Clare will be marrying Chris on 5th May 2018 at Laura Ashley The Manor in Elstree, UK.
THREE FACTS: (1) Clare is not Jewish but discovered Smashing The Glass via her Jewish sister-in-law and during her wedding planning journey it has (in her own words!) became her favorite and most useful wedding blog (2) She finds STG refreshing in a sea of wedding blogs as she loves reading stories of couples for whom the ceremony itself is as pivotal as all the other details. (3) Due to falling in love with so many amazing Jewish weddings through the blog, and then booking a wedding consultancy session with STG founder, Karen, it confirmed to her that there were a number of Jewish elements she was going to bring into her wedding that symbolise a lot of things that are very important to her and her fiancà© in their future marriage – she will be having a ‘Jewish-inspired’ wedding!
Losing my father and my aunt
Planning a wedding when your father is terminally ill is never going to be easy and when in July the news hit that my aunt had stage three cancer, the future looked even more bleak. Sadly they have both passed away since my last post, going just six days apart from one another. I have felt broken.
For my main wedding planning partner in crime (my mum) and I, there have been funeral plans to make rather than wedding. But thinking of this upcoming celebration has been the chance to share times of joy rather than sadness and has definitely kept us going!
Celebration of friendship
Weddings are a time for family, and the thought of neither of them being there was never much fun. Fortunately I’ve had some time to prepare for the lack of a ‘father of the bride’ and some wonderful friends will be fulfilling the roles of walking me down the aisle and giving a speech… Let’s just hope they don’t go too cringey in a bid to be an embarrassing ‘dad’!
Friendship is something that I have come to truly value since planning my wedding amidst this trauma. Our wedding will be a true celebration of friendship, and for me, my friends have and continue to fulfil a vital role in my life that can’t always be met by family relations.
So what better thing to write about than all the wonderful things we have been doing as part of the planning process, and the different ways in which they will be involved in the build up to the big day, never mind on the day itself!
