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Juliana & Elie | Chic Jewish Winter Wedding at The Roosevelt Hotel, Manhattan, New York

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Decadent, luxurious and hopelessly romantic, Juliana and Elie’s chic winter wedding held at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan last February is utterly sumptuous.

Despite having a very traditional Jewish Orthodox Wedding, they still wanted to play around on the margins, and incorporate as many of their own details into their W-day as they could.

One of the creative elements I  love most is their invitations which Juliana designed herself. She incorporated the most delicious intertwined Hebrew calligraphy and combined it with an english font inspired by Elie’s favourite brand of scotch! Their invitation suite also included a map highlighting milestones in their relationship and had lots of lovely production finishes like a letterpress finish and a wax seal on each envelope.
Roosevelt Hotel NYC wedding exterior

I also love their idea of ‘donation’ favours where in place of traditional favours they made a contribution to a charity close to their hearts, and placed small notes at each plate with a picture of themselves, explaining the donation.

Juliana and Elie were  set up on a blind date by Juliana’s roommate, Rena, who had gone to high school with Elie. Rena thought that Elie might be a good person for Juliana to meet, and she was  evidently right! Let’s hear all about the couple’s special day from the lovely bride herself…
Roosevelt Hotel NYC wedding atmosphere
A GLAMOROUS VENUE
Juliana the Bride: Our wedding was at the The Roosevelt Hotel in New York City. Since our wedding was in February, we wanted the location to still be accessible in the event of inclement weather. We loved the Roosevelt as soon as we walked through it; it was the first of the many venues we’d looked at that we could actually envision ourselves getting married in. They had many distinct rooms available, and a fantastic balcony / hallway between the tish room and where the badeken was. Elie being danced down that hallway was one of my favourite moments of the wedding. As one of my friends remarked on her video of the badeken: “That was epic”.

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Freya & Tim | Outdoor Fun ‘n’ Games Jewish Wedding at Ketchum Rotary Park, Idaho, USA

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 This is a great example of a wedding that shows what you can achieve if you put a bit of time and effort in to doing something, and that a wedding doesn’t have to cost an absolute fortune! With the sun shining and your best friends and family around you, it’s easy to remember that the best things in life are free…cheesy but true.

Freya and Tim are both farmers – Tim is a 6th generation farmer in rural southern Minnesota and Freya is an organic farmer by profession and runs her own small produce business. Agriculture, food, and the outdoors is the core of who they are and being a totally ‘smashing’ couple and  essentially being truly authentic to themselves, these elements came through beautifully and personally in their relaxed outdoor wedding.

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A HOMEMADE, HANDMADE OUTDOOR WEDDING
Freya, The Bride: Our wedding was in Ketchum, Idaho and we held the ceremony and reception in Ketchum Rotary Park along the Bigwood river, the river upon which I grew up and love dearly.  Tim and I didn’t really go for a theme or colour scheme. Everything was very simple and natural and the whole event was homemade and handmade – DIY style – very relaxed, like an afternoon picnic. We had lots of games like bean bag toss, ladder golf, hula hoops, bubbles, etc and these were played by both adult (and little) kids!

We had directional signs, chalkboards and such, all made by my husband. There was not much need for more decoration than that as it was such a beautiful venue.
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MY OWN BRIDAL STYLE
I knew I wanted to be comfortable and feel like myself, not all made-up and princess-like. After trying on too many “cupcake” dresses, I found the “mini-cupcake” and loved it. I paired the dress with Canadian-made handcrafted Boulet western boots, that were a gift from my husband a few months before we got engaged. He knows I love my boots, and the collection keeps growing.

In terms of jewellery, I wore my mothers, sisters, late-grandmothers and my pearl bracelets. It meant a lot to me to have all those women with me under the chuppah….

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Sarit & Ari | DIY ‘Handmade’ Jewish wedding at The Green Building, Brooklyn, New York

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Jewish wedding at The Green Building, Brooklyn, New York 1Sarit and Ari managed to pull off their NYC wedding on a modest budget, and what an *awesome* job they did. Often I find that the more restrictive the funds, the more creative and resourceful a wedding turns out to be. This one is a very handmade affair filled with friends and family and a true sense of community.

I particularly love the handmade fabric corsages and boutonnieres, and the wedding programs printed onto brown kraft paper bags filled with coloured dots and paper hearts cut from books! (The couple had a book theme running through their day).

