When it came to getting married, there were three things that were truly important to me; marrying the right person, marrying in Jerusalem and having my family and friends surround us. I can truly say that Corona didn’t stop any of these things from happening.
Firstly: Understand that there’s no guide book for a Corona wedding and the lead up to the day will be different then pre-Corona.
From the moment we got engaged, we knew that we wouldn’t be having a ‘normal’ wedding. Our L’chaim took place just as lockdown began and so involved four close friends and ourselves. Our parents (mine being in London and his in Germany) met for the first time over Zoom and would need government approval and to do a 14 day quarantine to actually attend the wedding (which they thankfully did).
By the time it came to actually planning a wedding, we were already used to things being a little unconventional.
Secondly: Think about how to include those living abroad.
Both myself and husband have the majority of our friends and family living outside of Israel but we made a real effort to involve them in the excitement because although they wouldn’t be there on the day itself, we knew that they were still our past, present and future. There were Zoom bachelorettes (BOOMS) with people across four time zones, and Facetime came with to dress fittings, venue viewings and food tastings. In the lead up to the day, our friends and family made sure we knew they were thinking of us; buying us presents from our wedding gift list (thank you La’Bayit!) and sending cookies, flowers, cards, babkas and more.
Thirdly: Since there most likely won’t be a lot of physical people at the wedding, give some real thought as to how to create an intimate affair.
Jewish weddings are known for their huge amount of guests and dancing between courses. Many of our guests weren’t comfortable to hold hands and dance and we were limited to 100 people (which the night before got reduced to 50 – but that’s a story for another time.)
With both of these factors in mind, we decided not to do a typical four course dinner but rather a buffet with no set seating. This meant that the dinner element of the wedding would be shorter and so the real focus of the wedding would be the chuppa itself.
We chose a wedding planner who would really focus on the chuppa, giving attention to the floral arrangement, music, comfortable seating and a venue with a great view. The planner (Penny Rabinowitz) truly delivered on each of these four points.
Fourthly: Invest in the live stream viewing.
Perhaps the most important step in organizing a wedding with so many virtual guests is making sure the virtual part works. We decided to use a live stream (Daniel Yitzchak Wetzler, www.videoeden.com) instead of Zoom. This was more costly but the happiness it brought our friends and family by being able to see the wedding properly, was for us, priceless.
On the day itself, we truly felt surrounded and inundated with love from every corner of the world. Cousins sent hair clips that they had used for their weddings for me to use. Our siblings actually got customized T-shirts for the day, so even though they couldn’t provide physical shtick, they definitely provided it virtually. In addition, before the wedding we sent out an email to our guests telling them to email in their selfies of them watching the wedding so we could create an album of all of our virtual guests and so we’re still receiving these as time goes on.
Breakfast was delivered to our apartment the next morning, from my sisters in London (thanks Vanilla & Bow) and the flower, cake and cookies deliveries, have still not stopped. As our sheva brachot come to an end, we’re still living in Jerusalem with the belief that however wonderful the past week was, the best is yet to come.
