Smashing the Glass | Jewish Wedding Blog

Inspired Jewish Weddings

“My best Jewish wedding photo” by Shlomi Amiga

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A weekly series where  I ask some of the world’s best wedding photographers to pick out their favourite shot from their Jewish wedding portfolio. This week it’s the turn of  Shlomi Amiga.

Shlomi-Amiga

‘Togetherness’ by Shlomi Amiga

This photograph was taken during one of the craziest celebrations of love I was honoured to document. As I was walking (more like dancing) around the guests, I noticed this group of friends circling the bride and groom in the middle of the dance floor. Before jumping right into the action, I snapped a few shots of this interlocking of love. One of the things I love the most about Jewish weddings is the sense of togetherness, and this moment describes it perfectly.  I love turning away from the obvious shot to look for the hidden in between moments. This one hit the jackpot for me!”

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Sarah & Dan | Rustic Jewish wedding held at their own farmhouse in Connecticut, USA

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Sarah and Dan purchased a Connecticut farmhouse during their engagement — their first home together — with the dream of getting married on the property. They made it happen with their wonderfully intimate orthodox Jewish wedding on December 6th 2015, the first night of Chanuakah! Sixty of their closest friends and family joined them to celebrate the happiest days of their lives. I certainly can’t think of a better way to  commemorate owning your first joint home!

This informal yet elegant affair just goes to show that you don’t necessarily have to incorporate a rainbow of colour or an abundance of details to have the wedding of your dreams. Mazal Tov Sarah and Dan!

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Choosing to get married in our new home

Sarah, the Bride: After having both lived in studio apartments in New York City our dream was to live on a quiet retreat within arms reach to the city. We found a farmhouse dating back to 1790  in Connecticut, that we purchased during our engagement ,with the dream of being married on the property.

Farmhouse Rustic Jewish wedding

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A Stephanie Allin bride in a blue and white wedding dress for an English country garden Jewish wedding at Adwell House, Oxfordshire

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Girl crush, girl crush!  Oh my goodness,  today’s bride, Claudia is utterly gorgeous, and what amazing fashion choices she made — an astonishing  Stephanie Allin wedding gown  adorned with blue flowers, followed by  a party dress to dance the night away in, not to mention some spectacular jewellery. She made a speech too (a smashing-the-glass-ceiling bride if ever there was one!) and  I could literally write pages about Claudia’s creative talents alone… She’s definitely one clever and very accomplished woman.

But full credit to her dashing groom, Edward, too… Claudia was working as a doctor in Africa for much of their engagement so Edward spent many a weekend wedding planning and venue-hunting with Claudia’s mum. Hat’s off, Edward!

Details-wise, I can’t kick off with anything but that glorious  chuppah… The groom’s  father cut branches off a tree in his Norfolk garden where the couple  got engaged and together with Edward built the chuppah in his  back garden. The delightful  Liz from  Blue Sky Flowers  worked her magic on the chuppah structure with the most sensational blooms, and for the canopy, one of Claudia’s  friends assisted all the  hens in decorating fabric ‘Stars of David’ on the  hen weekend. The stars were then  sewn on  to a simple white tablecloth and it  felt  like the most wonderfully personalised starry sky.

What’s more the couple are  now repurposing the chuppah poles as a gazebo in their  garden and growing flowers up it in time for summer. Perfection!

What makes this wedding all the more special is that both families had known each other long before Claudia and Edward had ever got together. Oh, and as an aside, Claudia has  a twin brother and identical twin sisters — how extraordinary  is that?!) Claudia told me.

During the ceremony our Rabbi asked us to turn around to look at all our family and friends. It was overwhelming…  To have so many people you love all there for you. Our families have been friends for 40 years and lots of people commented that they’ve never been to a wedding before where they love all the people under the chuppah – we are incredibly lucky and were completely surrounded by love all day.

There are  lots more treats, surprises, advice, tips and just a wonderful account of a glorious  day  so if you can get five minutes with a cuppa to sit down and read Claudia’s wonderful words,  as well as look at the stunning photography from  Ria Mishaal,  I promise you will get so much out of  this  wedding story.

With thanks to the lovely Alex from  The Bijou Bride for submitting this very original Jewish  wedding (and although heavily pregnant at the time, spot how ‘on theme’ Alex  was in her beautiful blue and white ‘ceramics pattern’ maternity dress… I love you girl!)

