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Jewish weddings and the importance of the role of parents and family

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A thank you letter

Last week my parents celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary. My sister and I planned a surprise party for them and we decided to decorate the house with photos of their lives together. Sifting through the hundreds of photos made me realise how important my family is to me and also what an incredible relationship my parents have. It got me thinking about what makes a wedding so special. What can possibly make one day something you remember for an entire lifetime? And I realised that the answer is family. Our wedding isn’t just about celebrating our love for each other, but celebrating the love we’ve both been blessed with from the day we were born. Love is what makes the day special, it’s what binds soulmates, families and friends together.

I started to think about our wedding and the role that my family and Gideon’s family have had and will have in our wedding. From dress shopping to checking out the venue; from supplier searches to food tasting our parents have been involved every step of the way. For us it is really important that this wedding celebrates Gid and I just as much as it celebrates our two families coming together as one.

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At our last meeting with Rabbi Miriam Berger who is marrying us, we went through each part of the ceremony. As we are having a reform wedding we are able to choose different components and mix and match traditions. One thing that featured throughout the discussion was the importance of the role our parents and family will play in the ceremony. Gideon and I are walked down the aisle by both our parents. Unlike in other weddings where it is just the father I love the idea that both our parents present their child to everyone and we walk down the aisle as a family unit. Both parents play an equal role in our lives so both parents should be by our sides when we marry each other.

Together with them walking us down the aisle they also stand under the chuppah with us. I love the idea that the chuppah is meant to represent our first home together and I love that we stand under it with our parents. To me it symbolises the importance they have played in helping Gid and I actually get to our wedding day but also the bringing together of both families in our home where both families are always welcome and a central part of the building of it.

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When choosing my bridesmaids I made the decision to have only family members. Just my sister, Gid’s sister and Gid’s cousins who I consider family. Having them as the central people on my wedding day is really important and again symbolises to me the importance of family within our Jewish wedding. Of course I have the most wonderful friends who would make the most amazing bridesmaids but to me keeping it within the theme of family allows for everything to be close and really makes it feel like two families are coming together as one.

As our parents have been at the centre of our wedding planning this has at times caused some conflict and disagreements. As is the case in most Jewish weddings our guest list is split three ways; my family, his family and Gid and my friends. With a maximum capacity of 160, two semi large families this has been a sticking point throughout the process. Despite lists, new lists, and new new lists being produced we know that as long as our nearest and dearest are with us it will be an amazing day and as long as the list is sorted by the time we send the invites out it will be all be wonderful in the end.

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Real Jewish Brides: Choosing Our Wedding Stationery

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Right now, Alex and I are in that really fun stage of wedding planning. Meaning, our invitations have been mailed out (phew!) and we’re just now starting to receive our guests RSVP’s back in the mail. Which for whatever reason, makes wedding planning  that  much more exciting. (what is it about snail mail that’s so deliciously appealing?)

Currently, coming home to check the mail is my favorite part of the afternoon, and because of that, I thought I’d talk about the process of choosing our wedding stationary.  

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Save The Dates

This is essentially a piece of postage that formally alerts your friends and family, that at some point in the not-so-distant-future, they will be receiving an actual wedding invitation. An invitation for an invitation, if you will. Alex didn’t care much about it (or think it was necessary) so he let me take the lead on the design and the entire process. Which I was more than happy to do. The save-the-date is the first piece of tangible evidence that shows we are going to be wed (minus my engagement ring, of course)!  

I booked a quick 30 minute engagement shoot with a local DC photographer, and scheduled our shoot in Georgetown. It was a ridiculously cold morning in March, but at the end of the shoot, we had nearly 200 photos to choose from before we settled on the one we ended up using.  

I loved the various save-the-date options I found online, however the price and lack of flexibility of the designs offered was enough to steer me towards a DIY project. And that’s exactly what we did.

I browsed Etsy until I found something similar to my vision. I worked 1-on-1 with a designer who tweaked everything to my liking. She emailed me a template, which I then uploaded and printed it locally at a shop. 100 copies for just about $50 (not including postage or addressing labels).  

