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An Elegant Jew-ish Winter Wedding at Bendooley Estate, New South Wales, Australia

25/08/2017 by Karen Cinnamon

At Smashing The Glass, we love nothing more than taking you around the world, to celebrate the very best of Jewish and Jew-ish weddings, and today’s winter-elegance-themed beauty comes to you all the way from apparently not-so-sunny Australia.

Stacey and Michael met at another wedding, and the rest is history – the power of love, guys! They planned their entire Jew-ish winter wedding themselves, with countless DIY projects, and the constant involvement and presence of friends and family.

As a result, everything about the day perfectly represented the couple, from the eclectic bottles they had collected, to their personalized origami fortune tellers; from bridesmaids in Stacey’s favorite shade of blue to the couple running through an AFL banner to start the hora.

If it looks like beautiful bride Stacey’s dress was made just for her, it’s because it was. Her glamorous Erin Clare gown came with personal attention from the designer herself, and a bespoke matching veil – and I think we can all agree that Stacey looked an absolute vision in both.

All of the heartfelt moments and details were captured by photographer, Milton Gan, and Stacey’s writeup below gives a fabulous insight into the divine day in all its glory. Over to Stacey!

How we met

Stacey, the bride: We met at a wedding in Melbourne. An old school friend of mine was marrying Michael’s cousin. Michael’s sister had planned to set him up with another old school friend at the wedding, but when she introduced them the match was not meant to be, and Michael and I ended up chatting for the most of the night.

At the very end of the wedding, I saw Michael striding over to me out of the corner of my eye, and I was overcome with butterflies. He asked for my number and a date once we were both back in Sydney and the rest, as they say, is history.

Two extraordinary brides for a sumptuous bohemian Jew-ish Wedding at Broger’s End Kangaroo Valley, Australia

10/05/2016 by Karen

Today’s wedding reaches new heights on the wedding spectrum and I am entirely and whole-heartedly in love with every little bit of it. The attention to detail and the amount of creativity is phenomenal. I hardly know what to talk about first because it’s such a total feast for the eyes, but what I love the most is that Lara and Cass’s union remains as the focal point throughout.

On the other side of the lens for a change, Lara is one of the world’s most renowned creative wedding photographers, and indeed I have featured her work on Smashing The Glass several times. She’s a girl after my own heart wearing not one, not two, but THREE wedding gowns, accessorised by a simply astonishing bouquet by Mikarla Bauer + Jardine Botanics — truly one of the best I’ve ever seen.

So much originality permeates Lara and Cass’s day from choosing to get ready and walk down the aisle together, to all sorts of gorgeous DIY like a ‘Guess Who’ game handmade by Cass using their family members, to an idea that I’ve never seen before: a flower crown station for the guests to accessorise with before the ceremony so that when the couple walked down the aisle they saw all their guests with flowers in their hair. Love love LOVE!

Sheree from She Designs Events blended their two very different loves into one creative theme which works brilliantly even though it combines everything from Country & Western to Vintage Romance! I love the idea of not compromising to one theme but rather merging both your loves.

Our two brides come from different religious backgrounds and chose to incorporate Lara’s Jewish culture with some crazy Jewish Dancing that really set the tone for the evening. Lara said:

We had the Jewish dancing before entering the reception and it really loosened everyone up! We were being thrown up and down on chairs and tossed in the air and running around in circles and forming conga lines around the fire pit! It was a definite highlight.”

And there are so many… You truly have to savour every one of Dan O’Day‘s astonishing images to take it all in. Oh, and there is a wonderful film by Light Noise Films at the end which you just must watch. What a total treat!

Planning the wedding ourselves

Lara: I think I completely underestimated how time consuming planning an entire wedding from start to finish can be, never mind running a business at the same time.

Cass was great as she really let me take full control of everything but was always there when I needed her to bounce ideas with and make final decisions or to get things done.

We had spread sheets and documentation for everything — its really quite overwhelming how many things / vendors there are to keep track of and all the little details to organise — but well worth all the effort in the end.

A Rue de Seine bride for a Jewish Wedding under the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Simmer on the Bay, Dawes Point, Australia

20/10/2015 by Karen

Nikki and Jem are just the coolest couple and their big day from the world-famous Sydney Harbour Bridge embraces the most beautiful Jewish wedding traditions whilst maintaining a totally free-spirited, energetic and fun vibe. It’s been sensationally captured by Australian photographer Dan O’Day whose work I adore — I could have filled this feature with every image he sent me and you’ll probably be able to tell I struggled to stop myself from doing just that!

