Jewish Super Luxe Weddings Archives - Page 31 of 31 - Smashing the Glass

Natalie & Oren | Spectacular Jewish wedding at The Great Synagogue + Villa Cora, Florence, Italy

03/01/2014 by Karen

I kid you not. The moment I laid my eyes on this magnificent wedding captured by David Bastianoni, I was speechless. As in, my mouth was unable to form words and my brain was unable to make sentences. And as a wedding blogger, that can be kind of a problem. But stare for even one minute at the array of images in this post, by the amazing David Bastianoni, and you’ll be doing the exact same thing.

So let’s hand over to our gorgeous bride, Natalie, to provide you with all the delicious detail of the day.

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Natalie, the Bride: We had our ceremony at The Great Synagogue of Florence. I lived in Florence for 9 months in 2002 and I always remembered the synagogue being remarkable. Upon re-visiting the synagogue I knew I wanted to get married there. We even decided to keep the ceremony at the synagogue despite it being an open house day where the synagogue was open to visitors throughout the day. Needless to say we had a lot of bystanders and ”extra” guests at our ceremony but we didn’t mind.

The reception was held at Villa Cora. The hotel was redone a few years ago and the main salon is breathtaking. As soon as I saw the main salon at Villa Cora my mind was made up. As you can see in the photos, the room speaks for itself. We ended up having more people than we expected and we used an adjoining room which was equally as gorgeous but with a totally different style (Moroccan).

AN ELEGANT WEDDING DRESS
I chose a dress by Marisa, New York. I knew I wanted something lace and I wasn’t looking for white. The material underneath the lace was a champagne color. When I saw my dress I knew it was the one as it had the perfect bustle (which we added to a bit) and an elegant lace overlay.

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

31/10/2013 by Karen

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.

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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.

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Michelle & Richard | Jewish/Celtic Winter Wedding at Babington House, Somerset, UK

16/10/2013 by Karen

I have no words for Michelle and Richard’s wedding. Truly. I will run out of adjectives trying to describe how magnificent everything is. The details are quite astonishing, the setting is magical, and I love the embracing of both the Scottish and Jewish cultures. The mix of traditions meld surprisingly beautifully (think the Hora followed by the Ceilidh; haggis bites served alongside potato latkes.. you get the picture – and it works!).

Scroll down and you will see bagpipers playing in the snow, exquisite floral designs, a stunning balletic Mira Zwillinger wedding dress, the most awesome and thoughtful wedding favours, and an incredible video by Gorgeous Films that may very well have you shedding a tear or three with its sheer beauty and sensitivity.

Now on top of that I admit that I whooped, hollered and clapped my hands with glee when I found out that with this wedding I’d be showcasing Especially Amy‘s sensational photography. She captures all the details of the day so emotively and she is a well-deserved Smashing Supplier.

So the lovely Michelle and Richard married back in January of this year (apparently the snowiest January on record) at one of my favourite places in the world, Babington House (part of the Soho House group) in Somerset. They chose this breathtaking venue, not only for its beauty, but because they could also take over the whole place and share the experience with friends and family over a couple of days.

A JEWISH / CELTIC THEME + A BEAUTIFUL VENUE

Michelle, The Bride: The theme of our wedding was to bring both of our cultures together, so essentially to have a Jewish/Celtic mix. Rich is Jewish, and I am half Irish, half Scottish, so it was important that all cultures were represented. So for instance we had a Ceilidh followed by the Hora; we had haggis and Irish soda bread, but equally we had Chanukah doughnuts; we had a rabbi, and we had our friend singing Ave Maria… etc etc. In terms of a colour scheme, we based it loosely around Weathered Kennedy Tartan (which made my Dad very happy!)

Our chosen venue was Babington House because it’s so very beautiful and because we could take over the whole venue and have our friends and family stay with us overnight and continue the celebrations the following morning.

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Starr & Jacques | ‘Palace of Versailles’ themed Jewish wedding, Palm Beach, Florida, USA

30/09/2013 by Karen

I have the most utterly sublime and beautiful wedding for you today. Starr is from New York City, and Jacques is from Paris, and the story of how these two met is quite simply a modern day fairytale.