I was thrilled with how they came out. They were in the mail in the very beginning of April. Providing our guests with a full eight months of notice – which for destination weddings seems to be standard etiquette. Fast forward through the summer…

Save The Date

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Is it ok to use vendors with no Jewish wedding experience for a Jewish wedding?

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When the first quote came in for a photographer and it was three times more than what we had budgeted for, I started to panic. Had our dreams of a relaxed, fun Jewish wedding on a budget been just that…a dream? Was it possible to have what we wanted within the constraints of our budget? I started to doubt the whole process and realised that we were now going to have to go down another route in our quest to find the vendors that would be able to create the wedding we wanted.

Rather than using vendors I had heard of from other Jewish weddings I took a different approach to my search. Using a range of wedding blogs and ‘real wedding’ write ups I collated a list of vendors that people had used and loved. Vendors  who hadn’t worked on  a Jewish wedding but had had the style of wedding we were hoping to have.

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Choosing a photographer without Jewish wedding experience

Photographs to me tell a story and should capture emotion and people in the moment. For my wedding photographs it was so important that this was the case. I was recommended Razia Jukes by my Mother in Law-to-be who had been at a wedding she was photographing. She said that she was really relaxed and the photos she had been beautiful — this all sounded perfect to me! I soon discovered that Razia features on loads of the blogs I read and I was able to see a big range of her photographs — which were exactly what I was looking for. They told a story with such emotion and love I had pretty much made up my mind before even meeting her!

Razia has never photographed  a Jewish wedding and at first this did worry me. At a Jewish wedding there are those key moments you know you want included: The badeken, the breaking of the glass, up on chairs for the Hora; and for most people knowing that the photographer knows when these moments will happen is a reassurance people want on their wedding day.  But hey, I love a challenge and when we went to meet Razia I realised that it wouldn’t be a problem. We spent a lot of the meeting talking in detail about the ceremony sharing and how the day would run. Her enthusiasm about the different components and their meaning was really reassuring and also made me even more excited about our wedding!

For Razia it isn’t ‘just another Jewish wedding’ and that makes it more special for me. I can’t wait for her to be a part of our day and to see the pictures she takes for us!

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Choosing  a  wedding venue that has never  hosted a Jewish wedding

This kind of set the ball rolling for Gid and I in our vendor search. After that initial panic we soon realised that with a bit more research, and a willingness to take risks, we could find the vendors we wanted that fitted with our theme, that were in budget and were a high quality.

I feel like now is a good time to mention that our venue, Lillibrooke Manor, has  also never hosted  a Jewish wedding and again they seem genuinely thrilled to be arranging  what they see as a new venture for them into the world of Jewish weddings. Initially they had some ideas of how we could set up our ceremony to fit everyone into the space. The ideas were focused on getting in the most amount of people rather than creating the atmosphere we were looking for. When I sat down and went through the ceremony with them they came up with a completely unique idea that we hadn’t thought of before.

They had taken from my description the importance of everyone being involved in the ceremony and that it was about being able to see what was going on just as much as being able to hear what was going on. I am so excited to bring together our vison for the wedding in the most beautiful venue. I know it is going to be incredibly magical and the venue have been really flexible and open to all of our ideas in order to bring together our Jewish wedding with the quirky, rustic barn feel that we want to achieve.

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Real Jewish Brides: How I selected all my wedding vendors in under 10 weeks

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We got engaged in January, and within 10 weeks, I had booked  all  our wedding vendors. I know, I know. That seems super fast, and a lot of brides are curious to know how I made such quick decisions in such a little amount of time, so I’m here to share my secrets…..

To preface, Alex and I are tying the knot across the country (in the USA) from where we currently live (think 3,700+ km). Rather than having the luxury of meeting potential vendors in person over coffee, at their respective studios, as many brides do, it meant that I was left with word-of-mouth referrals, online reviews, and phone conversations as the sole resources to make my final decision.

To be perfectly honest, the only vendor I really cared about meeting in person was the photographer, and of course seeing the venue IRL (in real life). The biggest challenge, in my opinion, is pin pointing where you want the wedding to be. The venue! And it’s true with what they say — Once you have that locked down, the rest sort of falls in line.

