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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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An Anglo-American Enzoani bride for an English country garden Jewish wedding at Northbrook Park, Farnham, Surrey UK

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One of the best ‘how we met’ stories ever to have graced these pages is about to unfold before your very eyes. I’ll let the bride, Danielle, regale the full tale, but essentially the bride and groom’s parents were friends before these two were even born and their mothers fell pregnant at the same time. Born just six days apart, the bride and groom essentially knew each other from birth and what makes this Jewish wedding so very special is that so many of the guests had known both the bride and groom since the day they were born and had seen them grow up together — and apart (Danielle and her family moved to Florida when she was six) — and then together again!

No surprise then that this wonderful wedding is all about celebrating family with a closeness and an intimacy that I’m sure was felt intensely by every guest. So many wonderful touches, but one of my favourite is Danielle and Adam’s chuppah idea:

As the chuppah symbolises the four walls of a Jewish home, we wanted our family and friends to help us build this ‘home’. We asked all the ladies to pick out a rose and place it within the chuppah and hopefully while they did so they also made a wish for us and our marriage.”

I’m also very much liking Danielle’s Enzoani dress and those wonderful mismatched bridesmaids complete with baby’s breath flower crowns  — the perfect accompaniment to that scenic backdrop of blue skies and the Great British countryside.

Everything about this beautifully designed wedding at the gorgeous Northbrook Park is like viewing canned happiness and fun! From the personalised ushers’ pants(!) to the abundance of floral prettiness provided by Fairynuff Flowers to the Marryaoke and the “family style” Mediterranean cuisine by Eat Me. It all made for a rustic, relaxed feel of a family Shabbat dinner with people chatting and sharing food as if they had known each other for years! Oh wait, many of the guests did!

Enjoy this one peeps — the day was photographed perfectly by Cotton Candy — a duo of fun, fabulous women who did a brilliant job of capturing all the love and details.

English Country Garden Jewish Wedding Northbrook ParkEnglish Country Garden Jewish Wedding Northbrook Park
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A Monsoon bride for a super fun destination Jewish Wedding on the Greek island of Paros, Greece

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If the image above doesn’t  draw you right in to this Greek / Jewish  (or Grewish!) wedding, I don’t know what will! I’m obsessed with the energy and aesthetic of it… and the talents of the man behind the lens, Ronen Boidek, whose work  I’m honoured to have  featured before on Smashing The Glass.

Courtesy of Ronen’s photography, and a very entertaining  wedding report by Tamar the bride, not to mention  an incredible film by  Nikos Vamvakidis  at the end of the post,  we’re being whisked  off to the  gorgeous Greek  island of Paros today. Blue skies, smiles for miles, sandy beaches, a bride and groom jointly smashing the glass, broken  plates, smashed pomegranates, Jewish wedding traditions, Greek wedding treaditions, the sparkliest of azure seas, Greek music, Jewish tunes, a first dance tango to  Por Una Cabeza  (one of my favourite pieces of music)…. wow! As the bride puts it, this wedding is literally  a mesh of joyous inclusion.

And  not only did bride  Tamar  rock a gorgeous Grecian-style dress from High Street label  Monsoon  but she switched into ANOTHER  gorgeous frock before the bash was  over  too! And Vasilis  played his part of the snazzy  groom splendidly  in his linen suit and trilby…  totally  dashing!

There are many humorous  moments (as could only be found at a big fat Greek Jewish wedding) brilliantly told by Tamar, including a very funny  proposal story, the groom’s getting ready story (I have genuinely NEVER heard anything like it!) and tales  aplenty about Tamar’s mother’s insane dancing…

Just a word of caution —  you may well be booking a little trip to Greece  by the time you’ve finished this post…. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Jewish Wedding on the Greek island of Paros, Greece
how we met and the groom’s  (five!) proposals

Tamar, the Bride:  Vasilis and I met in a boho tea room on Brick Lane in London in November what feels like 100 years ago. Five years after that he proposed five times! He had intended to propose on the anniversary of our first meeting. We had planned to go to Budapest that November and he wanted to get on one knee in the middle of the bridge between Buda and Pest. But he couldn’t wait. So the first time he proposed I was in my pyjamas the night before we flew and was so shocked and a bit sad: I wanted to have at least been wearing a bra!

