Converting to Judaism Archives - Page 3 of 4 - Smashing the Glass

A Mira Zwillinger bride for a snowy ski-themed Jewish wedding in the mountains of Verbier, Switzerland

15/12/2015 by Karen

I’m a bit of a ski-ing nut and LOVE everything that goes with the sport — the breathtaking scenery, the high altitude vibe, and the aprà¨s-ski life. So when I first clapped eyes on this wintery mountain wedding, I can hand on heart say that my breath was momentarily taken away. Then when I spotted the images of the bride and groom in ski boots having fun on the powder, I seriously couldn’t believe my eyes – my goodness… how lucky are we this morning?!

With a bride called Summer, this winter wedding is everything. I’m talking killer photography by Ronen Boidek, a Swiss mountain backdrop complete with sunshine, snow, alphorns, mulled wine, cheese fondue, St Bernard dogs, lanterns, candles, and a Mira Zwillinger gown so pretty it could move you to tears. But even more than that, it’s the sheer joy captured in every last image. Summer, take it away…

Our wedding in a nutshell

Summer, the Bride: I think the mountain setting helped make the wedding unusual! The alphorns, mulled wine, cheese fondue, cow bells, lanterns, candles and mountain tent all helped create a special day. We made a whole weekend of it with a mountain lunch and dinners and I hope that our guests had a really different and fun wedding weekend!

A Rue de Seine bride for a Jewish Wedding under the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Simmer on the Bay, Dawes Point, Australia

20/10/2015 by Karen

Nikki and Jem are just the coolest couple and their big day from the world-famous Sydney Harbour Bridge embraces the most beautiful Jewish wedding traditions whilst maintaining a totally free-spirited, energetic and fun vibe. It’s been sensationally captured by Australian photographer Dan O’Day whose work I adore — I could have filled this feature with every image he sent me and you’ll probably be able to tell I struggled to stop myself from doing just that!

I love pretty much everything about Nikki and Jem’s Jewish wedding but one of my favourite details (that I’ve never seen done before) is the couple choosing to shelve the idea of traditional favours, and instead place custom ribbons with their monogram and date on them at everyone’s place setting. They then invited guests to create their own bouquets from the gorgeous wild flowers that were in front of them, tie them together with the ribbons and take them home. Such a beautiful and thoughtful idea.

Nikki also bought her bride posse (note, Nikki doesn’t call them bridesmaids!) a pair of Converse each, and left them on their seats with “dancing shoes” tags.

Fashion stylist Nikki looks utterly gorgeous in her Rue de Seine gown — the New Zealand designers make the most perfect boho bridal romantic dresses combining rich beading, intricate detailing and sheer draping, and they just seem to design for the coolest, most stylish brides. If you’re looking for a more modest dress they cater for this brilliantly with many of their designs incorporating high necks and long sleeves.

Right, shall we dive into this super cool wedding then? Trust me, you’re going to love it…

how we met

Nikki, the Bride: We met in 2009 through a mutual friend who was trying to help Jem and his buddy get a jeans label off the ground. Our mutual friend suggested that I be their first model (because I was the only person small enough to fit in their teeny tiny samples!) I was interning at Cosmopolitan magazine at the time looking to get a career in fashion so it was a common interest for us both I guess. Jem now works in finance but I’m still in fashion. I was not born Jewish, and as our friendship grew, so did my love for Judaism. Once he found out I was looking into converting he also saw it as an opportunity for us to start dating, and the rest is history.
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The legal requirements of a Jewish wedding ceremony in the UK

05/08/2015 by Karen

Granted it’s not the most exciting of topics, but one that definitely needs addressing, so thank you, Emily, for highlighting it! I asked Emily to provide me with an exact list of questions that she wanted answering and then called upon the expertise of STG regular, the wonderful Rabbi Paul Glantz to shed light on the the legal requirements of a Jewish wedding ceremony in England, and the UK.

For any American readers, or brides holding a destination Jewish wedding in the USA, a post detailing the legal requirements of a Jewish wedding in the USA will be up on the blog in he coming weeks too.

Deborah & Hernan’s Jewish wedding in a farmhouse. See the full wedding here :: Image by York Place Studios

Steph & Juls | Boho English Country Garden Jewish Wedding, Narborough Hall, Norfolk

30/12/2013 by Karen

When I knew I’d be blogging this beauty of a wedding I whooped, hollered and clapped my hands with glee… Its filled with so many wonderful details, and the bride, Steph describes it all so beautifully.

It’s set in the depths of the Norfolk countryside at the resplendent garden venue that is Narborough Hall, and it’s full of creative details, fashion-inspired touches, and an achingly chic bride and groom ( well they do both work in fashion industry – in fact that’s how they met, but more about that later on).

