Jonathan and Ashwinnie Tahan at their Jewish-Hindu wedding. Photo provided

These days, when a Jew gets married, it’s likely to be to a non-Jewish partner. The famous Pew study of 2013 found that, in the years since 2000, the majority of non-Orthodox Jews — 72 percent — married someone who follows another religious tradition — or none at all.

When a Jew marries a Christian — or a Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or
Zoroastrian — there’s no guide to follow. And many of the necessary rituals may be unfamiliar to the other partner.

Such weddings aren’t trying to do the traditions “right,” says Rabbi Deborah Reichmann, of Potomac, who officiates interfaith weddings. The actions aren’t seen as a literal connection to the deity.
“Weddings are all metaphor anyway,” Reichmann says. “The couple is basically professing their love and fidelity, and there are different ways of doing that.”

“For a lot of people who are really in love, their love upends religion,” says Rabbi Annie Bornstein, another Washington-area interfaith officiant. “For others, religion is not a major issue in their love.”
Four interfaith couples spoke to WJW about their weddings, how they tackled the planning and the
challenges they faced.

Trevor Smith, 28, and his fiancée, Shir Kaplan, 25, are planning a wedding for May 2020. Smith is Christian, Kaplan is Jewish. They’re just beginning to plan.

“The interesting part about being an interfaith couple is what our faiths mean to us,” Smith says. “Both of our faiths are very important to us. We’ve had a very open conversation about what important traditions we want. We see our wedding as an opportunity to experience this other faith [and] do it right.”

Michael Tuteur and Maryam Nezamzadeh sit at the sofreh at their wedding. Photo provided

(Kaplan was studying for the MCATs at the time of the interview and unavailable to talk.)
They’re firm on a few things, Smith says. They want two officiants, a Jew and a Christian. They want a ketubah (a Jewish marriage agreement) a chuppah (Jewish marriage canopy) and a glass to break at the end of the ceremony. They also want to perform the Christian custom of washing each other’s feet.

According Smith, Kaplan’s family is from Israel and their diet is kosher style. He says he’s learned a lot from his relationship with the Kaplans.

“The Jewish identity is much more complex than I originally thought,” he says. “It’s not just a faith
matter. It’s a cultural matter, an ancestry matter and very ingrained in multiple aspects of her life. But in terms of wedding planning, it’s been eye opening.”

It becomes more complicated if a Jew is engaged to someone who isn’t Christian. They might
struggle to find officiants or turn up a search of other couples who have led the way.

“We couldn’t find anything like our wedding,” says Jonathan Tahan, a Jew whose wife, Ashwinnie, is Hindu.

We had no starting point.”

Tahan says while they had no trouble finding a Hindu priest willing to co-officiate the wedding (the priest was a relative of Ashwinnie’s) they did have trouble finding a Jewish
officiant. Then they struggled to figure out how to combine the traditions in a way that was satisfactory to both officiants and families.

Trevor Smith and Shir Kaplan are a Christian-Jewish couple planning their wedding.This photo was taken after Smith’s proposal last year. Photo provided

“After that, we got a plan of how we were going to mix our traditions,” Tahan says. “We wanted [the officiants] to legitimize [what we wanted to do]. It was a new endeavor for all four of us.”

What they ended up doing was switching back and forth between the Hindu ceremony and the Jewish one. It all lasted about 1 ½ hours.

“There’s a lot in a Hindu wedding, we had to cut some out to make it shorter,” Tahan says. “[The officiants] knew that this would be a little risky and we got confirmation and acceptance from them.”

The hardest part was breaking the glass. The couple in Hindu weddings goes shoeless. To protect Tahan’s bare foot, the glass was wrapped in extra layers of napkins. Tahan was still
nervous about cutting his foot, though it worked out in the end.

Another Jewish-Hindu couple, Alyson Kelly and Rahul Srivastava, found a different solution to breaking the glass. At that point in the ceremony, they left the platform and put on their shoes.

After Srivastava broke the glass, the bridesmaids acted out a Hindu
tradition of stealing his shoes.

Kelly said they benefitted from working with a Hindu priest who had performed an interfaith wedding with a rabbi.

“We had a script that we were basing it on, and we went from there. [There was] some kind of jumping in between,” Kelly said, adding she was happy to have somebody who knew what he was doing.
They had a chuppah that doubled as a Hindu wedding canopy, or mandap; danced the horah and were lifted on chairs. But they decided not to have a ketubah because Kelly’s parents didn’t have one at their
wedding.

During the Hindu ceremony, Srivastava danced his way to Kelly. There was a fire ceremony where offerings were made and where the couple danced around the blaze. And Srivastava applied red powder to

Kelly’s hair to symbolize her new status as a married woman.

Kelly says it was important to have both religions represented at their wedding, even if the Hindu
ceremony was longer.

Michael Tuteur and Maryam Nezamzadeh wanted their Jewish-Muslim wedding to balance the two religions as perfectly as possible. Tuteur, who is Jewish, says that Nezamzadeh had planned the entire wedding so that nothing would be left out.

“We were deliberate. We had to be,” he says. “We didn’t want people to think we were lopsided or imbalanced. I think that just starts with understanding. It requires constant thought. And that will be true for the rest of our lives.”

Bringing their traditions together was about honoring their respective heritages as well as their families.

And this wasn’t a simple task, Tuteur says. They struggled to find officiants who wouldn’t put strict
conditions on their wedding or who would perform it at all.

In the end, they worked with Bornstein and a Muslim friend of a friend who was willing to perform the
ceremony. They had two weddings that day.

First came a full Persian-Muslim ceremony, which included a sofreh, a table laid with multiple objects each with its own meaning.

Once the wedding was finished, the couple turned in the opposite direction, stepped under a chuppah and underwent a full Jewish wedding.

Tuteur says the importance to them was performing each ceremony in full and recognizing the importance of each ritual and object.

“Ultimately, the last step was breaking the glass, which to me is a reminder that
support is fragile,” Tuteur says. “Extra weight can crush the glass’ state of support. Just like the glass, the marriage is fragile. Extra weight will break a marriage, too.”

And though they tried to honor their Jewish and Muslim heritages at their wedding, the couple say they are more interested in creating their own traditions and holidays, rather than figuring out how to combine two different traditions.

“For us, there might be holidays, but we [also] celebrate our own holidays by, for
example, going back to a restaurant where something important happened,” Tuteur says.
Tuteur and Nezamzadeh participated in two complete weddings, either of which another couple would have been married at the end. When did Tuteur and Nezamzadeh consider themselves married?

“‘Love’ to us is short for ‘all-of’ the support, Tuteur says. “So, we considered ourselves married only after both certificates [the ketubah and nikaah were signed] and both ceremonies were complete. All-of the steps had to be completed.

For all four couples involved in this article, religion was important to consider in planning their ceremony, but second in consideration to their love.

“There’s no stopping them anyway,” Bornstein said. “These couples are going to bring the best of what each has to offer.”

scooper@midatlanticmedia.com

The post Joys and struggles of planning an interfaith wedding appeared first on Washington Jewish Week.

Getty Images

Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend, but how they’re mounted on rings is still up for discussion. We’ve spoken to some experts about emerging and consistent trends in the engagement ring industry.

“We’re probably seeing more and more rose gold,” said Leslie Schwab, manager at Aras Jewelers in Rockville. Kayda Araki, manager at Secrete Fine Jewelry in Bethesda, agreed and said that rose gold, along with white gold and platinum are the most popular metals. Araki said, “We’re seeing an increase in the number of people that want rose gold rings.”

Susan Koehn, of Susan Koehn Designs in Potomac, added that mixed metals are becoming more popular in rings while “yellow gold is back.”

“The cuts that are in are round, always, and square. Emerald, princess, and cushion cut [are] very big too,” Koehn said.

Schwab added that “round is most traditional. Pears have made a slight comeback, but not as much as they were” in the late 1980s and early ‘90s.

Cushions, in case you’re wondering, are similar to square or princess cuts, but instead of having 90-degree angles at each corner, the corners are soft and rounded. For designs, Araki thinks that vintage-inspired designs are the “most interesting trend right now.”

“We’ve definitely experienced people taking designs from art deco or vintage rings. That’s something we’ve noticed more lately. It ends up looking very nice and you can get a really unique ring that’s really
sentimental and personal,” Araki said.

Other non-traditional engagement rings are in as well, Araki said. There are “people who no longer want that center stone in a classic setting, but who want a ring that might to an outsider not even look like an engagement ring, but it is and it holds the same sentimental value for them.”

Araki also noticed that three-stone rings are coming back. In a three-stone ring, one bigger gem is nestled on each side by a smaller gem. “For a long time, solitaires or haloes were very popular and people are reverting back to the three-stone style,” she said.

Schwab noticed something similar, but added that haloes are still largely in style. “Sometimes they’re doing a multiple halo or a triple halo,” she said. Haloes are rings of smaller stones surrounding a larger stone as accents.

