Paperless Post Archives - Page 8 of 8 - Smashing the Glass

Talia & Indra | Colourful fusion Jewish Hindu ‘HinJew’ wedding at The Wit, Chicago, IL, USA

16/12/2014 by Karen

As a fan of bold colour, multi-cultural weddings are such a visual treat for me. So I’m totally thrilled to be blogging this afternoon’s fusion Jewish Hindu or ‘HinJew’ wedding that’s an all-out explosion of colour and fun. From the bride’s multi-coloured hair to her stunning dress, vivid jewellery and wonderful mix of flowers, to the groom’s hip style and snazzy bejewelled shoes!

This wedding really shows how to perfectly amalgamate cultures, rituals, merrymaking, and personality! Talia and Indra made sure that amongst all their combined traditions they didn’t forget to let their personalities shine through. One of my favourite (and oh-so-simple) party details is that they had a design-your-own-‘mac-and-cheese-bar’ , because Talia is obsessed with this dish!

I absolutely adore Talia’s colourful dress and accessories which suit her down to the ground and I think that it’s safe to say that Talia’s dad agrees too. The emotional photo of him when he sees her for the first time gave me a lump in my throat…

So settle down and enjoy Talia’s infectiously fun words, alongside some super stunning imagery from Roots of Life Photography.

a colourful city chic venue

Talia, the Bride: We chose theWit in Chicago, as we wanted a unique and colourful wedding venue with a city feel within easy walking distance to fun things to do before and after the wedding. And in terms of Chicago, there is definitely a significance there. We knew we were going to be a destination wedding for most people no matter where we had it, since we had guests traveling from South Carolina, North Carolina, Indiana, Texas, Canada, India, etc. So we chose to go with our favourite US city, which earned a special place in our hearts since we had our first date there. It made the whole event that much more meaningful to be able

12 online wedding resources every Bride-To-Be should know about

10/10/2014 by Karen

12-online-wedding-resources
Last Sunday, myself and Charley from London Bride were interviewed ‘On The Sofa’ at Brides The Show about how to find everything you need online when it comes to planning your wedding.

We loved every minute of our talk and were delighted to be speaking to a packed floor with brides scribbling our tips away in their notebooks, so I thought I’d recap the main points we made so that everyone can benefit from the content.

1. WEDDING BLOGS

We’re lucky enough to be living in a wedding planning world that is packed full of hundreds and thousands of inspiring wedding blogs. Each one caters to a niche with everything from geeky weddings to tattooed brides to of course Jewish weddings and everything in between. Unlike wedding magazines, blogs are free to read so the bloggers who run them don’t need to worry about appealing to the masses or shifting however many copies. It’s the bloggers’ unbiased, unedited opinions and being digital, blogs are also very fast-moving, immediate and very regularly updated.

2. USING BLOGS TO SOURCE SUPPLIERS

The heart and soul of many wedding blogs, including Smashing The Glass, are the real weddings. Each wedding is hand-picked by the blogger with the intention of inspiring you with the fabulously creative ideas of the bride and groom. The wonderful thing is that all the suppliers that contributed to that wedding are listed at the bottom of the feature, with links to their websites, so it’s a great way to directly find suppliers that catch your eye.

And if you’re after a specific type of supplier, many blogs have their recommended vendors section which is a great place to start your search if you resonate with a particular blog.

3. DIY TUTORIALS

Many wedding blogs post step-by-step DIY tutorials that are great for the craft-loving or money-saving bride. Particular favourites for DIY’s are Love My Dress and Bespoke Bride, and don’t forget YouTube for video tutorials too… did you know that Martha Stewart has her own wedding DIY YouTube channel?

Charley and I speaking ‘On The Sofa’ about how to plan your wedding online, at Brides The Show

Rachel & Emile | Moroccan Themed Jewish Engagement Party in London

24/07/2013 by Karen

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.

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.

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!

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!