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A Pronovias Bride for an Interfaith Jewish Jamaican Wedding at Tewin Bury Barn, UK

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We’re always curious to see what Jewish wedding vendors at the top of their game choose to do for their own weddings. So naturally we were pretty excited for today’s wedding. You see, beautiful bride Sarah-Louise is the rockstar bridal hair stylist behind Smashing The Glass Recommended Vendor Hair by SLO! She’s long been a favorite among our UK brides – you can see all her gorgeous weddings hair styles we’ve featured here – and her incredible interfaith Jewish-Jamaican (or Jew-maican!) wedding to groom Nathan is everything we could’ve hoped for and more.

Right off the bat, these two knew merging their backgrounds would be priority #1. Sarah-Louise is Jewish, while Nathan is a Christian pastor’s son – and every single detail of their ceremony reflected that.

The ceremony was under a chuppah, with the groom’s father officiating – along with a group of gospel singers all made up of Nathan’s relatives! Sarah-Louise circled Nathan 7 times, smashed the glass, and walked in to Hebrew singing.

Needless to say, the vendor lineup these two put together was pretty stellar. With simple, beautiful invitations from Smashing The Glass Recommended Vendor Papier, exquisite hair styling handled by three amazing hairdressers who were all the bride’s former assistants, emotion-filled photography by Harry Michael, the most moving videography by mega-talented videographer Smashing The Glass Recommended Vendor Denee Motion – seriously, don’t miss their wedding trailer – and music by Smashing The Glass Recommended Vendor XS Showband, who worked with the couple to choose the perfect lineup of garage, Motown, and beyond to keep their guests on the dancefloor all night long.

Now over to the bride, who totally rocked her gown by Pronovias…


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A Countryside Venue 

Sarah-Louise, the bride: We got married at Tewin Bury Farm in the Meadow Barn. We chose this venue because it was really important to us to have a venue where our guests could stay and a suite large enough where I could get ready in – I’m a bridal hair dresser so the morning and getting ready part was very important to me. We didn’t want a venue I had worked in before so that it felt special and different for me.

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Coming Together in the Face of Coronavirus: #STGvendors Helping #STGbrides

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Mayan and Mola’s micro Jewish wedding in the face of COVID-19 | Photo by Jossef Si

In these uncertain times, one thing we’re finding really comforting is seeing how all strands of the wedding community are coming together to support each other. We see it every single day in our Brides Club, and we’re seeing it in all the new initiatives our wonderful Smashing The Glass Recommended Vendors have come up with to help couples whose weddings have been affected by the pandemic.

A digital change-of-date design by Liv & Luc

There’s no denying that this is a challenging time, but the outpouring of generosity we’re seeing these days is so heartwarming, and we want to share with you some of the creative ways vendors are working to help couples make the best of this difficult situation.

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Kristin and Bryan‘s ketubah by The Ketubah  | Photo by Perfect Circle Photography

Change the Date

A stunning suite of wedding stationery by E.Y.i. LOVE

If coronavirus has forced you to postpone your wedding, you may as well inform your guests in style. And luckily, a bunch of our wonderful stationers agree – and they want to help!

E.Y.i. LOVE – one of the finest bespoke luxury wedding stationers around – are offering a free digital design service to couples who need to let guests know they’ve been forced to postpone their weddings. If that’s you, get in touch at info@eyilove.com.

How cheery is this floral change of date card from Papier?!

Papier has a wonderful range of change-of-date or postponement cards – whatever your style, whether sleek and modern, whimsical, using a photo from your engagement shoot – they’ve really got all tastes catered for.

Liv & Luc are also providing complimentary digital save-the-date designs. They’ll pop your names and date into one of four gorgeous templates, and you can even mix and match your preferred colors and fonts. If you’d like one, get in touch and they’ll get you set up.

Malka Klein has created a free digital file for couples to download to announce that they’re rescheduling or postponing their weddings, and she’ll even add your names in calligraphy.

