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A BHLDN Bride for a DIY Jewish Wedding Weekend at River Mountain, Everett, Pennsylvania, USA

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Shoshana and Mark, River Mountain, Everett, Pennsylvania, USA

We love a DIY Jewish wedding, and Shoshana and Mark’s is SO packed with wonderful personal touches. The couple planned every detail of their glamping wedding weekend getaway at River Mountain themselves, from the invitations to the music playlists for every event.

We’re obsessed with Shoshana and Mark’s gorgeous outdoor ceremony, officiated by a humanistic rabbi and attended by no fewer than four family dogs! The bespoke ceremony blended Shoshana’s Jewish upbringing and Mark’s non-religious background and featured a blessing over wine and another over beer, egalitarian circling, and humanistic versions of the seven blessings. And how fun is it that the duo included a crossword puzzle on details and traditions from the ceremony in their wedding program?! Don’t miss all the special details in the wonderful photography by Mariah Fisher!

Shoshana and Mark went for a beautiful custom  ketubah designed and hand-painted by Elena Berlo of Smashing The Glass Recommended Vendor Once Upon a Paper. The art captures the pair’s love of nature, with two trees intertwined and two golden birds sitting amid colored circles representing the changing seasons.

There’s so much more to say about this ultra-personal wedding, but we’ll hand you over to Shoshana for the rest…

Shoshana and Mark, River Mountain, Everett, Pennsylvania, USA Shoshana and Mark, River Mountain, Everett, Pennsylvania, USA Shoshana and Mark, River Mountain, Everett, Pennsylvania, USA Shoshana and Mark, River Mountain, Everett, Pennsylvania, USA

How We Met

Shoshana, the bride: We met by chance at a beer garden in Washington, DC, while out and about for Halloween celebrations. We were engaged nearly 5 years later and married the following June.

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A Demetrios Bride for a Roaring ‘20s Jewish Wedding Inspired by The Great Gatsby at The Banks Waterfront, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, USA

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Amy & Brad, The Banks Waterfront, Pennsylvania, USA

Amy, a travel agent, and Brad, a mortgage analyst, got engaged in July 2020, during the height of the pandemic. When lockdown finally came to an end, they were ready to party – roaring  ‘20s style. Hence the timely theme they chose for their Pennsylvania Jewish wedding: The Great Gatsby!

Their big day was full of fun touches nodding to an era of frivolity and decadence – like the bride’s fabulous Demetrios gown, and tons of feathers mixed in with the florals! We’re also obsessed with the couple’s wonderful Tree of Life Ketubah designed by the amazing Nava Shoham, founder of Smashing The Glass Recommended Vendor 1-800-ketubah. Amy and Brad loved working with Nava – in their words, she was “so amazing and friendly and flexible” – and obviously they were thrilled with the finished results! Don’t miss it in the wonderful photos by Brittany Boote.

There’s so much more to say about this delightful wedding – like the touching ways the bride chose to honor her late parents – but we’ll leave it to Amy to fill you in on the rest…

Amy & Brad, The Banks Waterfront, Pennsylvania, USA Amy & Brad, The Banks Waterfront, Pennsylvania, USA Amy & Brad, The Banks Waterfront, Pennsylvania, USA Amy & Brad, The Banks Waterfront, Pennsylvania, USA
How We Met

Amy, the bride: The first time we met was a very brief interaction at an event in April of 2014. Amy was riding on a jazzy after recent knee surgery and “bumped” into Brad, but life happens, and it was meant to just be a hi / bye interaction. Fast forward 3 years and we reconnected by modern day daters’ way of doing it… online.

After some witty conversation and Brad promising to do the “Bend and Snap”, we went to Full Pint Brewery for a good IPA to start off our first date on September 15, 2017. A 7 hour date and some Nicky Thai’s Kitchen for some sustenance along the way and we both knew a second date would follow not too long after. The night of our second date, 5 years prior, is now our wedding anniversary

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A Paolo Sebastian Bride for a Whimsical Outdoor Jewish Wedding at Farmington, Pennsylvania, USA

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We do love a whimsical, woodland Jewish wedding – there’s nothing quite like an outdoor ceremony set against a striking, natural backdrop — and we ADORE the origin story of today’s beautifully embroidered chuppah. We won’t ruin it for you, but make sure you check it out, because it’s absolutely wonderful!

Lena and Jacob met when she was hired to design the typography for a book that architect Jacob’s work was featured in. Realizing they attended the same college, she reached out to him on Facebook and the rest, as they say, is history. How romantic is that?

Lena also looked SO luxe and lovely in her stuff-of-dreams Paolo Sebastian gown, which fit her like a glove! Seriously, even if you’re already married, it’s a dress worthy of planning a whole second wedding around!

The gorgeous photography was provided by Steven Dray Images, please do feel free to feast your eyes on the spread of images, as well as Lena’s fabulous writeup. Enjoy! 

