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A Halfpenny London Bride for an interfaith Mexican-Jewish wedding at Searcys at 30 Pavilion Road, Knightsbridge, London, UK

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The last few weeks have been filled to the brim with all sorts of events and meetings… all in the name of work! From admiring the 2017 bridal collections at White Gallery London to a meeting with the Vivienne Westwood couture team in central London to the fabulous Not On The High Street press event where I got to meet the wonderful Kate Halfpenny and see her phenomenal wedding dress designs firsthand. Having been a fan of Kate’s for a long time (since I first heard her speak  at Paperfest in 2014) I’m delighted to be finally featuring a bride wearing one of her vintage-inspired Halfpenny London gowns in today’s interfaith (let’s call it Mexi-Jew!) fusion Jew-ish wedding.

Yes, today’s wedding features a surprise Mexican mariachi band singing Hava Nagila and Siman Tov… Epic, right?

And when it’s all captured by Matt Parry, you know it’s going to be utterly superb. Matt is one of those photographers whose work makes me do a little dance whenever I see it — there is something so very creative and fresh about his style — and I’m so happy to be able to say that today’s couple booked him after discovering his work on Smashing The Glass (which definitely elicits another happy dance from me!).

Mexican Jewish Wedding Searcys at 30 Pavilion Road
how we met

Liz, the Bride: Freddie and I met six years ago whilst I was living in London with friends.  We met at a club and exchanged phone numbers. We went on a date and I spent the rest of my time in London with him.

When I returned to Mexico we assumed that that was the end of our whirlwind romance, however two years later I came back to London for the Olympics and I met up with Freddie and we ended spending the entire summer together. The following summer I was back in London for work and after spending yet another summer together we finally decided to give it a go. I moved to London and the rest as they say is history…

We chose this venue as Freddie and his family used to live less than 100 yards away. As Freddie’s mum mentioned in her speech it felt like coming home…

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Two extraordinary brides for a sumptuous bohemian Jew-ish Wedding at Broger’s End Kangaroo Valley, Australia

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Today’s wedding  reaches new heights  on the wedding spectrum and  I am entirely and whole-heartedly in love with every little bit  of it. The attention to detail and the  amount of creativity is phenomenal. I hardly know what to talk about first because it’s  such a total feast for the eyes, but what I love the most is that Lara and Cass’s  union remains as the focal point throughout.

On the other side of the lens for a change, Lara is one of the world’s most renowned  creative wedding photographers, and indeed I have  featured her work  on Smashing The Glass several times. She’s a girl after my own heart wearing  not one, not two, but THREE  wedding gowns, accessorised by a simply astonishing bouquet by  Mikarla Bauer + Jardine Botanics  — truly one of the best I’ve ever seen.

So much  originality permeates Lara and Cass’s day from choosing to  get ready and walk down the aisle together, to all sorts of gorgeous DIY like a ‘Guess Who’ game handmade by Cass using their  family members, to  an idea that I’ve never seen before: a flower crown station for the  guests to accessorise with before the ceremony  so that when the couple walked  down the aisle they saw all their guests with flowers in their hair. Love love LOVE!

Sheree from  She Designs Events  blended their two very different loves into one creative  theme which works brilliantly even though it combines everything from  Country & Western  to Vintage Romance! I love the idea of not compromising to one theme but rather merging both your loves.

Our  two brides  come from different religious backgrounds and  chose to incorporate Lara’s Jewish  culture with  some crazy  Jewish Dancing that  really set the tone for the evening.  Lara said:

We had the Jewish dancing  before entering the reception and it really loosened everyone up! We were being thrown up and down on chairs and tossed in the air and running around in circles and forming conga lines around the fire pit! It was a definite highlight.”

And there are so many… You truly have to savour every one of  Dan O’Day‘s astonishing images to take it all in. Oh, and there is a wonderful  film by  Light Noise Films  at the end which you just must watch. What a total treat!

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Planning the wedding ourselves

Lara: I think I completely underestimated how time consuming planning an entire wedding from start to finish can be, never mind running a business at the same time.

Cass was great as she really let me take full control of everything but was always there when I needed her to bounce ideas with and make final decisions or to get things done.

We had spread sheets and documentation for everything — its really quite overwhelming how many things / vendors there are to keep track of and all the little details to organise — but well worth all the effort in the end.

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A Pronovias bride for a ‘Northerner & The Jew’ interfaith Jewish wedding at Corinthia Hotel London, UK

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Today’s Jew-ish wedding can’t fail to put a smile on your face. It’s literally bursting at the seams with fashion, fun and some very original ideas. The bride and groom are a director and  actor respectively, and they incorporated some brilliantly inventive details  into their  day.

There’s a surprise  Fiddler & The Roof bottle dance  by the groom and his friends, an off-the-scale Pronovias  dress,  Vivienne Westwood shoes that I am MAJORLY  coveting, a dress code of ‘Imagine it’s the Oscar’s and get glamorous’, and one of the best Jew-ish wedding themes ever:  ‘The  Northerner & The Jew’. Genius! The bride  says:

My Judaism  is very important to  me — it is my cultural make-up. It was a big decision to get serious
 with John but luckily I have a great family who adore him. And I adore his. Our upbringing often clashes, mainly 
over little things and we are having to re-write our own rules for our life together. We can’t base it on our parents but there are some great discoveries — like a bacon and challah sandwich. So wrong its right. So ‘Northern and the Jew’.

