There’s something so special about a Hanukkah wedding – and we’re obsessed with the way Brides Club member Jennie, a Ph.D. student at Cambridge, and Ben, a software developer for a financial firm, went all out incorporating the holiday vibes into their big day.
With their Jewish wedding falling on the first night of the Festival of Lights, Jennie and Ben opted for a full-on Hanukkah wonderland theme, and we are ALL about it. From the blue-tinged color scheme to the giant (5-foot!) menorah the pair lit at the start of dinner to the dreidels-and-gelt wedding favors, this wedding was chock full of wonderful festive touches. And we haven’t even gotten to the food yet – Jennie and Ben not only served delectable sufganiyot with their dessert; they also had a latke station with several different toppings at the end of the night! How fun is that?
Throughout her wedding planning, Jennie was a member of Smashing The Glass’s Brides Club, and we’re so touched by her kind words about how the community “made the wedding planning process a whole lot easier, especially since I was planning everything from overseas. All of the checklists and resources really allowed us to think about what was important for us. It was also great to have a group of brides who were going through the same process as me or had already completed their weddings – they really helped us not sweat the small stuff. Everyone in Brides Club is so kind and supportive of each other!”
Jennie also found some of her wonderful vendors via Brides Club, including Smashing The Glass Recommended Vendor Talia C, who provided the couple’s smash glass and then made the shards into Shabbat candle sticks, and their fabulous ketubah designer, Smashing The Glass Recommended Vendor Ink with Intent. Jennie and Ben chose Ink with Intent’s custom night sky design, featuring the star map for their wedding date! Don’t miss it in the wonderful photos by Simi Rabinowitz.
There’s so much more to this wonderful wedding, but we’ll leave it to the bride to fill you in on the rest…
How We Met
Jennie, the bride: We live in London but we originally met back in 2016 in Boston, where we were both working at the time. Ben was the flatmate of one of my colleagues, who brought him to an after-work meet up one evening. We kept seeing each other at group hangouts for a few years after that, then slowly became friends and started seeing each other more and more. Our friendship very naturally grew into a romantic relationship over time. The friend who introduced us was our Best Man!
A Boston Wedding
We got married at the Hyatt Regency in Downtown Boston. When we got engaged, we knew that we wanted our wedding to be in Boston for a few reasons. First, it’s where we met! Second, my family lives in California and Ben’s family lives in the UK, so having the wedding in Boston meant that both sides of the family would have to travel an approximately equal amount. Finally, since we lived in Boston for so long, we still have many friends there. I’d never been to the Hyatt before going on the venue tour, but as soon as I saw it, I knew it was the place for our wedding.
The events team there really made me feel at ease. I was going to be planning this wedding from the UK, but our coordinator was very organized and reassuring throughout the whole process. They do all their catering in house, and the chef personally met with us to discuss dietary restrictions our guests had and any special dishes we wanted made. This was a big relief since my Matron of Honor has celiac, and the chef personally made sure that all the dishes served through the night were gluten free, including the latke bar we had as our late night snack after the dancing portion of the evening was done!
What ‘Smashing The Glass Brides Club’ Did For Us
Brides Club made the wedding planning process a whole lot easier, especially since I was planning everything from overseas. All of the checklists and resources really allowed us to think about what was important for us. It was also great to have a group of brides who were going through the same process as me or had already completed their weddings – they really helped us not sweat the small stuff. Everyone in Brides Club is so kind and supportive of each other!
Hanukkah Wonderland
Our color scheme was based off of the gorgeous engagement ring that Ben got me! I love rose gold and my birthstone is aquamarine, so he purchased a custom made aquamarine ring with a rose gold band. Our wedding colors were sky blue, navy, and rose to match. We got married on the first night of Hanukkah, so we really wanted to have a “winter wonderland” sort of feel while still maintaining the warm and joyous atmosphere of the holiday. The combination of blues we used really let us have that “wintery” vibe we wanted. We lit a menorah at the start of dinner to mark the first night of Hanukkah, and we gave everyone gelt and dreidels as wedding favors.
My mom even created cards instructing people on how to play dreidel if they’d never played before! We served sufganiyot from Mamalehs with our dessert. Mamalehs is a super important spot for us because we used to visit them almost every weekend before we moved to the UK, and it’s where Ben proposed! So it was great to be able to include them in our wedding day, and in a way that is so tied to Hanukkah. We also had a latke station with several different toppings at the hotel bar at the end of the night, which was a perfect wrap up to the evening.
Because we had a Hanukkah wedding, we started dinner off by lighting a 5-foot-tall menorah while I led everyone in the blessings. The menorah became a focal point of the night – it was by our table during dinner and then was moved to the side of the reception room for the dancing portion of the evening. This menorah will now be a centerpiece in our future Hanukkahs together as a couple!
