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Preparation – Jewish Wedding Traditions Explained #1

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Jewish Wedding Traditions
All imagery by Blake Ezra Photography. This is part 1 of the 9-part Jewish Wedding Traditions Explained series.

Over the course of the next nine weeks, Blake Ezra, one of our amazing Smashing Suppliers, will be examining the Jewish wedding traditions from morning to evening, explaining the key rituals that make Jewish (and Jew-ish) weddings so special as well as suggesting ways to personalise these traditions, and how to make them fit your individual requirements.

This will be a really useful series whether you’re planning a super-traditional wedding, an alternative or interfaith Jewish ‘I Do’, or you just want ideas for modernising the traditions to make them personal to you.

This week it’s all about preparation…

Jewish Wedding Traditions
Jewish Wedding Traditions

MORNING PREPARATION

In many ways, Jewish couples prepare for their wedding ceremony and celebrations just like anybody else. The morning could include getting made over, having a spot of breakfast with family and friends, or heading to the park for some fresh air before the craziness begins. More often than not, the preparation in many Jewish homes tends to involve platters of bagels, with the occasional power ballad being played on the stereo.

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Tali & Dan | ‘Gin in teacups’ 1920’s Jewish Wedding at Heatherden Hall, Pinewood Studios, Buckinghamshire, UK

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1920s-wedding
Blake Ezra, one of our  Smashing Suppliers,  always captures bucket loads of love and emotion in his wonderful  photography, and this is most definitely true of Tali  and Dan’s  big day which I’m beyond excited  to be featuring on the blog  today.

This  stylish  pair were married at Heatherden Hall at the legendary  Pinewood Studios, just outside London, and this has  got to be one of the most iconic  wedding venues  to have yet graced the pages of STG. Pinewood has been home  to many productions over the years from huge blockbuster films to television shows, commercials and pop promos but  is most famous  as the home of the Carry On, Superman, James Bond and Harry Potter film series. What a  perfect  venue for film buffs!

Despite the fantastically cool  venue, this wedding is all about the people  —  you can see joy in every singe image, and  Blake Ezra tells me that, “there was a massive emphasis on friends throughout the day with their big crowd of amazing mates getting involved in all aspects of the ceremony, music and general entertainment.”

You can really see the fun factor complete with comedy DJs, barber shop routines, drum circles, dancing, a fire show (and a very moving ceremony) in the wedding film  by the uber-talented Charlotte Armitage right at the end of the post.

Tali’s  bridal style  is to die for…  I am expecting plenty of pinterest  action for her vintage dress  which incidentally  was made entirely out of  sustainable and  ecological fabrics.

And lastly I must mention that Dan, who is a journalist, recorded a message to Tali from Boris Johnson as part of his speech (see 10:38 in the film at the bottom of the post). I’m a big Boris fan  — that’s immense!

So come and have a look at this gorgeous  ‘I Do’ jointly narrated by  the bride and groom.
Jewish Wedding Heatherden Hall, Pinewood Studios Buckinghamshire Jewish Wedding Heatherden Hall, Pinewood Studios Buckinghamshire Jewish Wedding Heatherden Hall, Pinewood Studios Buckinghamshire
VENUE
Tali, the Bride, and Dan, the Groom: Tali and I chose to get married at Pinewood Studios  in Gerard’s Cross. We wanted a ‘London’ wedding so it was accessible for elderly family and all our friends,  and Pinewood had indoor and outdoor space, was very cool, and they allowed  us to do whatever we wanted.

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Chelm & Jake | Uber cool Jewish Wedding at the Doodle Bar + Testbed1, Battersea, London

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cool-london-wedding
I promise that what you’re about to see is truly epic. This folks is how to do a super cool, super fun, superfly wedding.

There are so many things that I love about this W-day that I’d be here until midnight listing them all, but I’ll just mention Los Desterrados playing ‘The Final Countdown‘ in the synagogue; pornstar martinis and chilli martinis as the cocktails of choice in the reception; an after-party stretching until sunrise, a Jenny Packham bride with her Vivienne Westwood groom… and I’ll stop now. You just need to see it.
Chelm and Jake
Chelm and Jake
Chelm and Jake
And as fabulous as this wedding is, some of my favourite elements are the way in which Chelm and Jake personalised their Jewish ceremony — in particular what they did with their Sheva Brachot, and also their spin on the traditional circling of the groom.

They chose the Doodle Bar in Battersea (don’t you think it’s one of the best venue websites you’ve ever seen?) for their reception. It’s housed in an old dairy in Battersea, on the banks of the Thames and the adjoining space, Testbed1, where the party continued, is normally used as an arts venue. It’s an incredible warehouse space that Chelm and Jake and their very creative friends decorated with real pizazz and flair. I’ll let Jake continue with all the details – yes it’s our cooler-than-a polar-bear’s-toenails  groom reporting the wedding today! He’s a real character – we need more groom wedding reports!

The photography is phenomenal and it’s by our newest Smashing Supplier and STG favourite, Blake Ezra Photography.

Chelm and Jake
Chelm and Jake Chelm and Jake Chelm and Jake Chelm and Jake Chelm and Jake Chelm and Jake
VENUE

Jake, the groom: Friends of ours own Doodle Bar in Battersea and I’d visited the place several months previously and thought it was very cool – a bit of East London in Battersea! I asked my friend if there was any chance that it would make a workable wedding venue, and to my delight, he said yes – they’d already done a lot of parties there.