In terms of gemstones, Araki said that some people are using other gem stones including sapphire and
emerald instead of diamonds. Schwab has noticed a similar trend toward sapphire or other hard gems, but says, “We’re still selling mainly diamonds.” She said they usually caution against using soft gems because they scratch and degrade much faster.

The post Ringing in new trends appeared first on Washington Jewish Week.

By Anna Lippe

Braid, half-up or chignon? Vintage-style curls or smooth waves? Wreaths, tiaras, hair pins or leaf crowns? And you thought choosing the groom was the hardest wedding-related decision you’d have to make.

There’s more to wedding hair than meets the…follicle. You want it to feel authentic to you. But you probably want it to be a cut above your day-to-day style. And you want to be able to dance. (Sweaty hair is no fun for any bride.) The options are enough to make your head spin.

Long-time wedding hair stylist Susie Ruckstuhl Mcnair, who works at Hair Lounge Salon in the District, has styled hair in every imaginable way. “Every bride is different. I usually ask them to go through Pinterest to see what styles they like. Almost every bride has a vision in their head when they walk in for their hair trial.”

The trial is a great time to experiment with styles and make sure you are happy with your hair before the big day. Susie recommends using the trial as a time to see how your hair will look exactly on the wedding day — so bring any hair pieces you want to wear, and wait until your hair is around the length it’ll be for the wedding.

“I try to work with the bride so we can create something together, so they get exactly what they want,” she says.

It takes work and intention to make hair look natural. Many brides are opting for rustic, natural, romantic and messy looks, inspired in part by Meghan Markle’s messy bun style for her May 2018 wedding.

“On the day of, my hair stylist had the brilliant idea of weaving leftover flowers and sprigs from the floral arrangements into my hair, which made the style look unique and kind of rustic but in a classy way,” says Leigh Shapiro, a D.C. resident who got married in 2018 in Lancaster, Pa. “I was so happy with how my hair turned out.”

Keeping the hair in place for the entire day (and night) is a primary concern for many brides.

“When I thought about how I wanted my hair to be for my wedding I knew I wanted to set it and forget it,” says Jackie Black, a D.C.-based bride. “To me, this meant having my hair up so that I don’t have to worry about the wind blowing it around or getting too hot while I’m dancing.”

Shapiro says her biggest concern was figuring out a low bun style that wouldn’t start to look messy the second she hit the dance floor. “I was very conscious of the fact that a chunk of sweaty hair stuck to my forehead could ruin an otherwise beautiful professional photo, so I definitely wanted to make sure my stylist and I had a plan to keep my hair in place all night. My hair didn’t budge throughout the ceremony, a vigorous horah and the four hours of dancing that followed.”

Photogenic hairstyles are important to many brides. The wedding may be one day, but the photos last a lifetime.

“The style is important because I still want to look like me, but I also want it to look good for pictures, and be somewhat classic and timeless, rather than uber trendy,” says Black.
Your wedding is not the time to experiment with totally new hair lengths and colors. Mcnair, who has been written up in Washingtonian and Washingtonian Bride and Groom for her wedding work, says the week of the wedding is not the time to change things up.

“My wedding hairdo was basically a glam version of how I wear my hair every day — half up, half down, with soft waves,” says Dana Bloom. “I wanted to look like me.”

Mcnair has seen everything in the bridal suite while the bridal party gets ready for the big day She loves when the bridesmaids sing and dance around the room, celebrating the bride.
Wedding hair trends have changed dramatically over time, but some things — like the veil — are timeless.

Bloom says she didn’t always want to wear a veil, but she is glad she did. “I really loved the way it looked in pictures and I’m planning to lend it to family members who get married in the future so it can be their something borrowed,” she says.

For Mcnair, the best moment comes after she’s put her finishing touches on the bride’s hair. “When the bride’s hair and make-up are finished, I often stand on a chair to put on the veil and any hair piece. Everyone in the bridal suite is standing around taking pictures. I feel like that moment is really special privilege for me.”

Now, it’s time for the bride to get married. Mazal tov!

Anna Lippe is a Washington-area writer.

PHOTO: Leigh Shapiro

Photo by Sten Hartman

The post It takes work and intention to make hair look natural appeared first on Washington Jewish Week.

When 2020 began, I was looking forward to attending five weddings with my boyfriend, Noam. We had plans to travel from D.C. all over the East Coast, from Walt Disney World to Philadelphia. In fact, we were supposed to have three weddings on consecutive weekends this spring.

We had hotels, flights, outfits picked out. We attended bachelor parties (where Noam went skeet shooting) and bachelorette parties (where I went on a New Orleans steamboat) for our friends to be wed in 2020. We had our Disney World rides picked out, and I even begrudgingly agreed to visit Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge in Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

Noam and I moved in together in the beginning of March. We decided to move when we did partially to be settled in before all of our April and May wedding travels. I envisioned having friends over when we weren’t traveling to enjoy our Shaw rooftop with a great view of the city. Masks and gloves were not part of the vision. Essentially, I went from living alone in a quaint studio in Kalorama to being quarantined in a one-bedroom with Noam.

The pandemic had other things in store

One after the other, we received thoughtful emails outlining postponed wedding dates and rescheduled plans that contained sentiments like: “We truly appreciate all the love and support we have received through this crazy adventure and cannot wait to celebrate our special day with you.”

I appreciate the thought our friends have put into rethinking their weddings, and I’ll be excited to celebrate with them when it is safe.

Like everyone, our calendars have completely opened up. While we were at a (socially distant) cabin in Virginia for Noam’s birthday, I realized that if not for the pandemic, I would have been dancing the horah at my friend Sam Flax’s wedding at that very moment.
Doing a puzzle in an owl-themed log cabin was a very different night.

The brides’ perspectives

I talked to three brides — Flax, Allie Gold and Sarah Halpern — about changing their wedding plans amid the pandemic. (I’m sure there are bridezillas out there, but these three are not.)

Flax and her fiancé, Jimmy Barber, planned on getting married in Baltimore in April. After postponing to July, they postponed again to April 2021.

“We made the decision to move it to July which, based on the information at the time, seemed plausible, and then it became apparent that the flattening of the curve and the whole trend would take longer than we thought,” says Flax, who invited 210 people to her wedding. “It became apparent that July wasn’t going to work.”

Another wedding we planned to attend was of Halpern and fiancé Seth Levin, who postponed fairly early on because they and most of their guests would have needed to travel to Charleston, S.C. “We actually started discussing the possibility of moving/canceling back in February, so we were mentally prepared when it became real, says Halpern.

Flax, Gold, and Halpern all pushed their wedding celebrations to 2021, but each had a different approach to how they spent their original wedding day.

What they did on their original wedding date

The pandemic didn’t stop Gold and fiancé Alex Smith from getting officially married on their original wedding date. They got married outside in the Canton neighborhood of Baltimore.

“Before our ceremony our friends surprised us with an amazing outdoor mimosa and macaron bar to ourselves,” says Gold. “That was followed by a walk to our friend’s house for a short ring exchange ceremony where we were surprised, again, to see our closest friends in Baltimore watching from hundreds of feet ⁠— and, of course, more than six feet away from one another⁠ — down one street.” More friends and family joined the celebration via Zoom.

Halpern and Levin will still get married on their original June wedding date in Hawaii, where they live. Halpern’s mom shipped Halpern’s wedding dress, some family tallitot and the kippot customized for their Charleston wedding. They are planning to have the officiant, a photographer friend, and two witnesses to sign the ketubah. “Maybe a few people more depending on what the situation is like in Hawaii by then, but definitely something low key,” says Halpern.

On the day of their original wedding date, Flax and Barber received food and champagne from friends to enjoy. The couple watched Flax’s favorite movie, “When Harry Met Sally.”

Their ketubah was already sent to them with their original wedding date engraved.

We Zoomed with yet another couple on their original wedding date, which was also postponed. They were in their D.C. apartment, not too far from ours, in sweatpants, the bride wearing her veil. That image — our friend as a little box on Zoom in her wedding veil — pretty much summed things up for me.

The right attitude

I’ve been so impressed with how my friends have maintained the bigger picture. I asked Flax’s advice to other brides, and she said to put things in perspective. “I know that there are other brides who have gotten really upset, but there’s nothing we can do about this situation,” she says. “It’s not ideal, but the reality is people are literally dying. Obviously the wedding day is about you, but there are so many bigger things going on in the world right now that you have to appreciate what you have.”

Gold felt similarly. “When we knew our wedding plans had to change, I really wasn’t that worried or upset,” she says. “Three thoughts dictated my emotions at the time: There’s nothing we can do about it other than let time, and our insurance company, handle the emotional and financial damages, respectively; our friends and family will support us and want to celebrate no matter what time of year; and there are worse things happening in the world than our postponed wedding weekend.”

A sense of perspective has also helped Halpern see the bigger picture. “People are dying and losing their jobs because of this virus, so having to move our wedding celebration really isn’t a big deal in the scheme of things,” she says.

And as Flax said, “If you can get through this, I would hope that it is an indication that you will have a successful marriage.”

