We just love it when a couple really makes their Jewish wedding their own – and that’s exactly what Chicagoans Ranana and Binyamin did.
They chose the Chicago History Museum as their venue, in honor of their shared love of art and history, and artistic bride Ranana designed the invitations herself – taking inspiration from the Frank Lloyd Wright window in the room where the chuppah took place. She also did her own ketubah art, featuring night and day water scenes inspired by Chicago’s Lake Michigan.
An egalitarian ceremony was important to the couple, and their officiant, Rabbanit Leah Sarna, helped them design one that was both Orthodox and incorporated many feminist and egalitarian touches. Ranana and Binyamin also wrote their own brit ahuvim, a document using liturgical verses to outline their values and commitments to each other outside of the more legalistic language of the ketubah.
We love that, rather than having traditional floral arrangements, Ranana and Binyamin opted for mini orchids potted in tea tins (which they collected leading up to the wedding) on the tables, allowing them both to save money and celebrate their shared love of tea!
The couple’s photographer, the spectacular Smashing The Glass Recommended Vendor Eliana Melmed Photography, captured the day so perfectly. In Ranana’s words,
We knew Eliana from our synagogue community and when we met with her about our wedding we knew we wanted to hire her because she was someone we could imagine spending hours with on the day of our wedding, having fun. Also we knew she would 100% understand what was going on in our very traditional, very feminist Jewish wedding, which was not something we could take for granted with our other (mostly non-Jewish) vendors. Not to mention her photography is beautiful – colorful, joyous, true to life. She was the best! (Ranana’s dad is still raving about how well she handled our big family during the torrential downpour that happened the day of our wedding.)
We’ll turn you over to Ranana for the rest of the story!
How We Met
Ranana, the bride: and Binyamin, the groom: The simple answer for how we met is “in our synagogue.” In reality we had met a year prior to Ranana moving to Chicago (and joining the same synagogue as Binyamin) at a Shabbat lunch in Jerusalem, hosted by a former teacher of ours (for Ranana from middle school, for Binyamin from grad school). Once Ranana moved to Chicago she and Biny recognized each other and became friendly acquaintances.
True friendship blossomed during the pandemic and we began learning Daf Yomi (the practice of studying a page of Talmud a day) together. That gave us an excuse to talk all the time and eventually we moved from being chevrutas (study partners) to dating. Ranana is a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago in religious ethics. Biny is the Director of Jewish Life at Rochelle Zell Jewish High School in Deerfield IL.
A Museum Wedding
We got married at the Chicago History Museum. We fell in love with it when we toured the space – as art and history nerds we couldn’t get over the chance to be married in a room with Tiffany and Frank Lloyd Wright stained glass windows. It is also only a few miles from where we live so it was very convenient for us and our guests.
Theme + Planner
We were very invested in making our wedding our own. Sonya Tran from Ohana Events was our planner and did a fantastic job. Our wedding was so much smoother and less stressful for her being involved. Our wedding color was navy blue with light blue accents. We leaned into the very classic and elegant aesthetic of the Chicago History Museum and let the space shine by not adding much decor.
One fun thing we did was rather than having traditional flower arrangements we collected fancy tea tins leading up to our wedding and had mini orchids potted inside on the tables. We both saved money buying wholesale orchids and celebrated our shared love of tea. We even named the tables after tea varieties.
Invitation
Ranana designed our invitation. The design she took from the Frank Lloyd Wright window in the room where we got married in the Chicago History Museum.
Hair + Makeup
Goldplaited, a salon in Lakeview Chicago, did Ranana’s hair. Since Ranana never wears makeup she had her friend Diane Tracht just do very light make up, which left her feeling beautiful and herself.
A BHLDN Dress
The dress was from BHLDN and was the Kensington by Watters gown. Ranana had seen it online and knew she wanted to try it on. She loved the structured modern lace and classic silhouette. She added a satin ribbon belt to accentuate the waistline. Her friends described the dress as “Ranana’s wardrobe in a wedding gown” so it was very much in keeping with her aesthetic.
