Smashing the Glass | Jewish Wedding Blog

Inspired Jewish Weddings

Claudia & Felix | uber-stylish and creative urban Jewish wedding with a rustic twist, Studio 450, New York City

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The Manhattan wedding of Claudia and Felix, two professional ballet dancers, is the perfect way to ease you into your Monday. It’s bursting with style, creativity, fashionable touches, and super original ideas.

They picked a clean, crisp, white canvas NYC loft space, and warmed it up with a farmhouse, rustic feel. As Claudia herself puts it, they wanted to match up their city slicker selves with their dream of a country wedding, and it works brilliantly. They also incorporated lots of meaningful and amusing Jewish, American, and Dutch traditions (Felix hails from The Netherlands) so that their guests had lots of little surprises throughout the day. One of my favourite idea of theirs are the kippot (skullcaps) supplied for every guest with “my mother was right” inscribed on the inside. You get why I’m loving this wedding!

Claudia and Felix also managed to create the most original I’m-not-sure-I’ll-ever-see-anything-like-that-ever-again escort cards / favours — but I’ll let Claudia surprise you with those.

Finally I love Claudia’s Vera Wang dress and Valentino heels more than dark chocolate. And I like dark chocolate A LOT.

The sublime images come from the fabulous STAK Photography who captured every last detail beautifully.

Creative urban loft Jewish wedding with a rustic twist, at Studio 450, New York CityCreative urban loft Jewish wedding with a rustic twist, at Studio 450, New York City
AN URBAN LOFT VENUE
Claudia, the Bride: Our wedding was at a beautiful loft called Studio 450 in midtown Manhattan. The venue has amazing 360 degree views of the city but especially incredible views of the Hudson River. The space itself is industrial yet very clean and entirely white. It also had a lovely upstairs space and some terrace space.

Our initial idea was to get married upstate at a big old house in Rye, NY but as Felix and I are both urbanites at heart and with many out of town guests it seemed impractical. When we came upon Studio 450 we knew it was the perfect space to marry our city slicker selves with our dream of a country wedding.

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Carmel & Edo | Forest theme rustic Jewish wedding at Baya’ar Hadera, Israel

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Carmel and Edo certainly know how to throw a party. And throw a party they did — more specifically a big day that embraced their American and Israeli backgrounds, with lots of Jewish traditions modernised  by the couple in a fun,  original  way.

Personally I have a lot of love for this wedding. Carmel’s exquisite Mira Zwillinger wedding gown?  I  adore  it.  The incredible song that Carmel walked down the aisle to?  I love it and cannot actually stop listening to it… Personalised  ‘CARMELychee Martinis’ and ‘MojEDO’  cocktails? Yes, absolutely need those in my life!

And let’s not forget the epic dancing at the end — this hot couple and their  guests had  ALL the moves!

Forest theme rustic Jewish wedding at Baya'ar Hadera, Israel_0040personalised wedding cocktails
AN AMAZING VENUE SURROUNDED BY NATURE
Carmel, the Bride: The venue we decided to have our wedding at was Baya’ar, which translates to “In the Forest”. It was actually the very first and last venue we went to — we both completely fell in love with the place the second we arrived and booked it immediately.

I wanted to be surrounded by nature during my wedding, which is exactly what this beautiful place offers. The grounds are filled with every colour of green imaginable; it really feels like you’re in a forest. This feeling is just the same inside, which is filled from floor to ceiling with glass windows with a view to the same beautiful greenery. The best part about the place is its lighting! It has the most incredible lighting system, which creates an amazing ambiance both during the dinner and especially on the dance floor! On top of everything, the owners of the venue took such great care of us and were there from early in the morning during set up and literally ordered us a cab to go home at 3:00am!

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Top 40 First Dance Songs

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Image: Crystall & Ryan’s first dance at their Jewish / Greek Wedding  by Brookelyn Photography

With  every one of my  Real Jewish Weddings  I ask the  bride or groom,  “what was your first dance song?”. I receive so many fabulous  song choices that I thought it was high  time I collated them into a Top 40 list for your  benefit! So here it is – click on the songs to listen to them and let me know if you have any to add. Click on the playlist to see the full first dance catalogue  in Spotify. The playlist will be constantly updated with new tracks. Enjoy!