And 2021 will have a lot of weddings.

Anna Lippe is a Washington writer.

The post Here’s what my friends were doing when they weren’t having weddings appeared first on Washington Jewish Week.

Wedding postponement wine glasses. Decorative protective masks. These are signs of our COVID-19 pandemic-tainted times.

What to do about the already planned wedding? Postpone?  Cancel? Intimate ceremonies — immediate family only — with the larger celebration postponed are increasingly popular.

How can couples make plans given the uncertainties of ever-changing social distancing and restrictive orders — and not knowing if the illness will return? How should couples who have yet to start planning go about making wedding plans now for 2021 or beyond?

Wedding planners familiar with what’s going on in the industry can be helpful, and numerous wedding websites have COVID-19 guides.

Here’s a bit of advice:

“Take a deep breath,” says event planner Tracy Bloom Schwartz, president of Creative Parties Ltd. in Bethesda. “It’s not your fault.”

Then consider what your next steps are. Much of that will depend on whether your wedding date is close — summer — or in early fall, or later with invitations yet to be ordered, or you’re just starting to plan.

A lot of people are in this unusual situation, Bloom Schwartz says.

Your Jewish ceremony may change a bit.

Couples counseling may be entirely over digital platforms for now. Due to COVID-19, Rabbi Cantor Annie Bornstein, whose company is Jewish Heart and Soul, says she holds sessions over Skype, including for local couples. Her calendar now includes officiating within weeks an intimate wedding ceremony from her home in Gaithersburg over Zoom, the web platform used for conferences (and big for COVID-19 spring seders), with the couple and their family elsewhere. A few of her weddings have been rescheduled for fall, she says.

The six-foot spacing for social distancing means fewer people at a chuppah for now, and that could continue, depending on comfort levels, government rules, health guidelines and so on, she says. She’ll be further than usual from the couple, too, and says she “can’t imagine” performing a wedding with a mask covering half her face, though knows she may need to if requested.

How the kiddush cup is handled may get another look and tweaked to ensure that the bride and groom feel at ease with that.

“If they are comfortable with it — when I bless the couple I generally put my arms around them or wrap them in a tallit and bless them, and I won’t be able to do that on Zoom,” she says.

Depending on a couple’s comfort level and social distancing practices, the Reform rabbi says she hopes to be able to do it at other upcoming weddings.

Vicky Choy, owner and event planner of Event Accomplished based in Arlington, notes in an email that among additional considerations, observant couples “will need to revisit the bedeken [where the groom veils the bride] and the tish [where the groom, or both bride and groom teach Torah] also. The question is ultimately can you perform all these rituals in a safe manner while observing social distancing and possibly minimizing contact. It’s tricky.”

Postpone or cancel?

Will you regret skipping the celebration entirely? Then consider having a ceremony with immediate family and closest friend or two — stay within your jurisdiction’s limit for gatherings — and reschedule the larger celebration. Or postpone the ceremony and its reception. Your venues and vendors — you have contracts and gave them deposits — generally will work with you to reschedule, Bloom Schwartz says. Currently, she says, no one’s certain what future events will look like as a result of COVID-19.

Much will depend on what evolving local government reopening orders allow — some activities are starting to resume with cautions — what vendors and venues can accommodate and the like, says Cara Weiss, founder and senior planner/director of Save The Date, LLC Events in Potomac.

Among the questions, Weiss says: Instead of trays of hors d’oeuvres being passed among guests will there be a small appetizer plate for each guest? Fewer seats per table to create a bit of distance among guests? Will the number of people permitted in a room be reduced? Will the dance floor be impacted? Masks for guests? For waitstaff?

If you decide to cancel the event — whether that’s either only the celebration or a ceremony with a reception in favor of a private ceremony — you may lose part or all of each deposit. Read your contracts carefully, wedding planners say. The inability to hold an event on a contracted date due to a situation that is under neither side’s control is disappointing to couples and businesses, and wedding planners advise trying to work out a resolution. Do consider that the disappointment over COVID-19 soured wedding plans may be offset by a later celebration.

Livestream the intimate ceremony.
Preserve the video.

Technology allows you to share a small ceremony with a large crowd. Mute guests during the ceremony. You may want to include such things as a toast, remarks by the few people there, a dance. An external mic, tripod and a friend managing the livestream are helpful, or consider hiring a professional. Check livestreaming platforms for price, fees for optional services, participant limits and more. Platforms include Facebook, FaceTime (for Apple products only), Joy and Zoom. Preserving it (YouTube is one of several options) allows you to view it and share it, including during a later reception.

Include guests in other ways in your small ceremony.

You can hold a drive-by mini-celebration perhaps with music — guests can honk congrats and wave from their cars, says Choy. You may want to give them a party box with a split of champagne and festive goodies — or send a similar box to virtual attendees of your livestreamed ceremony. And yes, that sort of event can be fun.

Amy and Robert (they didn’t want their last names published) changed plans and decided to keep the date with a ceremony downsized to only immediate family and are rescheduling their party. Catering by Seasons of College Park catered the family dinner at their Alexandria home, and at the scheduled time, local well-wishing friends drove by. Each car received a box with a bottle of champagne, a note asking them to toast the couple, take a selfie and post it to a virtual photo booth put together by Electric Events of Rockville.

“It was an oasis in a desert,” says Glynis Keith, senior sales and event manager at Catering by Seasons, coming during the pandemic.

Whether starting to plan, or rescheduling, be flexible and don’t dawdle.

Bookings are well into 2021. Couples rescheduling are vying with the newly engaged for the same dates. Many dates are taken, says Weiss. Saturday nights go fast; consider other days, including weekdays (prices are often lower) and holiday weekends when people will have an extra day off. Many venues, though closed, have added walk-through videos, Weiss notes.

Consider that although the number of people who decline invitations is typically about 15 percent, health and travel concerns may at least double that, Bloom Schwartz says. Choy says that as you look to reschedule, choose a few vendors you’d really like to keep — for example, that could be the venue, caterer and DJ – and see what they’ve got open on and around your preferred new dates. Check with the people closest to you as well.

Stay in touch with guests.

They may have travel and lodging arrangements to redo. “Wedding postponed” and “change the date” announcements come in card, magnet and email formats.

Call and text as well. Keep your wedding website current. “Your guests understand that is a very unusual circumstance. They will understand if you can have only five or 10 people (at your ceremony),” Choy says.

Keep this is mind: In the long run, this is about the start of a marriage.

Andrea F. Siegel is a Washington-area writer.

The post Here are ways you can make the best of your wedding plans appeared first on Washington Jewish Week.

By Ellen Braunstein

As the coronavirus forces wedding cancellations and postponements, two Washington-area wedding vendors have pivoted their businesses to help fight COVID-19. Something Vintage Rentals has organized a mask-making drive and Occasions Catering has launched “Occasions Giving Kitchen,” a fundraising initiative that brings wholesome meals to under-served communities.

Based in the District, Something Vintage Rentals specializes in reclaimed, handmade and heirloom pieces for weddings and other events. Owner Dawn Crothers mobilized a network of 150 volunteers to make the face covers that protect front-line health workers from respiratory infection. The rental shop is also paying additional seamstresses and laid off workers to help fulfill mask orders.

Volunteers have turned out 4,000 masks so far. Crothers’ company is providing many of the volunteers with the pattern, material and elastic at drop-off points throughout the metro area.

The protective face shields that Crothers calls Victory Masks have gone to Children’s National Hospital, MedStar Washington Hospital Center, Sibley Memorial Hospital, Community of Hope and nursing homes.

“Word spread through social media,” Crothers said of Something Vintage’s signature multi-colored masks. “We discovered that so many hospitals needed them and it just kind of blossomed and exploded from there. People just want to help our frontline healthcare workers.”

Harvey Green, Medstar vice president and chief philanthropy officer, said, “We are so grateful to Dawn and her team for dedicating themselves to making these homemade masks.”

Cole Norton, a potter for Something Vintage and a nursing home worker, has sewn 200 masks so far. “I think it’s important to keep everyone healthy. I’ve taken care of COVID-19 patients at a nursing home so I know how serious it is.”

Under normal circumstances Occasions Caterers in Washington is a full-service catering company that specializes in elegant cuisine for weddings and other events. They offer couples fully customized menus, a wedding consultant team and talented chefs.When the pandemic hit, Occasions formed Occasions Giving Kitchen to provide philanthropic relief feeding efforts for homebound seniors and disadvantaged youth and families. The special events vendor is working with DC Greens, a food justice program, Wards 7 and 8, churches and N Street Village.

They are also safely delivering food to frontline workers who need to eat on the job. To date, Occasions Giving Kitchen has provided more than 37,700 meals to communities in need.

Director of Marketing Denise Vu, said, “Hunger has been something that has been close to our co-founders Mark and Eric Michael. “We’ve always been working with many organizations that combat hunger in the city. Once the pandemic hit, it was really natural to work with these partners through the Giving Kitchen, which is the philanthropic relief feeding efforts.”

