Essense of Australia dress Archives - Smashing the Glass

An Essense of Australia Bride for a Romantic Country House Jewish Wedding at De Vere Latimer Estate, Buckinghamshire, UK

17/02/2020 by Karen Cinnamon

There’s nothing like a beautiful Jewish wedding in the English countryside. And Samantha, who works as a voiceover agent, and Adam, the CFO of a gaming company, could not have picked a more perfect spot for theirs than De Vere Latimer Estate. Nestled in the rolling green hills of the Buckinghamshire countryside, it ticks all the boxes – historic manor house, breathtaking grounds, and that quintessential English countryside feel without requiring London-based guests to travel too far.

And of course the couple’s photographers, Smashing The Glass Recommended Vendor LUZ, recorded the day perfectly, in their trademark artistic, architectural style. We’re obsessed with the way the team captured the blend of traditional and modern that made this day so uniquely wonderful.

There’s so much more we could say, but we’ll let the bride – who looked absolutely stunning in her Essense of Australia gown – fill you in on the rest.

How We Met

Samantha, the bride: We met through mutual friends on a night out in London.

An Essense of Australia Bride for an Interfaith Jewish Wedding at Trinity Buoy Wharf, London, UK

23/12/2019 by Karen Cinnamon

We’ll be taking a little break from posting over the holidays. We’ll still be active over on our Instagram, and inside our Brides Club and Smashing Life memberships, so hopefully see you there! Otherwise we’ll be back here on Friday January 3rd for our very first real Jewish wedding of 2020 (and it’s an epic one). Happy Holidays!

How was your first night of Hannukah last night? We’re so excited for the Festival of Lights and together with all our STG Brides Club and Smashing Life members, we lit our Chanukiahs together inside our Facebook group last night and it was magical!

Not yet a member of Smashing The Glass’ Brides Club? You can join here – we’d love to have you inside our community (and of course also help save your time, your money and your sanity on your way to creating your day your way).

Speaking of Brides Club members, we are totally in love with today’s real Jew-ish wedding of Brides Club member, Bethany, an assistant merchandiser, to Gavin, a project coordinator.

They held their wedding at Trinity Buoy Wharf, a stunning warehouse venue in London, And with the city skyline as the dramatic backdrop to their big day, what a celebration it was!

We love the way the interfaith couple – Gavin is Jewish, while Bethany was brought up Christian – followed their civil ceremony with a personalized religious blessing they crafted alongside their rabbi to reflect their shared values and beliefs. We’re also obsessed with Voyteck’s emotional-packed documentary-style photography, which captures the essence of the day so perfectly.

And with top-notch ‘sharing style’ catering from Smashing The Glass Recommended Vendor Adam Nathan – who the bride praises for going above and beyond in his willingness to run with any idea, no matter how out there (not to mention his delicious food, which guests are still raving about) – served alongside beer and damson gin the couple made themselves (!), we’re experiencing serious FOMO that we didn’t get to attend ourselves. (Also, how perfect is it that Bethany and Gavin named their beer“How Amaze is this Porter” to tie in with their wedding hashtag, #howamazewedding?)

Now over to the bride, who looked beautiful in Essense of Australia…

A London Wedding

Bethany, the bride: We got married at Trinity Buoy Wharf. It was a long search for a venue as we were determined to not have a wedding/party in a hotel ballroom and additionally we wanted a venue that none of our friends had been to! We did a lot of searching for venues, but it was all worth the wait! We also chose this venue as we knew that if we were going to get married in London then we actually wanted to be able to see London (Bethany grew up in the Suffolk and Shropshire countrysides, so that was an option too!).

We didn’t want all of our guests who were coming from across the world to come to our wedding and then be in a room which could have been anywhere. So we found a lighthouse on the Thames, opposite the O2 with the city in the background, it was perfect!

An Essense of Australia Bride for a Sunset Jewish Wedding at Cochav Hayam in Caesarea, Israel

29/11/2019 by Karen Cinnamon

Okay, we just can’t even with that sunset chuppah. Truly the stuff Jewish wedding dreams are made of. But would you believe it if we told you that wasn’t even the most remarkable thing about the incredible wedding of STG Brides Club member (and blogging bride) Lindsay, an insight manager at a media agency, to groom Dan, an account manager working in corporate events?

So first of all, we’re OBSESSED with Lindsay and Dan’s table plan: they got a polaroid of every guest, then wrote a personal note on the back. These were all laid out for guests to collect as they came in and find their table numbers. Genius!

We’re also super inspired that these two worked with non-profit Israel Blooms, an organization that will collect flowers leftover at the end of the wedding and repurpose them into small arrangements that they distribute in hospitals and old age homes. What a meaningful (and easy) way to spread the joy of your big day!

The couple’s photos from Idan Canfi and video from Ruslan Shane are simply sensational, and we love that Lindsay and Dan opted to have a separate couple’s photoshoot a couple of days after the wedding – this allowed them to get some dreamy portraits without them having to take time out of the wedding for photos. Such a smart idea!

