but long distance relationships can be tough, and I am so proud of us and feel so lucky and overjoyed that we’ve managed to make it work.
We reached the light at the end of our long distance tunnel last month and life together has really been everything we were looking forward to all this time. I can’t wait to see what the future holds!
The proposal
Now for the wedding part!! Daniel proposed to me outside the Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science in Miami, this April. He took me to these two huge blue plates that were positioned outside the museum, various feet apart.
The way the plates work is they each have a sort of mouth/ear piece, so two people can stand across from each other by the opposite plates and, although you are super far away, you can whisper into one and hear the sound through the other!
He asked me to marry him, and I think I answered, “EXCUSE ME!?”. I was truly in shock as his siblings and my aunty and uncle, who live in Florida, started cheering and came out of their hiding places with a huge (very polite and British!) banner and champagne, and my mum and little sister on Facetime!
Lots (and LOTS) of happy tears were shed and, after a gorgeous l’chaim in Miami, we flew back to England for Pesach to celebrate with my family and friends.
Our vendors booked so far
In terms of wedding planning itself, we aren’t hugely far along – deciding which country it would be in was enough of a challenge! (Multi-national couples, I’m sure you understand!) But we have our date, venue and caterer, Erik Kaufman, all sorted, and that is a great relief. I’m finishing off my master’s thesis this month and then it will be full blown planning mode!
How our wedding will be
Our wedding will be firmly Jewish, with a mixture of Ashkenazic, Sephardic, English and Venezuelan traditions – who knows how that will turn out, but we know it’s going to be one big party!
What marriage means to us
I think throughout the process, the main thing I want to keep in mind, that puts the small things in perspective, is that a wedding is an incredible way to start off a marriage, but the marriage is what counts.
One day versus the rest of your life means that, whilst every bride wants her wedding day to be the most special day of her life, at some point you have to realise that, whether you might have preferred a barnyard wedding or to get married on the beach (*cough* *cough*) rather than in the shul hall, what matters is your family and friends coming together for a huge celebration of you being lucky enough to find your person, and to never take that for granted. No flower or canape choices are going to change that!
Catch you on my next post!
Click here to read all Naomi’s planning posts to date.
Naomi & Daniel’s Wedding Vendors booked so far:
Venue – Beth Torah Benny Rok Campus
Catering – Erik Kaufman