I love pretty much everything about Nikki and Jem’s Jewish wedding but one of my favourite details (that I’ve never seen done before) is the couple choosing to shelve the idea of traditional favours, and instead place custom ribbons with their monogram and date on them at everyone’s place setting. They then invited guests to create their own bouquets from the gorgeous wild flowers that were in front of them, tie them together with the ribbons and take them home. Such a beautiful and thoughtful idea.

Nikki also bought her bride posse (note, Nikki doesn’t call them bridesmaids!) a pair of Converse each, and left them on their seats with “dancing shoes” tags.

Fashion stylist Nikki looks utterly gorgeous in her Rue de Seine gown — the New Zealand designers make the most perfect boho bridal romantic dresses combining rich beading, intricate detailing and sheer draping, and they just seem to design for the coolest, most stylish brides. If you’re looking for a more modest dress they cater for this brilliantly with many of their designs incorporating high necks and long sleeves.

Right, shall we dive into this super cool wedding then? Trust me, you’re going to love it…

how we met

Nikki, the Bride: We met in 2009 through a mutual friend who was trying to help Jem and his buddy get a jeans label off the ground. Our mutual friend suggested that I be their first model (because I was the only person small enough to fit in their teeny tiny samples!) I was interning at Cosmopolitan magazine at the time looking to get a career in fashion so it was a common interest for us both I guess. Jem now works in finance but I’m still in fashion. I was not born Jewish, and as our friendship grew, so did my love for Judaism. Once he found out I was looking into converting he also saw it as an opportunity for us to start dating, and the rest is history.
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Natalie & Nicole | uber-creative rustic ‘Barn Eccentric’ Lesbian Jewish Wedding at Sydney Polo Club, Australia

29/07/2014 by Karen

You know when a couple have really put their blood, sweat and tears (of joy obviously!) into their big day because it shows. It shows in the small details, it shows in the smiles of rapture on their faces and it shows in their guests faces. It also shines through in the photography.

Nicole and Natalie run a creative agency and are two craft-istas so they unashamedly went to town on getting everything just right with their own creative, personalised twist. and I’m not even sure I know where to begin with their big day. Do I start with the flash mob, old lady tea ceremony, and the double-smashing of the glass with a cowboy boot on one foot, and stiletto on another?

Or perhaps I’ll begin with the table centrepieces with clusters of ‘Beautiful Random’,or the brides’ sassy, ethereal style (I need their dresses in my life!). Actually I might just kick off with the tea ceremony with the rickshaws, lawn games, and breast cupcakes… and the oh-so-simple but effective paper doll-chain aisle runners… and the fans for guests with ‘We’re Your Biggest Fans’ tags, and tambourines with ‘Shake What Your Mumma Gave You’ tags!

Actually I’m just going to let you experience this heart-warming, life-affirming, radiant big day for yourselves. Enjoy their beautifully written report (watch out for their top advice at the end), and delve into Lara Hotz‘s images, and a wedding film by Light Noise Films
creative rustic barn Wedding at Sydney Polo Club Australia_0019 breast cupcakes

Gena & Tony | Extraordinarily imaginative ‘color explosion’ Jewish wedding at the Sydney Polo Club, NSW, Australia

10/07/2014 by Karen

Epic.

Get your sunglasses ready because todays wedding is a massive rainbow-hued color fest. Gena and her husband Tony had one of those weddings where there are so many details I love I hardly even know where to start.

There’s Gena’s pom pom crown, her crochet dress and her supersize bouquet filled with flowers of every possible hue, glitter, ribbons, and pom poms. Then we’ve got bridesmaids dressed in orange carrying big foil heart shaped balloons with tissue paper tassels instead of bouquets. There’s a super cute dog taking centre stage during the ceremony. And 1200 odd colored ribbons used to decorate the barn and chairs. The handmade resin crayons for buttonholes (a reference to the green crayon hair clip that Gena wore in her hair the night Tony first noticed her) are so cute!). And then there’s the way that Tony looks at Gena…

So have you got your sunglasses ready? Well get your Pinterest boards primed too because you are most certainly going to need them! All of these delectable images were taken by the rather brilliant Lara Hotz. (Oh and check out the mighty cute wedding film at the end of the post by The White Tree too!).

A RUSTIC VENUE
Our wedding was on a farm at the Sydney Polo Club, about an hour away from where we live. We wanted to have something a bit out of the ordinary (this can be hard with a big Jewish wedding but we knew we didn’t want a hotel reception room) and not expect people to have to travel too far. We ended up having the chuppah and dance floor inside the barn and connected a marquee to the side where the guests were seated. The barn doors slid open to connect the two spaces.