Speaking of which, you’ll see Alex holding an umbrella over Claudia in one or two  of the images. Claudia  quite rightly says, “don’t stress about the weather – it poured with rain all day for us but we had so much fun no-one even noticed and if you’ve surrounded yourself with the right professionals they’ll make the reorganisation needed completely seamless. We walked around the grounds having our picture taken through the rain and you’d never know from the pictures!”

Spot on, Claudia… SPOT ON! Enjoy every last detail of this very special Jewish  wedding.

Stephanie Allin bride for an English country garden Jewish weddingStephanie Allin bride for an English country garden Jewish wedding
how we met

Claudia, the Bride:  Our families have been friends forever but somehow Ed and I didn’t meet until a few years ago. We hid our relationship from our mothers for the first few weeks because we thought they’d start planning our wedding after the first date! He took me to the Zetter Townhouse for cocktails, and we ended up in the games room playing Jenga until they closed. When Edward  walked me home, we narrowly missed my brother who I lived with at the time who got home minutes later. He took me for a picnic two days later and cooked me dinner after a set of night shifts later that week and the rest was history!

I’m a doctor and had always planned to work abroad for a year and Ed was unwavering in his support for me doing this even though he couldn’t come with. He proposed in our favourite place in Norfolk just days before I left the country to work in Zanzibar. He didn’t realise he’d signed himself up to months of Sunday lunches with my mum planning and Saturday expeditions to wedding venues!

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“My best Jewish wedding photo” by Chris Giles Photography

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A weekly series where  I ask some of the world’s best wedding photographers to pick out their favourite shot from their Jewish wedding portfolio. This week it’s the turn of  Chris Giles  from  Chris Giles Photography.

Chris-Giles

‘Lost in a Moment’ by Chris Giles  Photography

It’s difficult to pick my favourite photo, but here it is. Imperfect in places, but an image I love because Shoshana is completely lost in a moment where unusually all eyes were not on them. In fact, these sorts of shots win out most of the time.

Jewish weddings are such that couples are rarely left alone to themselves. I’ve lots of hero dance floor shots and beautiful ceremony ones but the pure emotion and raw love is what I aim for, moments in isolation are a beautiful thing for me.’.”

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Friday Night Recipes #2 – Spaghetti Bolognese

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There’s Spaghetti Bolognese and then there’s Spaghetti Bolognese… (or Spaghetti Shabbatgnese!)

Friday night dinner doesn’t always have to be roast chicken and I guarantee that your nearest and dearest will go crazy for  this mind-blowing variant  of the recipe by our resident chef,  Mark Frankel.

Spaghetti Bolognese is a dish that  normally takes a huge amount  of love and time, and whilst this one is full to bursting with amour, it takes well under an hour to prepare and make  the entire dish (more time for wedding planning then — yay!).

This is the second in our monthly series  of Frankel-y brilliant Friday night recipes. If you missed Mark’s  first one, it’s right here.

Spaghetti Bolognese

By Mark Frankel

Three. Let’s give you three guesses.

Interested?

Before we start, I must say that it is great to see your culinary appetite whet after surviving my first recipe. There was a noticeable increase in poultry sales here in North West London, which I’m assuming had something to do with me giving away my deepest, tastiest secrets last month…

So, please do take your first guess to which question I am faced with the most. How do I keep my devilishly charming young looks, I hear you say. Ah yes, besides that one. All joking aside, the question of all questions is actually: “What is your most favourite dish?”

Less is more sometimes, and the sweet simple things in life are the real extraordinary pleasures. Therefore, my answer comes easily to this question: Spaghetti alla Bolognese. A hearty, wholesome bowl of steaming pasta covered in generous lashings of deliciously meaty sauce. It’s a fantastic family pleaser and magnificently ticks all the boxes in the comfort food criteria. For the geeks among us, the first documented recipe for this meat based sauce dates all the way back to 1891. Impressively tasty, right?

There are so many variations of this dish worldwide, that it truly boggles the mind. Can you really improve a recipe, which boasts a 125 old food lifespan having rubbed forks and spoons with various meats along the plates from veal to pork, and now the 21st century’s newest fad ‘Quorn’. My amazing grandma, G-d bless her soul, used to prepare her version with carrots and red peppers for a subtly sweet flavour. Others recommend using tomato pureà©, a pinch of nutmeg, a dash of wine & even milk for the non-kosher recipes or even turmeric as part of their take on the world’s best ‘spag bol’. Did you know that in Italy this dish is never served with spaghetti due to its smooth surface, which cannot easily absorb the meaty sauce. The true Italian way is to serve it with tagliatelle, pappardelle or fettuccine, which have a wider more coarse surface to taste every last ingredient in your secret bolognese sauce.

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