The Giving Kitchen has access to an extensive kitchen, a delivery fleet and food and supply chains. “It really just made sense,” Vu said. “When we formalized it, we started asking clients for donations to help with this really important effort for the city.”

Donations run the gamut from $10 to hundreds or more. Clients who had to cancel the events are applying the money for the relief fund to help with the food drive efforts. Occasions is also donating proceeds from its home meal kits and Mobile Market, a convenient, safe, drive-through market that is open twice a week.

“We’re making sure there is access to food throughout the city during this shutdown,” Vu said. “It’s at the core of what we do, bring happiness to people in the form of food and catering. Really this is no different, it’s just a different circumstance.”

Ellen Braunstein is a writer in Chicago.

The post Wedding vendors give back appeared first on Washington Jewish Week.

When my fiancé, Alex, and I got engaged in January, the COVID vaccine rollout was still shrouded in uncertainty and it was hard to imagine the limitations on gatherings lifting much, if at all, by our May wedding date. Apartment dwellers ourselves, we left imposing on home-owning friends for use of a backyard as a last resort. After all, safely spacing people and serving food would be challenging, restroom access could be a touchy subject and we would need to rent a tent in case it rained.

Back in February and March, the prospect of a 10-person maximum for indoor gatherings at some venues sent me trawling through the internet and crisscrossing the DMV by car to explore outdoor options with the trifecta of features we sought: natural setting, affordable cost and not a logistical nightmare.

Fast forward to late April, and Maryland, Virginia and the District doubled the maximum number of people who could attend indoor events from 25 to 50, and maximum number at outdoor events from 50 to a whopping 100. As of May 12, more than 50 percent of the region’s residents were at least partially vaccinated and the number of new COVID cases and hospitalizations locally were dropping, according to local departments of health. All this opened the door to celebrations in indoor settings previously off limits during the pandemic, even with burgeoning guest lists.

But for couples still committed to an outdoor wedding, whether to accommodate COVID-conscious family members, cut venue costs or because they just love to be surrounded by nature, here are some lessons I learned searching for my pandemic-perfect wedding site.

Pandemic discount packages get you maximum bang for your buck — if you can keep the guest list way down.

When we started considering venues, the first choice that leapt to mind was one that is reflexive for many MoCo residents: Brookside Gardens in Silver Spring. The gently rolling hills of this botanical garden and nature center, located within Wheaton Regional Park, are replete with gorgeous spots for a wedding ceremony and broad spaces to safely seat one’s guests during the COVID times. Additionally, as part of the Montgomery County Parks and Recreation system, Brookside Garden offers discounts on event packages for county residents. Ka-ching!

When I reached out to Brookside Gardens’ event department in February, however, I discovered they had no availability for a weekend wedding until at least August. Not only that: Unlike several venues I looked into later, Brookside Gardens did not offer a discounted package for pandemic-era smaller weddings that reflected the restrictions on large gatherings. I wasn’t prepared to pay the same amount for a 25-person ceremony as a 300-person blowout party.

Such discount packages made a venue like Dumbarton House in Georgetown seem like a no-brainer. Back in 2020, Dumbarton House instituted the policy that it could accommodate 50 individuals per event if the District of Columbia is in phases 2 or 3 in its ReOpen DC plan. In March, the Dogwood Event Package looked like it would suit our needs. For $1,000, plus a $100 refundable security deposit, one would get their choice of the property’s North Garden, Lower Courtyard, or East Park for a seated ceremony (chairs provided); the tented Upper Terrace provided as a rainy-day alternative for the ceremony and an ideal spot for the reception in any weather; as well as two rectangular tables, two cocktail tables, and white linens provided for the three-hour maximum duration of the event.

As we continued deliberating and the District opened up to allow outdoor gatherings of 50 instead of 25 people, we had to weigh the cost of upgrading our package choice to allow more family and friends to participate in our special day. An increase of just 10 people to the Crepe Myrtle Event Package, which admittedly also offered more time and perks, would bump the price from $1,000 to $3,000 dollars. Go up to 40 people, and the price would be $5,000.

Finding ourselves outside our desired price range for a low-budget wedding, we shifted our gaze back to public parks as our best option.

Public parks have rules, and some might surprise you.

I have many fond memories as a single parent exploring Rock Creek Park in the District with my son, now almost 10 years old, and I thought having the wedding there could be a sweet tribute and subtle form of closure to that period in our lives. The park features covered picnic areas available for reservation, a viable option for small event with a rustic vibe.

After scouring maps online and doing a drive-by visit in person, I identified Picnic Area 6 as my prime candidate: a picnic shelter staggered away from the open-air picnic tables, for a little more privacy; open space for the ceremony not far from the soothing sound of the creek; and easy access to public parking and a public restroom close by (but not too close by, if you catch my drift).

When I called the U.S. National Parks Service office, I was under the impression that all I would need for my event was to reserve the picnic shelter and maybe pay for a photo permit. A very patient park ranger explained to me that not only would I need apply for a special use permit to hold a wedding in Rock Creek Park, but that weddings are also limited to four specific locations: Georgetown Waterfront Park, Old Stone House, Montrose Park and Meridian Hill Park. The maximum participant limit is 50 people, the duration of the event could be no longer than two hours and decorations and chairs are not permitted. These were not pandemic-related rules but standard procedures to protect the condition of the parks.

No decorations? I could handle that. No chairs? Borderline dealbreaker. Limiting my options to four spots with no personal sentimental value? I didn’t see a need to have our guests stand for two hours for that. Surely we could find another, more hospitable, option.

In the interests of full disclosure, I will confess that I am not a huge stickler for rules. Left to my own devices, I have little doubt I would have held a flash mob-esque wedding and been prepared to disband or at least dissemble at the first sign of trouble. As the daughter of two lawyers and sibling of two more, however, I knew I would never hear the end of it from my family if I was presented with a citation along with my ketubah.

Rock Creek Park was out.

Get creative for the sake of tradition.

There was a factor I failed to consider about a public park wedding, even before my conversation with the park ranger popped the bubble of my plans.

In the interests of keeping our budget down, Alex and I were willing to forgo some elements traditionally associated with Orthodox weddings. A live band, for instance, and the crazy smorgasbord. A few details, however, are part of the ritual fabric of a religious wedding and cannot be foregone.

One of these details is the period of yichud, or seclusion, immediately after the wedding ceremony. The bride and groom head to a room to spend their first minutes alone as a married couple while the guests head to the reception area. A conversation with our rabbi confirmed that this practice was non-negotiable for us — but how could we create the yichud room experience in a public park?

The room is required to have a lockable door, so a tent wasn’t going to cut it. There are supposed to be two eidim, or witnesses, posted sentinel-like at the door — if we hid out in a car, would we need two people per door? This was getting ridiculous.

Meadowside Nature Center, located in Rock Creek Regional Park in Maryland, appeared to offer a solution.

Meadowside boasts a covered picnic shelter larger than the one at Picnic Area 6 at Rock Creek Park in DC. Reserving the shelter for the day is more affordable than booking Brookside Gardens or Dumbarton House. Finally, the nature center building is around the corner from the picnic shelter; with classrooms available for rent, that meant we would not only have access to the center’s restrooms for our guests, but also a yichud room for after the ceremony.

Unfortunately, while the park is open to guests and the picnic shelter is available for reservations, the nature center is closed for renovations until August.

Bye-bye, yichud room, and adios to the only public toilets for miles.

I successfully pitched our rabbi the idea of using a friend’s pop-up camper as the yichud room, but did not receive positive feedback from friends and family about the idea of a port-a-potty for wedding guests, so we were back to square one.

Backyard wedding, anybody?

Rachel Kohn is a freelance writer living in Silver Spring.

The post Planning an outdoor wedding? Learn from my experience. appeared first on Washington Jewish Week.

There’s a lot on your plate when you’re getting married. If the push to get a genetic screening feels like just one more thing, the organizations doing the screening can offer you many reasons you should feel otherwise.

The Jewish population, especially those of Ashkenazi (Eastern European) heritage, have a predilection for a number of genetic disorders and genetic screening can help prevent passing those genes to your future kids.

“The only way to know if you’re a carrier is to get tested or have an affected child,” said Hillary Kener, assistant director of outreach and marketing for JScreen, the Jewish genetic testing company. “And that’s what we’re trying to prevent.”

Take Tay Sachs, the fatal genetic disease. About one in 30 Jews is a carrier for it, compared to a general population rate of one in 250. In the 1970s, there was a push to start screening Jewish couples who wanted to have children and the grassroots action got results. The incidence of Tay Sachs went down by 95 percent.

The JScreen test — which consists of spitting in a tube and sending it in a prepaid envelope back to JScreen — screens for a panel of more than 200 diseases. Some, like Tay Sachs and Gaucher disease, have a higher incidence rate in Jews while others, like Duchenne muscular dystrophy and Salla disease, do not have a higher rate in Jews, but are included in the screening.

