Shana Tova to all of you! I wanted to take this opportunity to wish you a happy, prosperous year ahead full of joy, love and only good times.
With Rosh Hashana fast approaching I wanted to repost this totally exquisite wedding. It has so many beautiful details and the theme of Rosh Hashana is wonderfully integrated into the menu featuring the holiday symbols of pomegranates, figs and apples. The vibrant colour palette of red, orange and green, the jar of honey favours, and the divine-sounding pomegranate mojito reception cocktails all add up to a very well thought-through theme.
There were lots of personal touches and a combination of Adi and Amir’s old and new memories, meticulously organised by their wedding planner, Osnat Eldar. She asked Adi’s close family to collect photos from their own wedding days in order to create an ‘all-generations’ photo wall. I love that idea! So simple and such a lovely way of really making the wedding a family occasion and also remembering those that are no longer with us.
Thank you to Adi and Amir for sharing their very special Israeli day with us, and to Osnat Eldar, their talented wedding planner who alerted me to their wedding. Photography today is by Lihee Avidan.
VENUE + THEME
Adi, the Bride: we decided to get married in Sadot Beit Yehoshua, as we loved its rural feel, and it’s location. It has a calm and relaxing atmosphere which reflects us as a couple, and it’s in the centre of Israel right between Tel Aviv and Haifa.
As the wedding fell just before Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, we combined the holiday spirit with colours from the late-summer / autumn season. Paul Assenheim, our wonderful caterer prepared a menu based on Rosh Hashana featuring fig and pomegranate salads, fillet mignon in apple chutney, and as a final surprise, caramelised apples on sticks! We also had the most delicious pomegranate mojitos as our welcome cocktail, and used lots of real apples, grapes and pomegranates to decorate the whole venue.
INVITATIONS + WEDDING BRANDING
Our “save the date”, invitations, and thank you cards were designed in a retro style of an old Israeli Rosh Hashana greeting card. Amir’s favourite band is the Beatles, so we added lines from their love songs on our invitation and thank you card. So on the invitation it said “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make”, and on the thank you card: “Love is old, love is new, love is all, love is you”.
We used the logo to add personal touches everywhere and brand almost everything in sight! Signs for directions, ‘Just Married’ picture frames, name cards, and even bathroom stickers
CEREMONY
Amir walked in to the song Erev Shel Yom Bahir (evening of a bright day) and I walked to the sounds of the Pachelbel Canon. Our three grandmothers had fabric bags full of petals and scattered them towards me as I came down the aisle. It was very special and really symbolic to have just the three of them doing that.
Under the chuppah with us were our beloved family ie. both sets of parents and all our siblings. Our rabbi, Rabbi Israel Meir Lao, was very important to my father as he was his teacher in school and during the ceremony he spoke beautifully about how in September (the month we got married in, and also the beginning of the school year) some 50 years ago, he met my father. Over the years our rabbi has progressively met all my family and his officiating made the ceremony extremely personal and moving for us all.
FLORALS + DECOR
We used the flower designer, Chris Weys and in my opinion, he is the best in Israel! He decorated our venue with the Rosh Hashana theme colours of the season and also used real apples, grapes and pomegranates. Everywhere we looked was a joy to behold.
photo wall
We also asked married members of our families to send us their wedding photos (going back to grandparents) and we made a lovely display of it at the reception. Everybody loved it!
honey FAVOURS
In keeping with the Rosh Hashana theme we gave a present to each guest at the end of the night of a small box with a honey jar and assembling wooden stick with our logo on it.
t shirts with personalised quotes
For the men in our families I found quotes from an Israeli wedding cult movie (Colombian wedding) and for the dance part of the evening each one of them received a personal t-shirt with a quote suited to each of them.
MUSIC
We had an amazing dance party atmosphere with our excellent DJ, Idan Gavriel from Zebra music, and a live show of a great cover band The Blues Messengers whom Amir and I both love very much. Actually the night Amir proposed we were at their concert!
During the dancing part of the evening we also gave out wedding-branded flip flops which our guests really appreciated!
PHOTOGRAPHER
It was very important to us to have a photographer that caught every moment but who was also an artist who know how to take photos naturally and in that we found Lihee Avidan who ticked everyone of our boxes.
WORKING WITH OSNAT, OUR WEDDING PLANNER
I’d known Osnat’s wonderfully creative work for years as she planned the weddings of my two older brothers as well as other family events. So once Amir and I had cooled down from the proposal (the next day to be exact!) I called Osnat straight away.
Amir proposed at the end of April, and we knew we wanted to get married before the end of the summer. Four to five months to plan a wedding is not a huge amount of time but with Osnat we didn’t have to worry about our tight timescale. She arranged the meetings with all the suppliers and venues, and took to heart all of our ideas and brought them to life in a very imaginative way. Of course we had our differences, but that is part of the organisational process and Osnat knows how to listen and to correct things when needed.
The day itself was quite simply the wedding of my dreams. Everything was right on time and her planning took care of every small detail. She was a total star – I highly recommend her!
ADI + AMIR’S LITTLE WHITE BOOK
Venue — Sadot
Wedding Planner — Osnat Eldar
Catering — Paul Assenheim
Flowers & Decor — Chris Weys
Photography — Lihee Avidan
Bride’s dress — Lihi Hod
Hair — Karmit Barashi Reznik
Make up — Karin Cohen
DJ — Idan Gavriel
Band — The Blues Messengers