Invitation
We went with Paperless Post for our save the dates, invitations, and thank you cards. This made it easy to send invites to a very international guest list, with the added plus that it’s more eco friendly! We did need to get our mothers to follow up with some relatives who are not as consistent about checking email, unfortunately, but overall I would definitely go the paperless route again.
Hair + Makeup
I had my hair and makeup done by Alea Beauty. They work with several hair and make up artists in the area, so we had three artists come and help us get ready in the morning. Their bridal package included an trial run and hair and make up for one additional event. My makeup lasted all day after my trial, but my hair had come out a little bit, so my matron of honor took some pictures of it for my artist to help with troubleshooting. On the day of the wedding, she looked at the pictures and decided to pre-curl my hair, put more bobby pins in, and spray it up so that it would stay in place. The hair and makeup both lasted the entire day after that!
A Casablanca Bridal Dress
My dress was from Casablanca Bridal from their “Beloved” line. I wanted to wear something simple yet glamorous, and my matron of honor found this dress on the rack and chose it for me! As soon as I tried it on I knew it was the one – the silhouette was a very classic style and the beading at the back was the perfect amount of embellishment without being over-the-top.
I really felt like I was able to capture that Old Hollywood glamour look. My veil was custom made by Casablanca Bridal as well – they combined two of their veils for me – a longer one with beaded lining to match my dress, and a shorter one that served as my blusher for the badeken.
Bridesmaids
I had several of my closest friends as bridesmaids. They all wore the same dress in sky blue from Azazie. The sky blue went with our color scheme, and the cut and flow of the dress looked beautiful on everyone!
Ceremony & Chuppah
My best friend from high school was our chuppah singer! She accompanied herself on a ukulele which was a really beautiful touch. My processional music was ‘Kiss The Girl’ from The Little Mermaid, since I was such a huge Disney fan growing up. We had her sing ‘Erev Shel Shoshanim’ for our circling portion and we did a modern egalitarian version – first I circled Ben three times, then he circled me three times, and then we walked in a circle around each other.
We were married by Rabbi Audrey Marcus Berkman who I’ve known for several years and is an important Jewish mentor to me. She worked with us to customize our ceremony to be very personal to us, and had us both email her privately to explain why the other person is “our person”. My favourite part of the ceremony was when she read excerpts from our emails. I couldn’t help but cry when Ben’s words were read to me.
We rented our chuppah frame from Our Family Chuppah. If you’re having a wedding in the greater Boston area, I highly recommend working with them. I had completely procrastinated figuring out where to rent a frame from, but they were super quick to respond to us with availability for our wedding weekend. Jesse from Our Family Chuppah worked directly with our venue coordinator to determine setup and break down times for the chuppah, and he was very careful in affixing our hand-knitted canopy so that it was secure while also remaining undamaged. The chuppah is truly the visual centerpiece for the wedding ceremony, and ours looked absolutely gorgeous.
Our chuppah canopy was hand-knitted by Ben’s mom. She is a professional fiber artist and so we asked her to create the chuppah for us. She spent about 6 months working on it, and we just love how it turned out! She also hand knitted Ben’s kippah which he wore during the ceremony.
Ketubah
Before we signed the ketubah, we had our rabbi read a tenaim document that I had personally written with some inspiration from one that I’d found on Ritualwell. Rather than using traditional tenaim language, I focused mostly on who Ben and I are as a couple and expressed our desire to be active participants in our community and to establish a home dedicated to social justice and generosity. My mom started crying as the tenaim was being read. After it was read out, our mothers both signed the contract and then broke a plate together.
We purchased our ketubah through Ink with Intent which is one of the vendors that I found out about through Brides Club. We chose their custom night sky design, and chose the star map to be December 18, 2022 – our wedding date! Our ketubah was signed by two of our closest friends. We then displayed the ketubah during the reception so people could see it.
Our ketubah text was the “Brit Ahuvim” (Lovers’ covenant) originally written by Rachel Adler. We chose this text because of its emphasis on choosing each other as companions and true life partners. We also liked that one of the provisions of the covenant is a family commitment to kindness, justice, and tikkun olam (repairing the world), something that Ben and I are both deeply committed to and want to pass on to our future children. Rather than saying any vows during the ceremony, we read out the ketubah text in English together so people would know what our ketubah says, and what we committed to each other.
Chuppah Glass
We got our chuppah smash glass from Talia C’s Artwork. She’s an independent artist in Israel who makes a wide array of gorgeous art pieces from chuppah glass. We had her make some Shabbat candlesticks with our glass so we can have a keepsake from our wedding featured every Friday night. Talia is very friendly and great to work with – it’s clear that she’s very passionate about what she does.