Now not only do we have the delights of photographer extraordinaire, Katherine Ashdown, but we also have a wonderful film of this wedding included in the post, by the awesome Sugarfish.

You guys are in for a treat. Seriously. this wedding is a dream.

VENUE
Steph, the Bride: I fell in love with Narborough Hall as soon as I saw it… somewhere where we could feel at home, and relaxed. We were originally going to get married in Ibiza, but my family are farmers, so they couldn’t be away from the crops and the animals for any long amount of time, not to mention that my grandad wouldn’t be able to travel that far..

Narborough ticked all the boxes in terms of being a bit boho and absolutely beautiful, and somehow really tranquil and fun.. not at all stiff or pompous.

The fact that the flowers could all be sourced from Narborough’s own gardens also made it feel very natural and not ‘plastic’ or put on.

THEME
I sort of toyed around with loads of magazine tears and ideas from the internet..The problem was that trend seemed to be for kitsch, hand made, english country wedding, and although I love all that, I didn’t want our wedding to look like it had been taken straight out of someone else’s wedding shoot or too ‘theme’ wedding rather than my wedding..

So I began to look at films and other inspirations and found some fantastic images of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and that kind of era, mixed with a bit of faded English glamour and tarnished jewels became the background theme.

The diary of a Jewish bride who married out

25/11/2013 by Smashing The Glass

Today’s post is written by the wonderful Sara Gibbs of Darling Lovely Life, the vintage-inspired lifestyle blog (and one of my favourite daily reads).Today she shares her personal story of marrying out. Or as she puts it, “her husband marrying in”.

Growing up, I always assumed I would meet a nice Jewish boy (maybe a doctor) and spend the rest of my life kvetching at him. OK, so I didn’t really see myself as such an awful stereotype, but growing up in a Jewish / Israeli household that was relatively observant (in a reform kind of way) and going on to be president of my JSoc at university, it was a natural assumption that my future life partner would be Jewish.

So imagine my great surprise when the love of my life showed up when I was just twenty two — and he wasn’t Jewish at all. Not only was he not Jewish, but he’d grown up all over the Middle East (gasp) and not my neck of the woods either (double gasp) because of his dad’s job and while my views on the conflict are hardly controversial or right wing, we actually first got to know each other because of our amusingly divergent views on the obvious.

We worked together in my first job. We became adversaries, then friends, then more. The job was a short-term contract and didn’t last, but I took a souvenir home with me and no, it wasn’t the stapler.

It didn’t take long for John to embrace Jewish culture. The first time I took him home to meet my parents was Rosh Hashanah, throwing him right in the deep end. After three months together, I went to work in Israel for a month and he visited me out there.

He returned home, proudly telling everyone who’d listen how he’d been searched five times by El Al security and even had his wine gift wrapped by the security officer. I flew home and moved in — he was hooked and starting to look and sound more Jewish than I am.

Then, just six months into our relationship, on a freezing cold Brighton beach, John proposed. I said yes, and we started planning our interfaith wedding. I was lucky. My family, already in love with John, took no exception to my “marrying out”. They saw it the way John did. I wasn’t marrying out, he was marrying in.

Converting seemed irrelevant. I wasn’t religious, so I didn’t expect John to be. Judaism is so many things to so many people and to me it’s culture — it’s home. John was happy to have a Jewish home and I was happy to build it with him.

Living in England, interfaith marriages are easy enough. Finding someone to perform a Jewish-style ceremony for an interfaith couple? Not so easy. We went through a sparse list of rabbis who would do it, and again with the awful stereotypes but it seems that you pay a dear price for marrying out. Literally. I mean no disrespect when I say that some even had the chutzpah to charge per blessing.

We approached a dear friend who had been the Jewish chaplain at my university and was the president of my old shul there. While he isn’t a rabbi, he leads services and it wouldn’t be a legally binding ceremony. He knew both John and I incredibly well and we couldn’t think of anyone more perfect to send us off into married life.

As it wasn’t an official, legally binding ceremony (we had a legal ceremony minutes before), we took some liberties that probably had some of the older generations scratching their heads and wondering if they missed something. For a start, I made a Cath Kidston-style chuppah out of table legs, lace tablecloth and floral fabric, we wrote and designed our own Ketubah and I didn’t wear my veil but we did use it during the blessings as it had belonged to my great grandmother.

At the end of the day, though, we married under a chuppah, I circled my groom seven times (because I loved the symbolism), we said blessings, we drank Palwins (awful as ever) and he smashed the glass. My secular groom was about as Jewish as you can get without actually being Jewish.

A year and a half on and we are very happily married. We have a Jewish household, we celebrate the holidays, John is insistent on being observant even when I’m being lazy, he’s attempting to learn Hebrew, there is a mezuzah at our door.