A  bacon and challah sandwich? Too good to be true! There are so many good interfaith ceremony wedding ideas here, one of my favourite being  the laying out of  flags out on each seat during the chuppah  with different Lancashire and Yiddish sayings.

Jem &  John  had a very personal wedding  and, not surprisingly,  the  report today is written by them both. All the fun comes from the exquisite  Corinthia hotel  in the heart of London with sensational imagery by  Rhapsody Road.

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Choosing to get married at The Corinthia Hotel  London

Jem, the Bride: We were recommended to go and see The Corinthia  by a friend and fell in love with it. We have a love of architecture and restoration work and the way the hotel had been restored and modernised appealed to us. We also wanted somewhere in central London where we could have the ceremony and reception in one place.

John, the Groom: The place is magnificent. As Jem said, the architecture is splendid, the refurbishment is top notch. The welcome from the door staff was fantastic. In fact, everything was exemplary when we looked around. It just made sense. Once we had the food tasting, we knew it was money well spent.

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Sarah & Anne | Super stylish Same Sex Jewish Wedding at Hart House, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada

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I couldn’t name this blog anything but smashing the glass. It is THE moment of a Jewish wedding and images like the one above just make me so happy. Two beautiful women, crazy in love, performing this hugely symbolic tradition under a gorgeous chuppah. I’m telling you, one of the best things about this job is definitely how uplifting it is to look at images like these.

And like all the real Jewish weddings on Smashing The Glass, this W-Day is completely refreshing. Both brides chose to forgo the traditional wedding dress style in favour of a two super sleek and contemporary creations by Carolina Herrera and Judith and Charles respectively, accessorised in Anne’s case by the most delicate headpiece.

And that’s not the only thing that has me swooning. There are gorgeous dainty florals and rustic table runners by GLP Events that not only look delightful (Anne wanted a simple arrangement of flowers that reminded her of the fields in the small French village where she grew up), they’re cost-effective too.

And the guests…well if the photos at the end of the night are anything to go by, then it’s clear that everyone had a darned good time!

Back with a bang for his 3rd feature on STG, Niv Shimshon has captured the mood perfectly with these terrific shots. Prepare to swoon.

Lesbian Wedding at Hart House, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada
how we met

Sarah and Anne, the Brides: We met one cold winter’s evening in Montreal and have been together nearly every day since. On the night we met, Anne was sick with a nasty flu. Sarah, a germophobe, knew it was love at first sight because she didn’t want the date to end despite Anne’s coughing, sneezing, and significantly high fever. Anne is calm, cool and collected, and Sarah is witty, funny, and shows pictures of her dog to strangers every time she has a chance.

Lesbian Wedding at Hart House, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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A Johanna Johnson bride for Supper club inspired interfaith Jewish wedding at The Green Building, Brooklyn, New York City, USA

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I love Danya’s mum – she told her about Smashing The Glass and shared the blog with Danya a few months before her wedding. Danya told me how much of a help it was for her as she planned her interfaith Jewish wedding to Andrew, and that makes me one very happy smiley blogger.

Danya and Andrew are a really creative couple who blended  their heritages (she’s Jewish, he’s not) and their hobbies to start a pop-up restaurant inspired by Jewish culture. Their pop-up supper club was a big inspiration for their wedding ceremony and celebration as they wanted their guests to feel at home and as if they were at a really intimate, delicious, fun dinner party.

The attention to detail, craft and care for everything at this wedding is so apparent — the couple mixed age-old traditions together with individuality effortlessly, with a gorgeous Autumnal colour palette and lots of personalised details.

I also love this: Danya and Andrew asked two of their friends to decorate their apartment so that when they came home to it after the wedding (it was only a few roads away from the venue) it would feel celebratory and special. Their friends strung paper decorations and placed beautiful flowers and candles throughout the apartment together with a late-night snack plate of crackers, cheese, and champagne. Just wonderful!

Danya and Andrew were married in October 2015 at The Green Building in Brooklyn, an incredible warehouse / loft-style venue in the heart of Brooklyn. All the stunning images are by Chris Gifford from Weddings by Two

Green Building Brooklyn wedding
The background to our wedding

Danya, the Bride: I’m an East Coast Jew who loves neutral colours and socialising to relax. My husband is a Christmas-loving, West Coast guy who’s never met an outdoor sport he didn’t like. We wanted to combine our backgrounds in a way that felt authentic to us and in a way that our families would recognise, and we lucked out big time with a brilliant and quirky rabbi who totally got what we needed (Rabbi Jim Ponet, a close family friend and Yale University’s rabbi for 30 years – his first ever intermarriage was Chelsea Clinton and her husband!). We spent a lot of time coming up with an original, explanatory, sometimes funny program.

Green Building Brooklyn wedding

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