Starr says “My mum says she prayed for this husband for me, and that’s truly how I believe he came into my life! We met in Paris. I was on holiday and a mutual friend invited Jacques for dinner at this trendy hotel, and we were engaged 37 days and 5 countries later…”

As it happened, that first evening they met in Paris, Starr was at the beginning of a three-week European holiday. Jacques invited Starr to join him for dinner again the following night with a bunch of friends but it rained heavily the next day, and one by one his friends dropped out. Jacques called her to say that it would be just the two of them and asked if that would be ok. She agreed and so the spark was lit…

Jacques was determined to see Starr again even though she was about to leave Paris for the next leg of her trip, and the following weekend he caught up with her in Barcelona, then several days later he met her in London, the next weekend in Paris, and then the weekend after that he travelled to New York to meet Starr’s father to ask him for Starr’s hand in marriage. A week later the couple traveled to Morocco for a wedding and that’s where Jacques proposed.

Quite the love story, hey? I’ll now hand over the reigns to the beautiful Starr to tell you about the story of her wedding but just before I do, I want to say that I am beyond excited to feature the incredible photography of Joy Marie Smallwood. Her eye for composition, colour and texture means that each and every photo feels artsy, sexy, fun, candid, rich, boutique, authentic…. I could go on and on. I’m sure you’ll agree that every one of these images is immense.

VENUE TO ECHO OUR ‘PALACE OF VERSAILLES’ THEME
Starr, the Bride: We knew we wanted a destination wedding as we loved the idea of entertaining friends and family over an entire weekend – not just one night – and in fact we ended up having five different events during our wedding weekend, including a Shabbat dinner and a traditional Sephardi Henna Party!

As Jacques is French we toyed with the idea of getting married in France. I love the drama and history of the Palace of Versailles — you can actually get married in the Orangerie there — but in the end it proved impractical for us to tie the knot in France.

We thought about where would be good for everyone and where would they enjoy traveling to, and came up with Palm Beach… Americans love Florida, Europeans love Florida. We decided upon the beautiful Mar-a-lago Club whose stunning ballroom echoed the grandeur of Versailles which fitted right in with our wedding theme.

The Mar-a-Lago was built in the 1920s by the heiress Marjorie Merriwether Post, and combines stunning Moorish, Venetian, Spanish and Mediterranean elements, including spiral staircases and intricate stone carvings.

Natasha & Jez | French Riviera Jewish Wedding at Villa Ephrussi & Passable Beach, Cap Ferrat, France

13/06/2013 by Karen

French Riviera weddings are renowned for being exquisitely beautiful but I think that this Cà´te d’Azur wedding is one of the most unique that I’ve seen. It has absolutely magnificent attention to detail and superb originality and creativity running through it including a gospel choir singing before and after the Chuppah ceremony, a life-size cow wedding cake (bet you’ve never seen that before!) and a surprise second half to the evening when guests were transported from a palatial villa garden setting onwards to a magical secret beach party.

Natasha and Jez, both from London, met at a mutual friends wedding and are a super-gorgeous couple with great taste and style. Both Jez and Natasha were very heavily involved in their wedding planning, both wanting to make it a fun and very special party for themselves and their guests.

Natasha the bride: I wanted to get married somewhere different and I wanted to think ‘outside of the box’. We have a house in Cap-Ferrat in the South of France where we spend a lot of time, and I remember being there and thinking how lovely it would be to get married in the area. We looked at all sorts of local venues and by far our favourite was the Villa Ephrussi. We had the ceremony and reception in the beautiful gardens of the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild and then later on we secretly took everyone down to Passable Beach for the dinner and dancing. No-one knew they were going there. We didn’t mention Passable Beach on the invitation and people were wondering around thinking “where are we going to sit for the food” and bit by bit, “where is everyone going?!” Guests stating disappearing but they didn’t know where they were going to!

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A JEWISH / CELTIC THEME + A BEAUTIFUL VENUE

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