The other Jewish organization that does genetic screening is Dor Yeshorim. The organization’s policy is to test for only “recessive diseases where pain and suffering is avoidable,” according to its website, which means it likely tests for fewer diseases than JScreen. Dor Yeshorim said in an email that it does not speak to the media.

Recessive means that a child can only be affected if both parents are a carrier — a 25 percent chance. Carriers don’t have any symptoms themselves, since the disease needs both sets of the carrier genes to take effect.

Dor Yeshorim’s screening is a part of matchmaking. Those who are screened are given an ID number and when they meet their potential spouse, both will send in their numbers to find out if they are a compatible match — that is, they are not carriers for the same diseases. Those who find they are both carriers of a disease will be offered genetic
counseling by Dor Yeshorim.

JScreen’s philosophy is “knowledge is power,” said Kener. JScreen gives their clients the full results and offers them genetic counseling.

Kener said that couples who are carriers of the same disease don’t have to give up on having a family.

“Thankfully, in 2018, there’s so many more options to help couples have healthy babies,” she said, pointing to the possibility of using donated eggs and in vitro fertilization with pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (doctors can genetically screen embryos for the specific diseases).

And JScreen is trying to find the young people both before and after they’re coupled. They partner with synagogues, Hillels and young professional groups to set up pop-up screening booths.

“Newly engaged or married couples are a really big group,” Kener said, because they’re the most likely to be thinking about having children in the near future. Many rabbis will also hand out JScreen materials to couples in pre-marital counseling. “We’re really trying to become a household name,” Kener said. “Like, ‘Oh, I got JScreened.’”

And it’s not just Jewish heterosexual couples who should get screened, she emphasized. Interfaith and
same-sex couples should as well, since anyone can be a carrier.

JScreen has also enlisted the help of the best pushers of all — Jewish parents and grandparents. The organization heard from a number of parents and grandparents asking if they could buy a test for their child or grandchild. So, JScreen set up a way to gift the test to someone online.

“It’s important to be proactive when it comes to the health of our future families,” Kener said. “It takes 10 minutes. There’s no reason not to get tested.”

hmonicken@midatlanticmedia.com

The post Add it to the wedding checklist: Genetic Screening appeared first on Washington Jewish Week.

The joy of a wedding is not usually associated with the discomfort and serious reflection of a fast.

But in some pockets of the Jewish community, that may be just the reason brides and grooms don’t eat or drink on the day of their wedding. Fasting, say some rabbis, allows the couple one last opportunity for personal reflection before committing to a lifelong relationship.

“On the wedding day, our tradition teaches that all the bride’s and groom’s sins are wiped clean,” said Rabbi Mark Novak, of Minyan Oneg Shabbat, who officiates at weddings in the Washington area. “A wedding has a strong connection to Yom Kippur. The not eating reminds us of that soul connection that we call Adonai.”

Novak said he meets with couples before their wedding in for what he calls cheshbon hanefesh, or spiritual accounting, the same process observant Jews do during the High Holidays.

“What we talk about is the strengths of the individual and the relationship,” he said. “You want to arrive with as much intent and mindfulness as possible before you enter the chuppah,” the marriage canopy.

The purpose of fasting, he said, is to use the empty stomach to prompt introspection and an appreciation of the seriousness of marriage.

After the wedding ceremony, couples who have fasted will typically break the fast during yichud, a period when the bride and groom are alone together for the first time.

Rabbi David Kuperman of Silver Spring said he and his wife, Linda Siegel, fasted when they got married. Fasting, combined with a visit to the mikvah, or ritual bath, before the wedding, offered him and Siegel an opportunity to metaphorically cleanse themselves of any lingering doubts that they had.

“We wanted to be in the right mood and be clean and ready for a new experience,” he said.

Kuperman said fasting before a wedding is in some ways similar to ridding the house of chametz, or leaven, before Passover.

Both acts are a spiritual commitment and a dedication that the bride and groom have for each other.

There is also another, more practical reason that some couples fast before a wedding according to Chabad.org — to avoid the consumption of alcoholic beverages in order to prevent drunken parties or other indulgences from occurring the night before.

The practice is not explicitly written in the Talmud, it states, but is an ancient tradition observed by Jewish scholars.

Novak said the key to a successful fast is for couples to monitor how they feel throughout the day. He recalled the wedding of his brother and sister-in-law, who was wearing a heavy veil after an all-day fast.

“She could hardly breathe,” Novak said. “She nearly fainted as she was walking down the aisle, because she was so weak from having fasted.”

Maharat Ruth Balinsky Friedman of Ohev Sholom — The National Synagogue in Washington, had similar advice for couples who were thinking of fasting.

“I’ve heard horror stories of brides and grooms vomiting because they go from fasting to inhaling food to dancing,” she said.

“So that is why I advise being very careful and only doing what one wants to do and feels that they can do.”

dschere@midatlanticmedia.com

The post Fasting before wedding can help couples take ‘spiritual inventory’ appeared first on Washington Jewish Week.

These days, when a Jew gets married, it’s likely to be to a non-Jewish partner. The famous Pew study of 2013 found that, in the years since 2000, the majority of non-Orthodox Jews — 72 percent — married someone who follows another religious tradition — or none at all.

When a Jew marries a Christian — or a Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or
Zoroastrian — there’s no guide to follow. And many of the necessary rituals may be unfamiliar to the other partner.

Such weddings aren’t trying to do the traditions “right,” says Rabbi Deborah Reichmann, of Potomac, who officiates interfaith weddings. The actions aren’t seen as a literal connection to the deity.
“Weddings are all metaphor anyway,” Reichmann says. “The couple is basically professing their love and fidelity, and there are different ways of doing that.”

“For a lot of people who are really in love, their love upends religion,” says Rabbi Annie Bornstein, another Washington-area interfaith officiant. “For others, religion is not a major issue in their love.”
Four interfaith couples spoke to WJW about their weddings, how they tackled the planning and the
challenges they faced.

Trevor Smith, 28, and his fiancée, Shir Kaplan, 25, are planning a wedding for May 2020. Smith is Christian, Kaplan is Jewish. They’re just beginning to plan.

“The interesting part about being an interfaith couple is what our faiths mean to us,” Smith says. “Both of our faiths are very important to us. We’ve had a very open conversation about what important traditions we want. We see our wedding as an opportunity to experience this other faith [and] do it right.”

(Kaplan was studying for the MCATs at the time of the interview and unavailable to talk.)
They’re firm on a few things, Smith says. They want two officiants, a Jew and a Christian. They want a ketubah (a Jewish marriage agreement) a chuppah (Jewish marriage canopy) and a glass to break at the end of the ceremony. They also want to perform the Christian custom of washing each other’s feet.

According Smith, Kaplan’s family is from Israel and their diet is kosher style. He says he’s learned a lot from his relationship with the Kaplans.

“The Jewish identity is much more complex than I originally thought,” he says. “It’s not just a faith
matter. It’s a cultural matter, an ancestry matter and very ingrained in multiple aspects of her life. But in terms of wedding planning, it’s been eye opening.”

It becomes more complicated if a Jew is engaged to someone who isn’t Christian. They might
struggle to find officiants or turn up a search of other couples who have led the way.

“We couldn’t find anything like our wedding,” says Jonathan Tahan, a Jew whose wife, Ashwinnie, is Hindu.

We had no starting point.”

Tahan says while they had no trouble finding a Hindu priest willing to co-officiate the wedding (the priest was a relative of Ashwinnie’s) they did have trouble finding a Jewish
officiant. Then they struggled to figure out how to combine the traditions in a way that was satisfactory to both officiants and families.

“After that, we got a plan of how we were going to mix our traditions,” Tahan says. “We wanted [the officiants] to legitimize [what we wanted to do]. It was a new endeavor for all four of us.”

What they ended up doing was switching back and forth between the Hindu ceremony and the Jewish one. It all lasted about 1 ½ hours.

“There’s a lot in a Hindu wedding, we had to cut some out to make it shorter,” Tahan says. “[The officiants] knew that this would be a little risky and we got confirmation and acceptance from them.”

The hardest part was breaking the glass. The couple in Hindu weddings goes shoeless. To protect Tahan’s bare foot, the glass was wrapped in extra layers of napkins. Tahan was still
nervous about cutting his foot, though it worked out in the end.

Another Jewish-Hindu couple, Alyson Kelly and Rahul Srivastava, found a different solution to breaking the glass. At that point in the ceremony, they left the platform and put on their shoes.

After Srivastava broke the glass, the bridesmaids acted out a Hindu
tradition of stealing his shoes.

Kelly said they benefitted from working with a Hindu priest who had performed an interfaith wedding with a rabbi.

“We had a script that we were basing it on, and we went from there. [There was] some kind of jumping in between,” Kelly said, adding she was happy to have somebody who knew what he was doing.
They had a chuppah that doubled as a Hindu wedding canopy, or mandap; danced the horah and were lifted on chairs. But they decided not to have a ketubah because Kelly’s parents didn’t have one at their
wedding.

