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Home > Real Jewish Weddings > Jewish Interfaith Weddings > Page 20

Victoria & Oliver | Super-Creative Back Garden Jewish Wedding in Highgate, London, UK

12/12/2013 by Karen

back-garden-wedding
Today folks we have back garden glamour abound, with a wedding hosted in  the bride’s parents’ home followed by a reception at the bride’s grandparent’s home. How lovely is that?

There’s loads of super creative DIY, a gorgeous Alice Temperley bride, a Routemaster bus, some swimming pool action, and some immense photography from Richmond Pictures.

Victoria, a creative arts therapist, and Oliver, a theatre producer, met during their time at the Newcastle University Theatre Society where they played two drunks in Kebab! The Musical . What an awesome ‘how did you meet’ opener!
Red London bus wedding
VENUE + LOCATION
Victoria, the Bride: We had the ceremony in my parent’s garden in Highgate. They have a lawn down some garden steps, which makes it feel like a secret garden almost. We then took red London buses to my Grandparent’s house, also in Highgate, as they too have a lovely garden – we had a marquee here. I grew up in both these gardens so both venues had a lot of sentimental value and my fiancà©e loved the gardens too. (My Grandpa died a few years ago but my Grandma was thrilled to host everyone — she danced all night. This was particularly special as she passed away 6 months later. We have such great memories of her as hostess with the mostess!)
garden wedding london flowers wedding london garden wedding london 4

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The diary of a Jewish bride who married out

25/11/2013 by Smashing The Glass

Marrying-out
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.
Interfaith-Jewish-wedding
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.
Sara Gibbs Darling Lovely Life
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.
jewish-vintage-wedding-3
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.

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What happens when a Rabbi and a Priest officiate as a duo for a Jew-ish wedding ceremony? Something very special…

04/11/2013 by Karen

Priest Rabbi Jewish Wedding [Image: Alison Conklin Photography]

Jon from NewYorkFilmWorks recently contacted me to share one of his favourite wedding films from 2013: the Jew-ish wedding of Rachel and Rich.

Jon from NewYorkFilmWorks: This wedding had such a feel-good energy; it’s funny, it’s uplifting and you can feel how much they love each other. It’s really interesting because it was officiated by the best duo I’ve ever seen at a wedding: a Monseigneur (Priest, essentially) and a Rabbi – these guys KILLED it.

Rachel, the bride, lost her father, Jerry, a few years ago – the Monseignor touched upon that and mentioned how beautiful and sunny the day was (I remember that week was rainy and even on their day the forecast was for rain all day).

Rachel and Rich are very caring and loving to each other and close to their family. The final three shots of the film are his mum, her mum and the sky – signifying her father in heaven – all three watching and taking part in their union as they signed the ketubah (that’s the last sequence of the highlights as the music starts to wind down). After all the feel good energy of the rest of the highlights, I aimed to guide the viewer through a reflective and touching moment to end with.


Thank you for sharing this with us Jon. It’s a total must-watch for a heart-melting Monday feeling.

Film — Jon Armendariz | NewYorkFilmworks
Venue — The Brownstone, New Jersey, USA
Photography — Alison Conklin

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Crystall & Ryan | Jewish/Greek Wedding at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, New York City, USA

31/10/2013 by Karen

GREEK JEWISH WEDDING
A Greek and a Jewish wedding? Can it get much better than that?! Well in the case of this beauty, it does. Not only do we get the best of both cultures and traditions, it is literally oozing, hell, I’d even say *overflowing*, in style and creativity.

First off, Crystall and Ryan are one seriously hot couple. I’m talking hot with a capital ‘H’ guys, and I just know you’ll agree once you clap eyes on all the imagery below. Then there’s the fusion of the best Jewish and Greek traditions,  plus the theme of music running through all the festivities, and  on a fashion note, our lovely bride, Crystall wore not one but TWO fabulous dresses: a spectacular customised Oscar de la Renta for the ceremony, and a breathtaking Jenny Packham for the reception. I know — I must admit to being a teeny weeny bit green-eyed over this fact.

The backbone of Crystall and Ryan’s W-day is a certain symbolic willow tree in the Brooklyn Botanical Garden that was central in the early days of their relationship. The same tree went on to survive merciless Hurricane Sandy and the couple decided that this tree would form the framework of their chuppah.

I won’t delay you any further; let’s hear about this beautifully intertwined Jewish / Greek wedding day in the bride’s words. She infuses lots of lovely detail — you’ll feel as if you were right there at her wedding.
Jewish Greek Wedding at Brooklyn Botanical Garden New York 3

VENUE

Crystall, the Bride: The summer that Ryan and I met, we spent a perfect afternoon wandering the grounds of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.  It was the same day that Ryan moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn, closer to where I was.  We celebrated sitting under a large weeping willow tree, holding hands and completely in love. We had no way of knowing then that just 3 years later, we would be saying “I do” in that very spot in front of that same tree.

Very soon after getting engaged, we chose to marry in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, a place that means so much to us.  We wanted our guests to experience the sweeping 52-acre garden in an intimate way and truly be a part of the journey that led us full circle right back to that weeping willow tree.
Jewish Greek Wedding at Brooklyn Botanical Garden New York Getting ready Jewish Greek Wedding at Brooklyn Botanical Garden New York Getting ready 2

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Sara & John | Incredible ‘Granny Chic’ vintage Jewish wedding, Kidbrooke Park, Sussex

28/10/2013 by Karen

Jewish Vintage Wedding Sara is one incredibly beautiful and  creative bride. And I’m talking creative with a capital ‘C’ folks. Yep all the amazing decor and imaginative touches you see in the pictures below were all hand  made by Sara. It’s one big explosion of colour and thrills with lots of vintage prettiness everywhere!

As the bride herself says,  “With our wedding it was more “what did you leave alone?” than what did you create! It was the biggest project of my life but I was so happy with the way it all came together!”

Sara and John met at work in Sara’s first ever contract job as a copywriter. She left the job pretty soon afterwards but kept a special souvenir!

Over to Sara for the story of her gorgeous W-day.
Jewish Vintage Wedding 3
Jewish Vintage Wedding intro2 Sara John Vintage Wedding Jewish Vintage Wedding intro3
VENUE
Sara, the Bride: Our wedding was at Kidbrooke Park in Sussex. We chose this venue because it’s actually my old school. At first I’d ruled it out because I thought it would be strange to get married just outside the room in which I sat all of my exams, but the first venue we booked fell through when they insisted we use their preferred caterers who priced us right out of our own wedding and wouldn’t do a simple meal for us citing colours and presentation (or something silly).

After that I revisited the idea of getting married at my old school and suddenly felt like it would be really great to say “I do” somewhere so close to my heart. There is a beautiful, crumbling outdoor theatre which is covered with flowers in the spring and summer, and I suddenly had a vision of making my entrance through the doors of the theatre. It was such a nice daydream that I booked immediately!

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