The second time was only two minutes later with bra on and shock not over. The ring was a bit big so we planned to resize it after our anniversary holiday. The third time was that weekend on a bridge between Buda and Pest and the fourth time was a few minutes later on an even better bridge that he liked even more. Then, when we returned to London we had to get the ring resized and after picking it up he presented it to me again on the balcony of the Royal Opera House. He says that he loves proposing to me and that every time I say yes his heart leaps, so although the count is at five proposals, they may not be the last!

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Aly & Zach | Mountain-top Jewish wedding at The Lodge at Sunspot, Winter Park, Colorado, USA

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I’m ready to favourite this post, and I haven’t even written it yet! You see, as a self-confessed ski nut, any wedding that includes a bride and groom atop a chair lift, a mountaintop vista, cable cars as wedding transport, an oxygen bar (yes really!) and a beaming bride and groom is a winner in my book. And thanks to the talents of Daniel Lopez Perez Photography, this Colorado beauty is all that plus SO much more.

Aly and Zach decided to have their ceremony 10,700 feet up a mountain. You see, you really can have a Jewish wedding anywhere! Aly’s skied down Winter Park Mountain every year of her life since she was five and the region means so much to her. What better reason to choose it as her wedding venue?

Frankly this W Day looks like it was a blast with so many cute details (like blue sunglasses as wedding favours) not to mention the sweetest dress and the most besotted groom I’ve seen in a while. I think you’ll love it all!

Take it away Aly…

Colorado mountain Jewish wedding
how we met

Aly, the Bride: Zach and I met at a small dive bar that our mutual friends were playing a live show at. I saw him at the end of the bar and told my friend I thought he was cute and asked her what I should say to him. My friends’s answer: “hello.” So I did. The rest of night included giant jenga, funk music, three bars, dancing, a few drinks, and a lot of laughing…. We moved in together three months later, and never looked back.

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Sara & Ben | Gloriously Colourful and Creative Jewish Wedding at Castle Green, Pasadena, California, USA

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Sara is a true Smashing The Glass bride — she did it her way (to paraphrase old blue eyes). For Sara, this meant a traditional Jewish ceremony with some of her and Ben’s own egalitarian touches added in. It meant a beautiful home-made chuppah, created by her mother, that integrated small pieces of her and Ben’s past, and it meant listening to her instincts when she felt weird, alternate pressure to create something quirky and cool, and needed a middle ground. Ben was great at helping her to acknowledge when she needed to relax and let it go, and he did much of the work, making a lot of small details happen.

The end result is a wedding full of personality, astonishing detail straight from the heart, intimacy and gloriously magnificent colour. What could be be more perfect?
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The gorgeous couple first met in Israel whilst Sara was living there and Ben was visiting on holiday. She was taking classes in Jerusalem, and while Ben was in town he wanted to sit in on a class, since he had attended the same school a few years earlier. One morning in January, Sara walked into her usual class and Ben just happened to be sitting next to her regular seat. They struck up a conversation and ended up being chevruta (study partners), but spent most of their study time chatting and getting to know each other. By the end of that day’s class, they had exchanged emails and after Ben returned to the US they started getting to know each other first on email and Gchat, and then long hours over the phone. Several months later, when Sara arrived back in NYC, Ben was waiting for her at the airport with a bouquet of flowers. That was three and a half years ago…. I’ll now hand over to the lovely Sara to tell the story of her and Ben’s wedding day from June earlier this year.

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VENUE + LOCATION

Sara, the Bride: We were married in Pasadena, California, which is a city in Los Angeles county. I’m from the Pasadena area, and although I moved to New York City seven years ago, I still feel very connected to Southern California. My family and many of my dear friends still live there.

Ben is from the Bronx, and likewise, feels very connected to his city, NYC.  Since we both live in NYC, and our lives are anchored there now, I really wanted a wedding that would change the centre of gravity a little. California is such a huge part of who I am, and therefore it felt like an authentic place to officially declare our love. In addition, I wanted my family to feel connected and involved. The fact that I live in NYC often means they can’t be involved in the details of my life, and I wanted to change that.

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