During the Hindu ceremony, Srivastava danced his way to Kelly. There was a fire ceremony where offerings were made and where the couple danced around the blaze. And Srivastava applied red powder to

Kelly’s hair to symbolize her new status as a married woman.

Kelly says it was important to have both religions represented at their wedding, even if the Hindu
ceremony was longer.

Michael Tuteur and Maryam Nezamzadeh wanted their Jewish-Muslim wedding to balance the two religions as perfectly as possible. Tuteur, who is Jewish, says that Nezamzadeh had planned the entire wedding so that nothing would be left out.

“We were deliberate. We had to be,” he says. “We didn’t want people to think we were lopsided or imbalanced. I think that just starts with understanding. It requires constant thought. And that will be true for the rest of our lives.”

Bringing their traditions together was about honoring their respective heritages as well as their families.

And this wasn’t a simple task, Tuteur says. They struggled to find officiants who wouldn’t put strict
conditions on their wedding or who would perform it at all.

In the end, they worked with Bornstein and a Muslim friend of a friend who was willing to perform the
ceremony. They had two weddings that day.

First came a full Persian-Muslim ceremony, which included a sofreh, a table laid with multiple objects each with its own meaning.

Once the wedding was finished, the couple turned in the opposite direction, stepped under a chuppah and underwent a full Jewish wedding.

Tuteur says the importance to them was performing each ceremony in full and recognizing the importance of each ritual and object.

“Ultimately, the last step was breaking the glass, which to me is a reminder that
support is fragile,” Tuteur says. “Extra weight can crush the glass’ state of support. Just like the glass, the marriage is fragile. Extra weight will break a marriage, too.”

And though they tried to honor their Jewish and Muslim heritages at their wedding, the couple say they are more interested in creating their own traditions and holidays, rather than figuring out how to combine two different traditions.

“For us, there might be holidays, but we [also] celebrate our own holidays by, for
example, going back to a restaurant where something important happened,” Tuteur says.
Tuteur and Nezamzadeh participated in two complete weddings, either of which another couple would have been married at the end. When did Tuteur and Nezamzadeh consider themselves married?

“‘Love’ to us is short for ‘all-of’ the support, Tuteur says. “So, we considered ourselves married only after both certificates [the ketubah and nikaah were signed] and both ceremonies were complete. All-of the steps had to be completed.

For all four couples involved in this article, religion was important to consider in planning their ceremony, but second in consideration to their love.

“There’s no stopping them anyway,” Bornstein said. “These couples are going to bring the best of what each has to offer.”

scooper@midatlanticmedia.com

The post Joys and struggles of planning an interfaith wedding appeared first on Washington Jewish Week.

Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend, but how they’re mounted on rings is still up for discussion. We’ve spoken to some experts about emerging and consistent trends in the engagement ring industry.

“We’re probably seeing more and more rose gold,” said Leslie Schwab, manager at Aras Jewelers in Rockville. Kayda Araki, manager at Secrete Fine Jewelry in Bethesda, agreed and said that rose gold, along with white gold and platinum are the most popular metals. Araki said, “We’re seeing an increase in the number of people that want rose gold rings.”

Susan Koehn, of Susan Koehn Designs in Potomac, added that mixed metals are becoming more popular in rings while “yellow gold is back.”

“The cuts that are in are round, always, and square. Emerald, princess, and cushion cut [are] very big too,” Koehn said.

Schwab added that “round is most traditional. Pears have made a slight comeback, but not as much as they were” in the late 1980s and early ‘90s.

Cushions, in case you’re wondering, are similar to square or princess cuts, but instead of having 90-degree angles at each corner, the corners are soft and rounded. For designs, Araki thinks that vintage-inspired designs are the “most interesting trend right now.”

“We’ve definitely experienced people taking designs from art deco or vintage rings. That’s something we’ve noticed more lately. It ends up looking very nice and you can get a really unique ring that’s really
sentimental and personal,” Araki said.

Other non-traditional engagement rings are in as well, Araki said. There are “people who no longer want that center stone in a classic setting, but who want a ring that might to an outsider not even look like an engagement ring, but it is and it holds the same sentimental value for them.”

Araki also noticed that three-stone rings are coming back. In a three-stone ring, one bigger gem is nestled on each side by a smaller gem. “For a long time, solitaires or haloes were very popular and people are reverting back to the three-stone style,” she said.

Schwab noticed something similar, but added that haloes are still largely in style. “Sometimes they’re doing a multiple halo or a triple halo,” she said. Haloes are rings of smaller stones surrounding a larger stone as accents.

In terms of gemstones, Araki said that some people are using other gem stones including sapphire and
emerald instead of diamonds. Schwab has noticed a similar trend toward sapphire or other hard gems, but says, “We’re still selling mainly diamonds.” She said they usually caution against using soft gems because they scratch and degrade much faster.

The post Ringing in new trends appeared first on Washington Jewish Week.

By Anna Lippe

Braid, half-up or chignon? Vintage-style curls or smooth waves? Wreaths, tiaras, hair pins or leaf crowns? And you thought choosing the groom was the hardest wedding-related decision you’d have to make.

There’s more to wedding hair than meets the…follicle. You want it to feel authentic to you. But you probably want it to be a cut above your day-to-day style. And you want to be able to dance. (Sweaty hair is no fun for any bride.) The options are enough to make your head spin.

Long-time wedding hair stylist Susie Ruckstuhl Mcnair, who works at Hair Lounge Salon in the District, has styled hair in every imaginable way. “Every bride is different. I usually ask them to go through Pinterest to see what styles they like. Almost every bride has a vision in their head when they walk in for their hair trial.”

The trial is a great time to experiment with styles and make sure you are happy with your hair before the big day. Susie recommends using the trial as a time to see how your hair will look exactly on the wedding day — so bring any hair pieces you want to wear, and wait until your hair is around the length it’ll be for the wedding.

“I try to work with the bride so we can create something together, so they get exactly what they want,” she says.

It takes work and intention to make hair look natural. Many brides are opting for rustic, natural, romantic and messy looks, inspired in part by Meghan Markle’s messy bun style for her May 2018 wedding.

“On the day of, my hair stylist had the brilliant idea of weaving leftover flowers and sprigs from the floral arrangements into my hair, which made the style look unique and kind of rustic but in a classy way,” says Leigh Shapiro, a D.C. resident who got married in 2018 in Lancaster, Pa. “I was so happy with how my hair turned out.”

Keeping the hair in place for the entire day (and night) is a primary concern for many brides.

“When I thought about how I wanted my hair to be for my wedding I knew I wanted to set it and forget it,” says Jackie Black, a D.C.-based bride. “To me, this meant having my hair up so that I don’t have to worry about the wind blowing it around or getting too hot while I’m dancing.”

Shapiro says her biggest concern was figuring out a low bun style that wouldn’t start to look messy the second she hit the dance floor. “I was very conscious of the fact that a chunk of sweaty hair stuck to my forehead could ruin an otherwise beautiful professional photo, so I definitely wanted to make sure my stylist and I had a plan to keep my hair in place all night. My hair didn’t budge throughout the ceremony, a vigorous horah and the four hours of dancing that followed.”

Photogenic hairstyles are important to many brides. The wedding may be one day, but the photos last a lifetime.

“The style is important because I still want to look like me, but I also want it to look good for pictures, and be somewhat classic and timeless, rather than uber trendy,” says Black.
Your wedding is not the time to experiment with totally new hair lengths and colors. Mcnair, who has been written up in Washingtonian and Washingtonian Bride and Groom for her wedding work, says the week of the wedding is not the time to change things up.

“My wedding hairdo was basically a glam version of how I wear my hair every day — half up, half down, with soft waves,” says Dana Bloom. “I wanted to look like me.”

Mcnair has seen everything in the bridal suite while the bridal party gets ready for the big day She loves when the bridesmaids sing and dance around the room, celebrating the bride.
Wedding hair trends have changed dramatically over time, but some things — like the veil — are timeless.

Bloom says she didn’t always want to wear a veil, but she is glad she did. “I really loved the way it looked in pictures and I’m planning to lend it to family members who get married in the future so it can be their something borrowed,” she says.

For Mcnair, the best moment comes after she’s put her finishing touches on the bride’s hair. “When the bride’s hair and make-up are finished, I often stand on a chair to put on the veil and any hair piece. Everyone in the bridal suite is standing around taking pictures. I feel like that moment is really special privilege for me.”

Now, it’s time for the bride to get married. Mazal tov!

Anna Lippe is a Washington-area writer.

PHOTO: Leigh Shapiro

Photo by Sten Hartman

The post It takes work and intention to make hair look natural appeared first on Washington Jewish Week.

When 2020 began, I was looking forward to attending five weddings with my boyfriend, Noam. We had plans to travel from D.C. all over the East Coast, from Walt Disney World to Philadelphia. In fact, we were supposed to have three weddings on consecutive weekends this spring.