Our music choice
Our DJ was Sam Lurie with TSG Weddings! We chose TSG weddings because they specialize in Jewish weddings, and we knew that over half of our wedding guests would not be Jewish. Sam assured us that he could coach everyone on how to do the hora, and sure enough he did!
Our hora was a blast. We started with very traditional hora music that he provided and then switched to a trap version of Hava Nagila that Ben loves and is on his personal work playlist. One thing that we continue to laugh about months later is that the light fixtures in the ballroom were way lower than we had realized when we were touring the venue space before, so our heads were up near the lights for a lot of the hora! Luckily our chair lifters were good about making sure we didn’t hit our heads.
Flowers
We didn’t go with fresh flowers – instead we used sola wood flowers that my mom and I hand dyed ourselves. Then the week leading up to the wedding, Ben and my matron of honor Jacqui worked together to put together all of the bouquets, boutonnieres, corsages, and centerpieces. They ended up looking so beautiful, and were a lot more budget friendly than fresh flowers would have been.
The other nice thing was that we had the ability to use colors that wouldn’t necessarily been available had we gone with fresh florals. My favorite flower is the calla lily, so Ben and Jacqui put sola wood calla lilies in my bouquet, and Ben’s boutonniere matched. My bouquet now is in a vase on our kitchen table at home, acting like a permanent centerpiece for us that always reminds me of our happy day!
Photographer and videographer
Our photographer was Simi Rabinowitz. We’d seen some of his work previously on the Smashing the Glass and really liked the natural, candid style he shoots with. We had a great first conversation with him and he seemed very excited about the idea of photographing a Hanukkah wedding! We spoke with him about his process and got a good sense that we’d be on the same page with him regarding what moments were important and how we wanted our day to be shot.
We went with Jim Merchant at Pirates Lane Video for our videographer. His response to our inquiry email made it clear that he was already very familiar with Jewish weddings and how they can differ from other wedding timelines. We felt a good connection with him when we met over zoom, and it turned out that he’d also worked with Simi before at several weddings, and they got along well. He also offered a video live streaming service for our chuppah ceremony. This service was incredibly important to Ben and I, since we knew many family members would be unable to make the long journey to our venue.
We’re so happy with the photos and the wedding video we received. I’m very glad we went with two vendors here who already had a strong familiarity with Jewish weddings, since we didn’t need to direct them too much or spend time worrying about whether we’d communicated every small detail to them. We of course had pre-wedding meetings with both of them to discuss timelines and important events during the day that we wanted captured, but having experienced professionals definitely took some stress off.
Advice to couples currently planning their wedding
We look back on our wedding day with so much joy, and there isn’t anything that we would change. We both think that the key to our day going so smoothly was that we had the right choice in vendors and chose the right group of friends to be part of our wedding party. I’d say when you’re inquiring with different vendors, make sure to go with people who you feel like you can get along with well and who you can trust.
Every single person we worked with was dedicated to making sure our day went as smoothly as possible, and they all communicated well with us and with each other. Our wedding party was made up of some of our closest friends and our siblings. I think a lot of people worry about choosing a maid of honor or best man, because they’re worried that it’ll seem like they’re picking a “favorite” friend. In reality, the wedding party is really a group of people who you feel like can handle any minor crisis on the day of your wedding.
My matron of honor was key to making sure everything went smoothly – she kept a running to-do list whenever I remembered an errand that I hadn’t run yet, and worked with our coordinator to make sure that no minor problems made their way up the chain to me.
JENNIE & BEN’S LITTLE WHITE BOOK
Photography – Simi Rabinowitz
Videography – Pirates Lane Video
Ketubah – Ink with Intent {offers 10% discount to all members of Smashing The Glass’s Brides Club}
Chuppah glass –Talia C {offers 10% discount to all members of Smashing The Glass’s Brides Club}
Chuppah –Our Family Chuppah {offers 10% discount to all members of Smashing The Glass’s Brides Club}
Venue – Hyatt Regency
Bride’s dress & veil – Casablanca Bridal
Bridesmaids – Azazie
Hair + Makeup – Alea Beauty
DJ – Sam Lurie with TSG Weddings
Sufganiyot – Mamalehs
Stationery/Invitation – Paperless Post
Rabbi – Rabbi Audrey Marcus Berkman
Smash The Glass Pouch – Smashing The Glass Etsy Shop {or join Smashing The Glass’s Brides Club and get one for free!}
If you’re a Jewish or Jew-ish bride-to-be, you’ll want to join Smashing The Glass’ Brides Club. Guided by the world’s number 1 Jewish wedding expert, Karen Cinnamon, Brides Club is the private community for Jewish and Jew-ish brides that removes wedstress and indecision and gives you what you need to plan with confidence during these uncertain times. Join our Brides Club here.