There are lots of stylish, crafty details to cherish – these two are a ridiculous talented and thrifty pair – and they definitely achieved their aim of creating the greatest party on the smallest budget.
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A WAREHOUSE VENUE WITH LOVELY WARM TOUCHES
Sarit, The Bride: Our wedding was at The Green Building in Brooklyn, New York. We’re both from New York and since most of our friends and family live in or near the city we wanted to keep it local and accessible by car or public transportation.Continue ReadingContinue Reading

Madalyn & Aaron | Ultra-Creative and Chic Jewish Wedding at The Metropolitan Building, New York, USA

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This wedding is cooler than an igloo with air con.

In the achingly chic wedding venue of The Metropolitan Building in New York, Madalyn, Aaron and their guests got together to celebrate one of the most exquisitely fashionable and creative weddings I have ever laid my eyes upon.

There are beautifully designed invitations, programs and custom illustrations of the bridal party (which the bride and groom created themselves), mismatched floral table centres, the cutest polka dot kippot you’ve ever seen, and something I didn’t think was even possible: personalised Converse black and orange sneakers made for every one of the groomsmen!

On top of that, frankly any bride that incorporates a gorgeous peplum into her bridal gown scores serious style points in my book.

Let’s take a look…
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A CREATIVE ‘LOFT-STYLE’ VENUE
Madalyn, the Bride: I fell in love with the Metropolitan Building in Long Island City, New York, the minute I saw it on a wedding blog. The mismatched vibe and colourful alcoves and artsy rooms were exactly what we were looking for. Only when I got there did I realise I had been to a wedding there before!

Our colour palette was a mix of deep autumn colours like eggplants and plums. We wanted a warm and intimate atmosphere that beautifully accented the loft-like vibe of the building.

DESIGNING OUR OWN INVITATIONS
Aaron and I actually designed the invitation ourselves so it was completely unique to us. We letterpressed them onto real birch wood giving them a beautiful earthy vibe.Continue ReadingContinue Reading

Starr & Jacques | ‘Palace of Versailles’ themed Jewish wedding, Palm Beach, Florida, USA

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I have the most utterly sublime and beautiful wedding for you today. Starr is from New York City, and Jacques is from Paris, and the story of how these two met is quite simply a modern day fairytale.

Starr says “My mum says she prayed for this husband for me, and that’s truly how I believe he came into my life! We met in Paris. I was on holiday and a mutual friend invited Jacques for dinner at this trendy hotel, and we were engaged 37 days and 5 countries later…”
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As it happened, that first evening they met in Paris, Starr was at the beginning of a three-week European holiday. Jacques invited Starr to join him for dinner again the following night with a bunch of friends but it rained heavily the next day, and one by one his friends dropped out. Jacques called her to say that it would be just the two of them and asked if that would be ok. She agreed and so the spark was lit…

Jacques was determined to see Starr again even though she was about to leave Paris for the next leg of her trip, and the following weekend he caught up with her in Barcelona, then several days later he met her in London, the next weekend in Paris, and then the weekend after that he travelled to New York to meet Starr’s father to ask him for Starr’s hand in marriage. A week later the couple traveled to Morocco for a wedding and that’s where Jacques proposed.

Quite the love story, hey? I’ll now hand over the reigns to the beautiful Starr to tell you about the story of her wedding but just before I do, I want to say that I am beyond excited to feature the incredible photography of Joy Marie Smallwood. Her eye for composition, colour and texture means that each and every photo feels artsy, sexy, fun, candid, rich, boutique, authentic…. I could go on and on. I’m sure you’ll agree that every one of these images is immense.
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VENUE TO ECHO OUR ‘PALACE OF VERSAILLES’ THEME
Starr, the Bride: We knew we wanted a destination wedding as we loved the idea of entertaining friends and family over an entire weekend – not just one night – and in fact we ended up having five different events during our wedding weekend, including a Shabbat dinner and a traditional Sephardi Henna Party!

As Jacques is French we toyed with the idea of getting married in France. I love the drama and history of the Palace of Versailles — you can actually get married in the Orangerie there — but in the end it proved impractical for us to tie the knot in France.

We thought about where would be good for everyone and where would they enjoy traveling to, and came up with Palm Beach… Americans love Florida, Europeans love Florida. We decided upon the beautiful Mar-a-lago Club whose stunning ballroom echoed the grandeur of Versailles which fitted right in with our wedding theme.

The Mar-a-Lago was built in the 1920s by the heiress Marjorie Merriwether Post, and combines stunning Moorish, Venetian, Spanish and Mediterranean elements, including spiral staircases and intricate stone carvings. 

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