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Tali & Mo’s Jewish wedding | Art Deco afternoon tea at The Savoy and an evening soirée in Soho, London

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afternoon-tea-wedding
Today’s wedding looks like such a fun filled affair – it’s a twist on the traditional hotel wedding: yes, Tali and Mo chose to have the first part of their wedding at The Savoy, but *no*, there wasn’t a sit-down 3 course dinner, or show band in sight.

Instead (partly due to Tali’s pastry chef background) they went for a splendid afternoon tea theme with everything from flowers arranged on cake stands (genius!) to beautiful home made jam favours, to a splendid art deco theme, sprinkled with some lovely DIY details.

Then, to top it off, for the second part of their wedding, they held an  evening soiree at  Kettner’s  in nearby Soho, complete with props and a rocking dance floor, and celebrated their big day with a larger circle of friends.

So let’s partake in some champagne and a macaron or two and be serenaded to The Savoy followed by a night in Soho. What more could you ask for?  Perhaps for the imagery to be by our very own  Wedding Smasher,  Blake Ezra? Oh yes, I’ve got that for you too… we’re in for a treat!
Afternoon Tea Jewish Wedding 98
TWO LONDON VENUES
Tali, the Bride: Our choice of venue came down to a few requirements. First of all we wanted to get married in London. It’s where we met, and we are both great lovers of this beautiful city. We wanted to serve afternoon tea at our reception, and as I am a pastry chef it had to be good so we went with the only London hotel that offered in-house milchik kosher catering — The Savoy. Oh what a hardship! Luckily for us around half of the hotel is Art Deco and as we are massive fans of the Art Deco period it was a no-brainer.

We chose to split the day between two venues, we had the chuppah and afternoon tea at The Savoy, and we then moved on to an evening soiree at Kettner’s in nearby Soho. This allowed us to share our big day with a larger circle of friends.
Savoy Jewish Wedding

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Rachel & Emile | Moroccan Themed Jewish Engagement Party in London

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Moroccan Theme Engagement Party
I normally only like to focus on weddings here on Smashing The Glass, hence the name of the blog, but this Moroccan themed engagement party and Blake Ezra‘s amazingly energetic photos from the occasion swayed me into sharing it with you.

From the spirited dancing to the authentic Moroccan decor to the colourful traditional henna ceremony there’s lots of lovely personality, tradition and detail to focus on at this engagement party extraordinaire.
MORROCAN_ENGAGEMENT_3
Rachel, a teacher from Melbourne, and Emile, an online marketer, met two years ago when Rachel moved into a flatshare in Hendon when she had just arrived in London. The room that she had moved into was actually Emile’s old one. After two days of being in the new apartment her housemates threw a party and at that party she met Emile although they didn’t actually start dating till about 5 months later.

The couple got engaged in December 2012 and threw their (what can only be described as ‘mini-wedding’) Moroccan engagement and henna party in May of this year. I’ll hand you over to Rachel now for all the juicy details but before I do I’ll just give you a little background as to what a ‘henna’ is.

JEWISH HENNA

Image: Henna By Sienna

WHAT IS A HENNA?
The henna ceremony is a cultural and spiritual celebration practised mainly amongst Sephardi Jews that is supped to bring good luck to the engaged couple. It involves crushing the leaves of the henna plant into a powder, which, when mixed with water, becomes a dough that stains the skin orange. The henna is arranged in intricate lacey or floral patterns on the hands or feet, and symbolises good health, fertility, wisdom, protection or spiritual enlightenment.

Rachel: I’m an Australian from Melbourne and have been living in the UK for two and a half years now. Emile is British but his dad is Moroccan Israeli so that’s where the Henna ceremony/ party would definitely have had to come in either way. We had to make a decision on which country to have the wedding in and we  decided to do it in Australia in March 2014. So having a big engagement party in London incorporating a henna ceremony made perfect sense as we could have all our British and  international guests who may very well not be able to get to Australia for the wedding, celebrate with us at a big fun affair too.

INTERNATIONAL GUESTS
Emile’s dad had over 20 of his relatives fly in from Israel for the week and I had my parents come in from Australia. Emile and I both had family from Canada and New York celebrate with us too and we couldn’t have been more thrilled to have such an international array of family and friends have a ball with us at our London engagement party.

I have to admit it felt like a mini wedding – it was the ‘London leg’ as it were. We loved that everyone could feel part of a big celebration no matter what country they were in.

INVITATIONS
With so many foreign guests to invite we thought that using Paperless Post for our invitations would be a good idea. It’s a great service as you can customise the invitation however you want and then you can really stay on top of things with all the RSVPs and messages. We didn’t need  to worry about a designer, printing, postage or addresses or RSVPs getting lost in the mail. We loved it!
Moroccan Theme Engagement Party Moroccan Theme Engagement Party
VENUE
We wanted to hold the party somewhere local that would be easy to get to and big enough to house our 200+ guests. Kinloss Hall was a blank canvas and we loved the fact that we could dress up the room to the degree that we needed to.
DECOR
Being an authentic Moroccan, Emile’s dad had a vision of how he wanted the room to be  set out. He arranged palm trees and lanterns and pouffes and all kinds of fabulous Moroccan props. We didn’t have to hire anything – all the stuff is within Emile’s family – so it was all totally authentic. We weren’t  pretending to do a Moroccan party. It was a genuine Moroccan party!

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