Oh, and we  also have  a playlist for songs to walk down the aisle to too.

Happy music selecting!

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Natalya & Alex | Wine-themed ‘vintage glam’ Jewish wedding at Jacuzzi Family Vineyards, Sonoma, California

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Oh my! I have a sneaking suspicion that you are going to fall in love with this morning’s California vineyard wedding. To Natalya and Alex (both originally from Russia), their big day was particularly special to them, as their parents didn’t get a chance to get married in a traditional Jewish ceremony, under a chuppah, in the former Soviet Union.

Natalya is BEAUTIFUL with delicious bridal accessories to match — I mean you just can’t help but gawp at her super sparkly Jimmy Choo shoes and that divine necklace on her bare back.

It’s s perhaps one of the most eloquently executed themed wedding I’ve seen on these pages from the grapevine-themed stationery to the wine bottle cork place cards to the olive oil favours. I also love all the vintage-glam touches, particularly the EPIC portrait shots by  in that super sexy 1962 Buick Electra .

Also, I must add that I love that Natalya’s niece wrote her toast on Jenga pieces, as Natalya and Alex met playing Jenga…

OK enough from me, take it away you gorgeous pair!

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A BEAUTIFUL VINEYARD VENUE
Natalya, the Bride: Our wedding was in Sonoma, CA at Jacuzzi Family Vineyards. We knew we wanted to get married in the wine country. It is a place we love coming to any time of year. We also wanted our guests to have a relaxing weekend with us away from the busy city life. As our wedding was in April, we chose a venue with options for both indoor and outdoor events. The building at Jacuzzi Winery is beautiful from an architectural standpoint, and the property has what seems like a never-ending vineyard in the back.

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Smashing The Glass features in this week’s Jewish Chronicle

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I’m in the diary section of the Jewish Chronicle today – such a sweet piece! Thank you to the lovely folk at The JC for writing about me.

If you’ve found Smashing The Glass via this article well hello there! You can read all about why I started the blog here, and see my own Jewish wedding (at London’s Wallace Collection)  here. In fact, the  heart and soul of SmashingTheGlass.com are the real Jewish weddings  so I think that’s a great place to start.

Click here and you’ll find  all the UK Jewish weddings that I’ve blogged about  with everything from this  outrageously cool London Jewish wedding, to this breathtaking ‘HinJew’ wedding at the Mandarin Oriental where the bride and groom intertwined their Indian and Jewish heritages incredibly beautifully, to this New Years Eve fancy dress wedding held in an Arthouse cinema, to this South London Jewish wedding that was held in a chapel(!),and this Wedstock-themed wedding featuring a bride who made her entire dress out of paper. You can bet your bottom dollar that I’ve blogged about every Jewish wedding  in between too.

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Chelm & Jake’s super cool London Jewish wedding by Blake Ezra Photography

I also regularly post wedding planning articles  and have  blogged  about everything from what are the best chuppah entrance songs, to tips for getting great wedding photography to how to incorporate ‘Jewish’ into a non-Jewish or interfaith wedding, inspiration for chuppah ideas, and lots more.

And if you’re still on the hunt for that perfect photographer, DJ, chazan, or venue, my  Smashing Suppliers section is a great place to start.  It’s my handpicked selection of the most stylish brands and services the wedding industry has to offer, and you’ll not only be able to click through to the suppliers own websites to see what they say about themselves, you’ll be able to see a lot of their work first hand in the real Jewish weddings section and read the opinion of couples that have actually used them.

I love helping my readers plan their weddings but the best part is when couples email me their own photographs after their wedding and tell me that Smashing The Glass helped them have the wedding they truly wanted!

By the way if you’re reading this and you’re already  married, be sure to send me a submission. It’s my readers who ultimately make my blog a must-read and I can’t wait to hear from you!

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