Accessories
Ranana wore her mother’s veil! She also wore her floral headpiece for the end of the wedding. It was really special to get to reuse something of her mom’s. Both Binyamin and Ranana wore wedding converse that said “Just Married” on the bottom (Ranana for the whole time, Binyamin switched into them after the ceremony).
Ranana wore her paternal grandmother’s gold and pearl earrings (matching her pearl engagement ring). Both Ranana and Binyamin’s wedding rings belonged to their grandparents (Ranana’s was her paternal grandmother’s, Binyamin’s his paternal grandfather’s). Binyamin also wore cuff links that had belonged to his maternal grandfather and had his monogram.
Bridesmaids
We only had our direct family (siblings and spouses, along with parents) be part of the wedding party. They all wore navy blue dresses and suits of their own choosing, and the men had light blue ties.
Handsome Groom
Binyamin’s royal blue custom suit was from Indochino. He chose the color so he would stand out just enough from the other men in navy blue.
Ceremony & Chuppah
Rabbanit Leah Sarna performed our ceremony and helped us design one that was both Orthodox and incorporated many feminist and egalitarian touches. She opened by giving a speech that aligned our love story with the page of Talmud for that day’s Daf Yomi which was amazing. We had our synagogue rabbi, Rabbi David Wolkenfeld, bless us and read our ketubah.
We also wrote our own additional document, a brit ahuvim, that used liturgical verses to outline our values and commitments to each other outside of the more legalistic language of the ketubah. Ranana’s aunt, Rabbi Melanie Aron, honored us by reading that document. We had various mentors from across our careers say the Sheva Brachot (Seven Blessings). We also added in the Birkhat Kohanim (Priestly Blessing) which we had our fathers and brothers say, since we are both from Kohanic families.
Ketubah
Our Ketubah was really special. First of all we added a Brit Ahuvim which we wrote ourselves. Binyamin’s friend Leana Jelen Tapnack calligraphed the text of both the ketubah and the brit in traditional safrut style on parchment. Ranana made the art surrounding the ketubah on mat board in collaboration with Leana. Ranana’s night and day water scenes were inspired by Chicago’s Lake Michigan.
Our music choice
We ended up hiring the most wonderful, kooky, klezmer band out of Madison Wisconsin called Yid Vicious to play our ceremony and simcha dancing. They were so much fun and fantastic. They learned new material for us coming down the aisle (‘Dodi Li’ by Rabbi Deborah Sacks-Mintz and Lincoln’s ‘Niggun’ by Joey Weisenberg), played the Cantina song from Star Wars to get everyone seated at the ceremony, and learned the traditional song Mareh Kohen for our simcha set, along with more traditional tunes. On top of that, they played an Irish fiddle tune so Ranana could do an Irish dance performance! Everyone loved them and their tuba!
For dancing later in the night and secular music we switched to a DJ, Robert Kozyra. He played our “first dance” song, which was ‘Quitting You’ by the Arkells, a favorite Canadian band (Binyamin is from Winnipeg). He played a lot of our requested tunes – ABBA, Taylor Swift, and all of American Pie. We ended the night on a more sentimental note with James Taylor’s ‘Sweet Baby James and the Rainbow Connection’.
Flowers
Hedonia Flowers was our wonderful florist. They provided the flowers for the bouquets and the chuppah. Ranana wanted flowers that would go with the navy blue color scheme. As mentioned above we used mini orchids we sourced ourselves from the wholesaler Orchids by Hausermann.
Photographer & Live Stream
Our photographer was the spectacular Eliana Melmed Photography. We knew Eliana from our synagogue community and when we met with her about our wedding we knew we wanted to hire her because she was someone we could imagine spending hours with on the day of our wedding, having fun. Also we knew she would 100% understand what was going on in our very traditional, very feminist Jewish wedding, which was not something we could take for granted with our other (mostly non-Jewish) vendors.