Dresses at Your Doorstep

A Berta gown from The Wedding Club | Photo by David Pullum from Salena and Stefan’s wedding 

The Wedding Club, one of London and Birmingham’s very finest bridal boutiques – and a favorite among STG brides -have made a selection of sample sale dresses available for delivery right to your doorstep, available to purchase via email – perfect for any bride finding herself in need of a dress ASAP during this time of self-isolation whether it’s due to manufacturing delays or because you’ve had to move your wedding date up. The range of gowns on offer includes pieces from Pronovias, Berta, and many, many more. For more info and to see the styles and sizes currently available, email appointmentsbham@thewedding-club.co.uk

Take Away, but Make It Gourmet

Adam Nathan’s delectable canapés for Bethany and Gavin‘s wedding | Photo by Voyteck

Adam Nathan Catering – one of our very favorite London-based kosher-style caterers – has risen to the present challenge of, in his own words, “having to create new businesses overnight” by temporarily pivoting from events catering to home delivery. Yes, this London-based kosher-style caterer is now bringing his delectable Middle Eastern-inflected dishes right to your (UK) doorstep – at very reasonable prices. And it’s all kosher-style (so no meat+dairy), using kosher meat. Plus, everything’s freezable, so you can buy in bulk and save for later.

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Real Jewish Brides – Charlotte: Designing Our Wedding Stationery

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Charlotte will be marrying James on 26th August 2018 at The Brewery, in London, UK.

THREE FACTS: (1) James proposed to Charlotte in Florence… on her parent’s 36th wedding anniversary (aaaah – we love that!)  (2) They are planning a Jewish urban-rustic wedding in East London (3) They have already decided on their wedding hashtags — it’s #dropitlikeitshart !


Choosing our wedding stationery

In September 2016 I had been to the bridal show with one of my bridesmaids, looking for invitation inspiration. I think it is a good way to speak to vendors and get sample packs, and also to look at what the brands are specialist in, there are so many different categories and styles available on offer, and I found it really good to see the stationery in real life. 

I had already used Papier for our engagement party invitations. Which were great quality and also allow you to do a mix of printed and online. They offer such a huge variety of styles, and you can personalise them to suit you. They are also really affordable! They suited the need for our engagement party but we decided against them for the wedding, as we wanted to go for something bespoke for our wedding stationery.

Knowing that I wanted the calligraphy feel, I actually designed our save the dates myself. I downloaded a lot of calligraphy and handwriting fonts on dafont.com. And created them in a Word document and got them printed with Vistaprint. I was lucky that I tested them out before ordering nearly 200 copies, as they originally came out blurred (!). Which then followed with me on a live chat with Vistaprint for over two hours to try and remedy this, luckily they refunded my original order, and actually sent my complete order out for free! It sometimes pays to complain!

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Real Blogging Brides: Clare – Difficult News, Learning Calligraphy, and Some DIY Wedding Projects…

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Clare will be marrying Chris on 5th May 2018 at Laura Ashley The Manor in Elstree, UK.

THREE FACTS: (1) Clare is not Jewish but discovered Smashing The Glass via her Jewish sister-in-law and during her wedding planning journey it has (in her own words!) became her favorite and most useful wedding blog (2) She finds STG refreshing in a sea of wedding blogs as she loves reading stories of couples for whom the ceremony itself is as pivotal as all the other details. (3) Due to falling in love with so many amazing Jewish weddings through the blog, and then booking a wedding consultancy session with STG founder, Karen, it confirmed to her that there were a number of Jewish elements she was going to bring into her wedding that symbolise a lot of things that are very important to her and her fiancà© in their future marriage – she will be having a ‘Jewish-inspired’ wedding!


Losing my father and my aunt

Planning a wedding when your father is terminally ill is never going to be easy and when in July the news hit that my aunt had stage three cancer, the future looked even more bleak. Sadly they have both passed away since my last post, going just six days apart from one another. I have felt broken.

For my main wedding planning partner in crime (my mum) and I, there have been funeral plans to make rather than wedding. But thinking of this upcoming celebration has been the chance to share times of joy rather than sadness and has definitely kept us going!

Celebration of friendship

Weddings are a time for family, and the thought of neither of them being there was never much fun. Fortunately I’ve had some time to prepare for the lack of a ‘father of the bride’ and some wonderful friends will be fulfilling the roles of walking me down the aisle and giving a speech… Let’s just hope they don’t go too cringey in a bid to be an embarrassing ‘dad’!

Friendship is something that I have come to truly value since planning my wedding amidst this trauma. Our wedding will be a true celebration of friendship, and for me, my friends have and continue to fulfil a vital role in my life that can’t always be met by family relations.

So what better thing to write about than all the wonderful things we have been doing as part of the planning process, and the different ways in which they will be involved in the build up to the big day, never mind on the day itself!

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