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How we met

Lena, the bride: We met when I was hired to design the typography for a book called “Encoding Architecture” that his work was being published in.

When I was putting his work into the book, I realized that we went to the same college and I reached out to him through Facebook. I said something to him like, “You don’t know me, but I am the designer for that book your work is going to be in.” We met up, and the rest was history.
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A rustic, horse farm Jewish wedding with an Enzoani bride at The Stables at Fox Crossing, Cochranville, Pennsylvania, USA

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Happy Friday, everybody! To celebrate, we’re treating you to the ultimate authentic rustic American wedding.

In typical ‘Smashing The Glass’ style, Sara and Justin didn’t want a cookie-cutter wedding and chose a blank canvas venue (a working horse farm) and filled it with stunning chandeliers, decadent dà©cor and so much love. The juxtaposition of a colourful, yet vintage-looking chuppah against the rustic dark wood of the barn is truly a sight to behold. 

Their Jewish wedding was captured in all its glory by photographer Gary Nevitt, including the bride’s epic cowboy (girl) boots – we have serious boot envy over here – and the stunning floral and mossy details, put together by Tonia of Aribella Events.

It also always strikes us how many Jewish weddings are filled with precious family heirlooms passed down through the generations. Sara and Justin’s wedding was no exception, with beautiful relics that even survived the Holocaust. This solemn tribute to our collective history can seem odd to some, but it says so much about the Jewish soul – the ability to commemorate our difficult past in a way that somehow makes the celebration feel all the more necessary in the present. 

Over to Sara for the full story on her and Justin’s special day. 

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How we met

Sara, the bride: Justin and I met through a mutual friend, Jill. We were the only two Jewish friends she had, so she figured we would be a good fit! I was in graduate school at Syracuse University for broadcast journalism and Justin was a sports reporter an hour away at a small station. Jill was my classmate and interned at Justin’s TV station on the weekends.

Justin and I hit it off immediately and the rest is history! We were long distance for a while, and would meet halfway in Scranton, Pennsylvania on the weekends. We would stay at a local Hampton Inn and go see the Tommy Guns Band play music. Hampton Hotels corporate got wind of our story and featured us in a promotional video, in which we also got engaged! Tommy Guns Band wrote us our wedding song and played it at our engagement.

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A rustic farm venue

We were married at a working horse farm in Cochranville, Pennsylvania called The Stables at Fox Crossing. Justin, my husband, and I dreamed of having a horse farm wedding, but every rustic wedding venue we visited seemed extremely commercial and like a “wedding factory.”

We wanted a space that was truly unique. We wanted guests to feel as if they were attending a wedding at someone’s personal residence, not at a commercial banquet facility. Our wedding planner, Tonia of Aribella Events, found this farm for us, and the owners generously allowed us to use it as our venue. 

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Yana & Archita | Jewish-Hindu-Indian-Russian multicultural lesbian wedding at Trust, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

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Now this wedding is not just special, stylish or merely a good day out – it’s a totally spectacular cocktail of uber-chic modernism, elegant traditionalism, multi-cultural funkiness and fun, all blended and shaken to perfection.

For any of you who are wondering how to mix two completely different backgrounds into one smooth and stylish day — get ready for some serious pinning action.

Yana and Archita seamlessly melded their loves, tastes and cultures together to create a unique day at Trust — a neoclassical styled art and event space gallery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

An art event in itself, our two gorgeous brides amalgamated a colourful and awesome blend of Russian, Jewish, Hindu and Indian traditions against the ridiculously gorgeous, all white, architectural splendour of a soaring 10,000 square foot, turn of the century building.  Simple.  Ahem.

What could have been contrived or clunky – trying to shoe horn different traditions and styles together — is instead thoughtful and elegant.

But the simplicity really lies in their motivation — to unite two families into one, representing both cultures.  Even more, what underlined and defined the wedding was FUN. They wanted a huge, huge party and they got it, right down to the last few bars of Bohemian Rhapsody.

I’m still grinning from ear to ear at the image of the couple being raised high on chairs by friends and family, old and young — all partying together with the help of some homemade “traditional” vodka — to the Black Eyed Peas’ I Got a Feeling!

Even their choice of traditional wedding dresses had a twist… Archita wore a sari, whilst Yana wore a white wedding gown but with a sash around her waist made from the same material as Archita’s sari — a beautiful and subtle symbol to truly demonstrate the bond between the two.

All of the fantastic photography is by Michael and Melissa at M2 Photography. Now over to our beautiful brides…

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How we met

Yana & Archita, the Brides: We met in undergrad at Penn at the largest party of the year called “Spring Fling”. To this day we debate about who made the first move. Chita’s friends were having a small party in a dorm room, and Yana crashed it. It was only three weeks before summer break began, so this was supposed to be just a fling… but we fell in love before the summer.

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