Not to mention her photography is beautiful – colorful, joyous, true to life. She was the best! (Ranana’s dad is still raving about how well she handled our big family during the torrential downpour that happened the day of our wedding.)
Instead of traditional videography we decided to hire a professional live streamer so that the friends and family who could not attend (many in foreign countries) could join virtually. We also this way got a recording of our video. Live streaming was done by MultiMedia Squared, and was great, professional and high quality.
Extra Details
We really invested in special details that reflected us – the tea tins and orchids, creating and designing our own ketubah and brit ahuvim, Ranana’s Irish dance performance, designing our own invitations based on the venue, the quirky klezmer band, etc. For us making the wedding feminist and egalitarian was very important. So for example we had a joint Tisch (pre-ceremony singing and words of Torah), where we both spoke, and then had a joint Bedeken (veiling ceremony) where Binyamin lowered Ranana’s veil while Ranana put his kittel on him.
We signed a new more powerful halakhic prenup document so neither of us can ever take advantage of the other. We also wanted our wedding to have as small an environmental impact as possible and so payed for a compost company to take away any compostable garbage. And finally in our wedding speech at the end of the night we spoke about how we wanted to create a wedding that reflected us, our values and passions, and the home we will build together, and got to thank everyone who made that happen.
We had been hoping to have our ceremony outdoors, but then Chicago got hit with a whopping 9 inches of rain and we moved the entire event indoors. But that didn’t stop some roads from getting flooded, and us getting a bit wet in our wedding attire. And we loved it – the cute umbrella pictures are great and we just took the whole thing in stride along with our team. It also was hilarious since Ranana had given a speech in synagogue the day before about water and blessings. Our family and friends pulled out the stops!
We had close friends with beautiful voices sing for us down the aisle, and our larger group of friends did incredible work with the shtick section of the dancing (when they do little performances with props to bring joy to the couple). Ranana’s aunt made hilarious T-shirts for the whole Dine family to wear, and gave a touching and very funny speech complete with figurines. Binyamin’s mother blew past the time limit we gave her for her speech, but it was worth it for the funny and touching anecdotes.
We had seven friend-mentors deliver the sheva brachot and another gave Ranana a blessing before the bedeken.
Honeymoon
We went to Rome for a week! We had the opportunity to go somewhere in January, and chose Rome since it was a place we both wanted to visit (we’re history/religion/art/classics nerds, not to mention pasta lovers) and where the weather would be pleasant in the winter.
Advice to couples currently planning their wedding
In terms of planning: 1. If you can, hire a good wedding planner. 2. Particularly when maybe the traditional thing is out of budget (flowers, band etc.), think creatively and you might get something that is more you. We didn’t feel like we could afford a full traditional wedding band, but our klezmer band reflected our quirkiness and love of yiddishkeit. We didn’t want to spend a lot on table flower arrangements, but our tea tins and orchids let us celebrate our love of tea and let our guests take home a living plant.
For the day of the wedding: 1. Don’t wear a watch 2. Laugh about the things that will inevitably go wrong (the historic amount of rain on our wedding day now makes for a great story and cute photos.) 3. Take a few minutes after the wedding to record a conversation between the two of you of everything that happened that you can listen to later.
RANANA & BINYAMIN’S LITTLE WHITE BOOK
Photography – Eliana Melmed Photography
Venue – Chicago History Museum
Planner – Ohana Events
Bride’s dress – from BHLDN
Groom’s attire – Indochino
Hair – Goldplaited
Flowers – Hedonia Flowers
DJ – Robert Kozyra
Klezmer Band – Yid Vicious
Catering – Shallots Bistro
Live Stream – MultiMedia Squared
Rabbi – Rabbanit Leah Sarna
Smash The Glass Pouch – Smashing The Glass Etsy Shop {or join Smashing The Glass’s Brides Club and get one for free!}
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I was a member of the band at this wedding. I have to say I cried more at this one than at my own. It was so beautiful and so moving. We were incredibly proud to be part of this celebration and we wish the bride and groom so much joy in what definitely promises to be a wonderful and fruitful marriage in so many ways.