Oh, and did we mention that Lindsay and Dan are working with the incredible Smashing The Glass Recommended Vendor Abby Taubman of Colletts Travel to plan their honeymoon to Australia and Thailand next year?

Now over to the bride, who looked lovely in her Essense of Australia dress…

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How we met

Lindsay, the bride: We met through my cousin’s wife. She was an old school friend of Dan’s and decided that we would be a great match – and she was right!

An Essense of Australia Bride for a Jew-ish Wedding at Poundon House, near Bicester, Buckinghamshire, UK

14/12/2018 by Karen Cinnamon

One of the things we most love here at Smashing the Glass is hearing how we’ve helped couples plan the Jew-ish wedding of their dreams. So when lovely bride Philippa (who just happens to be a member of Smashing The Glass’s Brides Club) told us she found STG while looking for interfaith wedding inspo, it melted Team STG’s collective heart — and even more so when she told us reading other brides’ writeups of their Jew-ish weddings “made me realise we weren’t the only ones out there!”

So you can only imagine out delight in finding out that she and groom Jerome booked their officiant, Smashing The Glass Recommended Vendor Rabbi Paul Glantz, via STG! Rabbi Paul helped the couple — Philippa is Christian, Jerome’s Jewish — craft an ultra-personal ceremony that reflected both of their backgrounds and traditions, complete with plentiful description of the Jewish parts of the ceremony so everyone could follow along, plus an explanatory order of service crafted by the bride. This is such a smart idea if you know you’ll be having guests who are unfamiliar with Jewish wedding traditions!

We also love that toward the end of the ceremony, after the rabbi recited the traditional Jewish seven blessings in Hebrew, the couple invited some friends and close family to give seven humanist blessings in English!

And with Smashing The Glass Recommended Vendor the Function Band performing, this wedding was no slouch from an entertainment standpoint either. The Function Band are renowned far and wide for their ability to get the party started, and we’re not surprised that guest after guest came up to the couple to tell them how awesome the band was!

We haven’t even gotten to the fab rustic elegance aesthetic, the gorgeous floral chuppah, or Philippa’s stunner of a dress from Essense of Australia, but we’ll leave it to the bride — with some support from the fab photography by Pascal from Reportage, and videography by Cedar House Productions — to fill you in on all of that…

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How we met

Philippa, the bride: Jerome and I both work in the media industry – I’m a producer at a creative agency making commercials and promotional content, and Jerome is head of strategic development at a creative studio, working in VR and CGI.

We met through a mutual friend whom Jerome lived with at the time and we finally got together on a big group trip to Ibiza where we started kissing in the middle of a Hardwell gig at Ushuaia! We didn’t stop kissing after that. It didn’t take long for us to realise that it was meant to be and we moved into together after 3 months.

An Essense of Australia Bride for an Enchanted Autumn Jewish Wedding at Garnethill Synagogue and Oran Mor in Glasgow, Scotland, UK

24/08/2018 by Karen Cinnamon

It’s always a good day when we hear from couples who loved used Smashing the Glass to plan their Jewish weddings — like today’s fab couple, Stephanie, an architect, and Darren, a retail director for Aspinal.

We’re so pleased that the bride was a loyal reader of STG in the lead up to her big day, even finding fantastic videographer Velvet Wedding Studio on the blog! He and photographer David Grant Simpson did the absolute best job of capturing the magic of the couple’s enchanted autumnal wedding (over Halloween weekend, no less!).

As an architect, Stephanie was focused on getting married in a beautiful space — and she ended up with not one, but two of them! With the chuppah at the majestic 19^th-century Garnethill Synagogue and the evening party at super cool converted church venue Oran Mor, this wedding was basically non-stop architectural splendor.

We love how Stephanie and Darren decided to include a ceilidh in their big day as a way of honoring the bride’s Scottish background and providing some familiarity to balance out the novelty of the Israeli dancing for their non-Jewish guests. Good sport Darren even let Stephanie cajole him into putting on a kilt for the Scottish dancing!

Stephanie, who looked stunning in her Essense of Australia dress, will fill you in on the rest of the fantastic details…

How We Met

Stephanie, the bride: I never ever thought I would try online dating, but as time went on I just realized that it was now the ordinary way to meet someone and gave it a go. We both have stressful jobs, which can make it difficult to find time to date. I still can’t believe that I met my now-husband on Jswipe but I guess that’s modern day romancing for you!

So many people ask me when we knew we wanted to get married. About a month into the relationship after coming in from a night out with, Darren we were laughing about something and then told me he would marry me tomorrow. I know it was a passing comment after I made him laugh, but I guess in the back of our minds we both knew that we wanted to settle down. It sounds odd to many but I think when you meet someone in your thirties you have both already seen the world, been around the block and essentially are in a totally different mindset when you are getting into a relationship. Online dating is literally like modernâ€day matchmaking! I guess in a way you could say it was love at first sight, or love at first selfie.