Securing a venue gives you a date and a place. You literally cannot do anything without those two. Picking our venue was slightly overwhelming, but once we stepped foot on Tubac Golf Resort and Spa, we knew we hit the jackpot. As I said before, we loved everything about it, and it incorporated everything both Alex and I envisioned for our wedding. We signed our contract within a week of our return flight to Washington, DC. Boom! We had our venue.

OK, so moving onto the other vendors: photographer, cake baker, musicians, florist, and a wedding planner! Now that’s when the ten weeks of non-stop planning really began.

Luckily Tubac had a list of their preferred vendors, folks that are (1) reasonably priced, (2) familiar with the space, staff, and (3) previous brides had been happy with — all aspects are important to a bride-to-be. I used Tubacs preferred vendor list as a springboard in my hunt.  I decided to focus on one vendor category at a time, and went in the order of which vendors I booked.

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Wedding Planner

Before I began with anything else, I figured that I wanted to secure a wedding planner. Someone to assist not only the day-of, but also guide me through the planning stages.

I had two phone interviews with two women who had been in the business for a long, long time which is great. I wanted someone with years of experience under their belt. They were both wonderful, but one wasn’t available on our wedding date to assist with day-of coordination, and the other was highly recommended by Tubac. It was a no brainer. We hired Jeri, our wedding planner and moved on.

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8 ways to stick to your wedding budget without compromising style or elegance

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This is a guest post by Alex Boucher

It’s very easy to get  carried away when planning your wedding (it’s all part of the fun after all!). Pinterest boards, blogs, magazines and Instagram accounts are full of ideas you hadn’t even realised you liked; photos of celebrity weddings showing just what a huge budget can buy you.

Setting a budget may not be the most thrilling part of the planning process, but it still beats the panic of overspending! The simple truth is that weddings cost money, and depending on exactly what you want, that could be a sizeable sum. But while there are plenty of articles out there on how to plan your budget, there are not that many on how to stick to it — at least not without losing any panache. So how do you keep your big day classy whilst sticking to that all important figure?

1 . Think carefully about your guest numbers

A brief mention of the budget basics before we start chatting about the details. Firstly, you need to look at the amount that you can honestly afford. With that done you need to prioritise elements of the day eg. if you have a particular venue in mind, or know you want a designer dress. If you haven’t thought about venues yet then I always suggest writing a rough guest list. Sure it won’t be close to the final cut, but it should give you an idea of numbers.

Now, I am aware that Jewish weddings are often  quite large affairs, but this trend is slowly changing and while perhaps still a little controversial (especially with more traditional family members), one of the best ways to stick to a budget without losing class is trim your guest numbers to only people that really mean something special to you; the atmosphere will be more intimate and it will cut the costs dramatically. When you know roughly who you want to invite you can start looking for venues that suit.

2.  Consider venues that don’t need much in the way of decor

Now, here we go with a few little ideas for you to consider when you are thinking about a venue. When you have visited a couple of venues you can see how much they charge so that you can budget accordingly… but it’s a good time to get a little savvy. A dramatic venue (such as the beautiful Kensington Roof Gardens in London) needs very little in the way of embellishment. Sure the initial outlay may be a little more than a blank canvas of a venue, but the saving on decor may actually weigh things out. When looking at a venue don’t just look around starry eyed — think carefully about how much it would take to make the place look how you would like it and if it has all the basics. A marquee or tipi can be wonderful, but not all that cheap when you add on the cost of things like toilet hire. (Ps you need toilets, no negotiation here!)

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Table setting from Missy & Yoni’s Jew-ish wedding  (image: Babb Photo)

3. Enlist talented friends and family

For many, help from others is a way to stretch the budget. You may have family and friends desperate to help with any aspect of the day — from baking your cake to creating your invitations to help save the pennies…. and keen not to hurt feelings as well as watch the cash flow you find yourself agreeing to something that is decidedly more amateur than you would have liked. This is a sticky situation. Certainly accept their kind offer if they can bake like Mary Berry, or have the craft skills of Kirstie Allsopp; however don’t be shy about saying no. If the cake is inedible you will be disappointed — better to buy a decent wedding cake and decorate it inexpensively — and helping to decorate is something that your nearest and dearest can definitely get involved with. I had some cake at a wedding once that looked incredible… but tasted as though it was baked a month ago. Lovely!

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