We had hotels, flights, outfits picked out. We attended bachelor parties (where Noam went skeet shooting) and bachelorette parties (where I went on a New Orleans steamboat) for our friends to be wed in 2020. We had our Disney World rides picked out, and I even begrudgingly agreed to visit Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge in Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

Noam and I moved in together in the beginning of March. We decided to move when we did partially to be settled in before all of our April and May wedding travels. I envisioned having friends over when we weren’t traveling to enjoy our Shaw rooftop with a great view of the city. Masks and gloves were not part of the vision. Essentially, I went from living alone in a quaint studio in Kalorama to being quarantined in a one-bedroom with Noam.

The pandemic had other things in store

One after the other, we received thoughtful emails outlining postponed wedding dates and rescheduled plans that contained sentiments like: “We truly appreciate all the love and support we have received through this crazy adventure and cannot wait to celebrate our special day with you.”

I appreciate the thought our friends have put into rethinking their weddings, and I’ll be excited to celebrate with them when it is safe.

Like everyone, our calendars have completely opened up. While we were at a (socially distant) cabin in Virginia for Noam’s birthday, I realized that if not for the pandemic, I would have been dancing the horah at my friend Sam Flax’s wedding at that very moment.
Doing a puzzle in an owl-themed log cabin was a very different night.

The brides’ perspectives

I talked to three brides — Flax, Allie Gold and Sarah Halpern — about changing their wedding plans amid the pandemic. (I’m sure there are bridezillas out there, but these three are not.)

Flax and her fiancé, Jimmy Barber, planned on getting married in Baltimore in April. After postponing to July, they postponed again to April 2021.

“We made the decision to move it to July which, based on the information at the time, seemed plausible, and then it became apparent that the flattening of the curve and the whole trend would take longer than we thought,” says Flax, who invited 210 people to her wedding. “It became apparent that July wasn’t going to work.”

Another wedding we planned to attend was of Halpern and fiancé Seth Levin, who postponed fairly early on because they and most of their guests would have needed to travel to Charleston, S.C. “We actually started discussing the possibility of moving/canceling back in February, so we were mentally prepared when it became real, says Halpern.

Flax, Gold, and Halpern all pushed their wedding celebrations to 2021, but each had a different approach to how they spent their original wedding day.

What they did on their original wedding date

The pandemic didn’t stop Gold and fiancé Alex Smith from getting officially married on their original wedding date. They got married outside in the Canton neighborhood of Baltimore.

“Before our ceremony our friends surprised us with an amazing outdoor mimosa and macaron bar to ourselves,” says Gold. “That was followed by a walk to our friend’s house for a short ring exchange ceremony where we were surprised, again, to see our closest friends in Baltimore watching from hundreds of feet ⁠— and, of course, more than six feet away from one another⁠ — down one street.” More friends and family joined the celebration via Zoom.

Halpern and Levin will still get married on their original June wedding date in Hawaii, where they live. Halpern’s mom shipped Halpern’s wedding dress, some family tallitot and the kippot customized for their Charleston wedding. They are planning to have the officiant, a photographer friend, and two witnesses to sign the ketubah. “Maybe a few people more depending on what the situation is like in Hawaii by then, but definitely something low key,” says Halpern.

On the day of their original wedding date, Flax and Barber received food and champagne from friends to enjoy. The couple watched Flax’s favorite movie, “When Harry Met Sally.”

Their ketubah was already sent to them with their original wedding date engraved.

We Zoomed with yet another couple on their original wedding date, which was also postponed. They were in their D.C. apartment, not too far from ours, in sweatpants, the bride wearing her veil. That image — our friend as a little box on Zoom in her wedding veil — pretty much summed things up for me.

The right attitude

I’ve been so impressed with how my friends have maintained the bigger picture. I asked Flax’s advice to other brides, and she said to put things in perspective. “I know that there are other brides who have gotten really upset, but there’s nothing we can do about this situation,” she says. “It’s not ideal, but the reality is people are literally dying. Obviously the wedding day is about you, but there are so many bigger things going on in the world right now that you have to appreciate what you have.”

Gold felt similarly. “When we knew our wedding plans had to change, I really wasn’t that worried or upset,” she says. “Three thoughts dictated my emotions at the time: There’s nothing we can do about it other than let time, and our insurance company, handle the emotional and financial damages, respectively; our friends and family will support us and want to celebrate no matter what time of year; and there are worse things happening in the world than our postponed wedding weekend.”

A sense of perspective has also helped Halpern see the bigger picture. “People are dying and losing their jobs because of this virus, so having to move our wedding celebration really isn’t a big deal in the scheme of things,” she says.

And as Flax said, “If you can get through this, I would hope that it is an indication that you will have a successful marriage.”

And 2021 will have a lot of weddings.

Anna Lippe is a Washington writer.

The post Here’s what my friends were doing when they weren’t having weddings appeared first on Washington Jewish Week.

Wedding postponement wine glasses. Decorative protective masks. These are signs of our COVID-19 pandemic-tainted times.

What to do about the already planned wedding? Postpone?  Cancel? Intimate ceremonies — immediate family only — with the larger celebration postponed are increasingly popular.

How can couples make plans given the uncertainties of ever-changing social distancing and restrictive orders — and not knowing if the illness will return? How should couples who have yet to start planning go about making wedding plans now for 2021 or beyond?

Wedding planners familiar with what’s going on in the industry can be helpful, and numerous wedding websites have COVID-19 guides.

Here’s a bit of advice:

“Take a deep breath,” says event planner Tracy Bloom Schwartz, president of Creative Parties Ltd. in Bethesda. “It’s not your fault.”

Then consider what your next steps are. Much of that will depend on whether your wedding date is close — summer — or in early fall, or later with invitations yet to be ordered, or you’re just starting to plan.

A lot of people are in this unusual situation, Bloom Schwartz says.

Your Jewish ceremony may change a bit.

Couples counseling may be entirely over digital platforms for now. Due to COVID-19, Rabbi Cantor Annie Bornstein, whose company is Jewish Heart and Soul, says she holds sessions over Skype, including for local couples. Her calendar now includes officiating within weeks an intimate wedding ceremony from her home in Gaithersburg over Zoom, the web platform used for conferences (and big for COVID-19 spring seders), with the couple and their family elsewhere. A few of her weddings have been rescheduled for fall, she says.

The six-foot spacing for social distancing means fewer people at a chuppah for now, and that could continue, depending on comfort levels, government rules, health guidelines and so on, she says. She’ll be further than usual from the couple, too, and says she “can’t imagine” performing a wedding with a mask covering half her face, though knows she may need to if requested.

How the kiddush cup is handled may get another look and tweaked to ensure that the bride and groom feel at ease with that.

“If they are comfortable with it — when I bless the couple I generally put my arms around them or wrap them in a tallit and bless them, and I won’t be able to do that on Zoom,” she says.

Depending on a couple’s comfort level and social distancing practices, the Reform rabbi says she hopes to be able to do it at other upcoming weddings.

Vicky Choy, owner and event planner of Event Accomplished based in Arlington, notes in an email that among additional considerations, observant couples “will need to revisit the bedeken [where the groom veils the bride] and the tish [where the groom, or both bride and groom teach Torah] also. The question is ultimately can you perform all these rituals in a safe manner while observing social distancing and possibly minimizing contact. It’s tricky.”

Postpone or cancel?

Will you regret skipping the celebration entirely? Then consider having a ceremony with immediate family and closest friend or two — stay within your jurisdiction’s limit for gatherings — and reschedule the larger celebration. Or postpone the ceremony and its reception. Your venues and vendors — you have contracts and gave them deposits — generally will work with you to reschedule, Bloom Schwartz says. Currently, she says, no one’s certain what future events will look like as a result of COVID-19.

Much will depend on what evolving local government reopening orders allow — some activities are starting to resume with cautions — what vendors and venues can accommodate and the like, says Cara Weiss, founder and senior planner/director of Save The Date, LLC Events in Potomac.

Among the questions, Weiss says: Instead of trays of hors d’oeuvres being passed among guests will there be a small appetizer plate for each guest? Fewer seats per table to create a bit of distance among guests? Will the number of people permitted in a room be reduced? Will the dance floor be impacted? Masks for guests? For waitstaff?

If you decide to cancel the event — whether that’s either only the celebration or a ceremony with a reception in favor of a private ceremony — you may lose part or all of each deposit. Read your contracts carefully, wedding planners say. The inability to hold an event on a contracted date due to a situation that is under neither side’s control is disappointing to couples and businesses, and wedding planners advise trying to work out a resolution. Do consider that the disappointment over COVID-19 soured wedding plans may be offset by a later celebration.

Livestream the intimate ceremony.
Preserve the video.

Technology allows you to share a small ceremony with a large crowd. Mute guests during the ceremony. You may want to include such things as a toast, remarks by the few people there, a dance. An external mic, tripod and a friend managing the livestream are helpful, or consider hiring a professional. Check livestreaming platforms for price, fees for optional services, participant limits and more. Platforms include Facebook, FaceTime (for Apple products only), Joy and Zoom. Preserving it (YouTube is one of several options) allows you to view it and share it, including during a later reception.

Include guests in other ways in your small ceremony.

You can hold a drive-by mini-celebration perhaps with music — guests can honk congrats and wave from their cars, says Choy. You may want to give them a party box with a split of champagne and festive goodies — or send a similar box to virtual attendees of your livestreamed ceremony. And yes, that sort of event can be fun.

Amy and Robert (they didn’t want their last names published) changed plans and decided to keep the date with a ceremony downsized to only immediate family and are rescheduling their party. Catering by Seasons of College Park catered the family dinner at their Alexandria home, and at the scheduled time, local well-wishing friends drove by. Each car received a box with a bottle of champagne, a note asking them to toast the couple, take a selfie and post it to a virtual photo booth put together by Electric Events of Rockville.

“It was an oasis in a desert,” says Glynis Keith, senior sales and event manager at Catering by Seasons, coming during the pandemic.

Whether starting to plan, or rescheduling, be flexible and don’t dawdle.

Bookings are well into 2021. Couples rescheduling are vying with the newly engaged for the same dates. Many dates are taken, says Weiss. Saturday nights go fast; consider other days, including weekdays (prices are often lower) and holiday weekends when people will have an extra day off. Many venues, though closed, have added walk-through videos, Weiss notes.

Consider that although the number of people who decline invitations is typically about 15 percent, health and travel concerns may at least double that, Bloom Schwartz says. Choy says that as you look to reschedule, choose a few vendors you’d really like to keep — for example, that could be the venue, caterer and DJ – and see what they’ve got open on and around your preferred new dates. Check with the people closest to you as well.

Stay in touch with guests.

They may have travel and lodging arrangements to redo. “Wedding postponed” and “change the date” announcements come in card, magnet and email formats.

Call and text as well. Keep your wedding website current. “Your guests understand that is a very unusual circumstance. They will understand if you can have only five or 10 people (at your ceremony),” Choy says.

Keep this is mind: In the long run, this is about the start of a marriage.

Andrea F. Siegel is a Washington-area writer.

The post Here are ways you can make the best of your wedding plans appeared first on Washington Jewish Week.

By Ellen Braunstein

As the coronavirus forces wedding cancellations and postponements, two Washington-area wedding vendors have pivoted their businesses to help fight COVID-19. Something Vintage Rentals has organized a mask-making drive and Occasions Catering has launched “Occasions Giving Kitchen,” a fundraising initiative that brings wholesome meals to under-served communities.

Based in the District, Something Vintage Rentals specializes in reclaimed, handmade and heirloom pieces for weddings and other events. Owner Dawn Crothers mobilized a network of 150 volunteers to make the face covers that protect front-line health workers from respiratory infection. The rental shop is also paying additional seamstresses and laid off workers to help fulfill mask orders.

Volunteers have turned out 4,000 masks so far. Crothers’ company is providing many of the volunteers with the pattern, material and elastic at drop-off points throughout the metro area.

The protective face shields that Crothers calls Victory Masks have gone to Children’s National Hospital, MedStar Washington Hospital Center, Sibley Memorial Hospital, Community of Hope and nursing homes.

“Word spread through social media,” Crothers said of Something Vintage’s signature multi-colored masks. “We discovered that so many hospitals needed them and it just kind of blossomed and exploded from there. People just want to help our frontline healthcare workers.”

Harvey Green, Medstar vice president and chief philanthropy officer, said, “We are so grateful to Dawn and her team for dedicating themselves to making these homemade masks.”

Cole Norton, a potter for Something Vintage and a nursing home worker, has sewn 200 masks so far. “I think it’s important to keep everyone healthy. I’ve taken care of COVID-19 patients at a nursing home so I know how serious it is.”

Under normal circumstances Occasions Caterers in Washington is a full-service catering company that specializes in elegant cuisine for weddings and other events. They offer couples fully customized menus, a wedding consultant team and talented chefs.When the pandemic hit, Occasions formed Occasions Giving Kitchen to provide philanthropic relief feeding efforts for homebound seniors and disadvantaged youth and families. The special events vendor is working with DC Greens, a food justice program, Wards 7 and 8, churches and N Street Village.

They are also safely delivering food to frontline workers who need to eat on the job. To date, Occasions Giving Kitchen has provided more than 37,700 meals to communities in need.

Director of Marketing Denise Vu, said, “Hunger has been something that has been close to our co-founders Mark and Eric Michael. “We’ve always been working with many organizations that combat hunger in the city. Once the pandemic hit, it was really natural to work with these partners through the Giving Kitchen, which is the philanthropic relief feeding efforts.”

The Giving Kitchen has access to an extensive kitchen, a delivery fleet and food and supply chains. “It really just made sense,” Vu said. “When we formalized it, we started asking clients for donations to help with this really important effort for the city.”

Donations run the gamut from $10 to hundreds or more. Clients who had to cancel the events are applying the money for the relief fund to help with the food drive efforts. Occasions is also donating proceeds from its home meal kits and Mobile Market, a convenient, safe, drive-through market that is open twice a week.

“We’re making sure there is access to food throughout the city during this shutdown,” Vu said. “It’s at the core of what we do, bring happiness to people in the form of food and catering. Really this is no different, it’s just a different circumstance.”

Ellen Braunstein is a writer in Chicago.

The post Wedding vendors give back appeared first on Washington Jewish Week.

More than just brides and grooms are saying “I do” this wedding season. Vered Asta, principal event planner at Vela Events serving the Virginia, D.C. and Maryland areas, has noticed guests saying “Yes” to attending more weddings, too.

“People have been using weddings as an opportunity for reunions of sorts,” she said. “People haven’t seen each other in a few years.”

Rather than intimate ceremonies with laid-back dress and modest receptions, weddings are big, bold and tailored to the whims of the couple. Asta shared her wedding trend observations ahead of a busy summer season.

Bucking Tradition

Working with a diverse Jewish clientele, Asta has seen new takes on the wedding traditions of old: Rather than just the groom circling the bride seven times, the couple circle each other. Similarly, once-gendered language in a couple’s ketubah is altered to be more egalitarian and eliminate clauses that feel dated or irrelevant.

While she’s familiar with planning interfaith and LGBTQ weddings, Asta has noticed clients choosing to spotlight different parts of their respective cultures, such as Sephardic and other non-Ashkenazi traditions. 

In an interfaith wedding between a couple with respective Indian and Jewish backgrounds, the couple chose to have an Indian ceremony, but said brachot over the wine and food in Hebrew. The tradition of the couple circling one another seven times is shared in both cultures.

“It’s been really nice — a new and exciting challenge to talk to our couples about, what is the right fit? And what are the traditions going forward that will mean the most to you?” Asta said.

Personal Touches

Picking meaningful traditions is part of a greater trend Asta has seen: Couples want to incorporate parts of their story into their reception.

One couple served milkshakes at the end of the evening, an homage to their first date. Asta said some clients choose to incorporate favorite or memorable restaurants into the evening through a giftcard giveaway.

Another bride and groom, instead of a guest book, had guests enter a phone booth and leave a voice message to wish the couple well. Shared personalized sentiments go both ways. One pair of clients wrote personalized notes on each guest’s name placard.

Personalized ceremonies and receptions are in part a result of parents, once insistent on having a hand in their children’s wedding, taking the backseat in the planning process. Gone are the days of someone’s father inviting his business partner to his child’s wedding.

“Couples are speaking up for themselves, but also the parents are being more open to recognizing that it means more if these are people that they know, and it’s a more meaningful celebration if it’s people they know,” Asta said. “So it’s really more of a collaborative planning process.”

Sustainable Solutions

Clients not only want to be creative, but eco-friendly as well. Vela Events, as well as other event planning companies around the country, have found ways to accommodate that desire.

“Couples are certainly more conscious of what is happening after the event,” Asta said.

If clients want to have compostable plates and silverware made of bamboo or other organic materials, Vela Events will compost them, along with food scraps from uneaten plates. Extra food and unused ingredients will go to shelters or local food pantries.

Vela Events donates flowers and floral arrangements to women’s shelters
as well.

Staying in the Budget

After years of COVID-impacted weddings, couples have been pulling out the stops for their celebrations, but Asta is aware that some clients may not or cannot break the bank for their special day.

To still make the day feel special
while saving some cash, Asta recommends hiring a DJ instead of a live band, or switching out a multicourse meat meal for a dairy or vegetarian catering option. Couples will often opt to provide beer or wine for guests at the reception, instead of an open bar. Of course, a small guest list means lower costs, too.

Considering an appropriate venue that accommodates these budget restrictions can help the wedding keep its charm and elegance. If you have a beautiful outdoor venue, you may be able to save money on decor or dress the event down, if you have little interest in spending money on a gown or tuxedo.

Making some sacrifices may be necessary to planning the big day, but Asta recommends having three core components to prioritize: “Great music, excellent lighting, really great food. I think people always
remember those.”

srogelberg@midatlanticmedia.com

The post Big Jewish Weddings are Back, with a Personal Touch appeared first on Washington Jewish Week.