Category Archives: From the Expert

From The Expert: Top 10 Things Every Bride Should Know

Posted on October 10, 2011 by Alison in From the Expert

Randy Lehrman is the owner of Real Genius Entertainment, a special events company that specializes in Jewish life cycle events, making every event unique and different while paying close attention to detail and a high level of personal service. With 20 years of experience, Randy uses his personality to drive the party. He also will help you with lighting design, music selections, room layout, and making your wedding exactly how you want it. Real Genius Entertainment is located in West Hills, California and is available for all your party needs!

In this crazy world of wedding event planning, I tell people all the time that these things have become mini-productions. I envision future weddings to be produced like the Oscars or Grammys with staff using walkie talkies and guests giving red carpet interviews. Okay, so I’m kidding, but only a little. The truth is, so many experts go into helping you achieve your dreams of your wedding day and everyone gets to be star of the day at some point. You’ve trusted some of the best pros in the biz to join you on your wedding day –DJs, entertainers, videographer, photographer, florists, caterers — but, there are two more people that are the true celebrities of your special day: You!

For the most part, as an entertainer, I drive a party to its success with the bride and groom as part of my team to deliver the most amazing event it can be. So believe it or not, there are actually many things you can do to make your own wedding even better. It’s really the difference between good and optimal. Follow this Top 10 List and you might float to your honeymoon on Cloud 9!

#1. Dance! That’s right. Even if you and your spouse are as stiff as boards you need to dance and participate on the dance floor. Why did you hire an awesome DJ for your event? To get people dancing all night! But, if you and your new partner are at the bar all night or yapping outside, how do you expect everyone else to get out there? Lead by example. You are the hosts. Monkey see, monkey do. And you guys are the two best dressed monkeys there!

#2. Know when to schmooze! With only a certain amount of time to visit and thank all of your guests, you usually rush around like little bees to thank them, which is very kind of you. But doing it at the right time can be a scheduling nightmare in itself. So my advice to you is to make sure you eat first (you get fed first anyways) and then there is time go chat and thank. You might also have schmooze opportunities at cocktail hour, salad, dinner, and cake cutting to say thanks! And remember, some of your best conversations might be on the dance floor!

#3. Work with your DJ! Don’t be your own! Of course you want your favorite music at your party. Many brides and grooms are focused on their taste in music instead of thinking of dance music. Use the expertise of your DJ to pick music for dancing. If something you like doesn’t work for the dance floor, it shouldn’t be a problem. Utilize it instead as background music during the meal, or as people enter the party. Green Day isn’t going to fill a floor no matter how much you like it.

#4. Don’t play your montage during dinner. Ninety-nine percent of all weddings are four to five hours long. If you are showcasing pictures of the two of you, the worst thing you can do is play it while your 200 guests are cutting chicken. Allow dinner time to be a time to relax and socialize. Set up the slideshow during dinner and after all the plates have been cleared, voila! It’s showtime! It will ensure you have all of your guests’ attention on something that is very special to you.

#5. More sugar! Have a secondary dessert if you can. The longest lull in the party is when the caterer is slicing cake for each and every one of your guests. I suggest having a candy or extra dessert table. That way after you’ve cut the cake, you can send your guests to that goodie table to nosh, and by the time they get back to their table there’s cake there, too!

#6. Bring money! Even if you leave cash or a check with your coordinator, you never want to run out of green. Many DJs require overtime payment on the spot so if you want to keep dancing the night away, have your coordinator take care of that for you. There is literally one instance at every party where you will need some kind of money for someone, whether it’s a tip or overtime. Count on not needing to pay up, but be prepared just in case, and make it easy on yourself.

#7. Beware of offsite photos. Out of the 20+ years of weddings I have worked, one thing has remained constant: when a photographer requests to take the bride and groom off-site for photos, the couple never returns on time. Try to avoid doing this at all costs because guests have already been there a long time and when your doors open they expect to see you introduced within fifteen minutes. If you aren’t at the beginning of your own party it will be uncomfortable for everyone there. We cant start without you, right? You can also schedule a photo shoot with your photographer where you get all dolled up again and take photos at a cool location or favorite spot. Bottomline, take as many photos as you can before the ceremony or the reception. You will be glad you aren’t late to your own party!

#8. Eat! You should get your plates before other guests, so take advantage of this and eat. This is a long and special weekend. You need lots of energy while dancing, chatting, and just meeting new family. Eat and drink water to keep yourself going. The number of times I’ve seen a bride or groom not eat before or during an event? Six. The number of times one of those people has fainted or thrown up? Six. Do the math.

#9. Inform your special VIP guests. All too often there is a mother-son dance where mom is floating at the bar, or there’s the emotional cousin who has just been asked to — surprise! — give a toast and had no idea. Tell your toasters, tell your dance partners, tell the people who are doing the motzi over the challah. Tell all your VIPs that you are honoring them with a special duty and then they’ll be prepared and excited about what they are doing.

#10. Have fun! If you have fun at your own party everyone else will, too! Don’t sweat the small stuff at your wedding reception. All too often, brides become upset over just one song they might not particularly like and and then not even realize that the dance floor is packed. Trust your DJ, smile, take pictures, kiss your new partner, and enjoy the best day of your life.

No Wrinkles On Your Wedding Day

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Alison in From the Expert, Inside Scoop

Aura Schwartz, professional makeup and skincare aesthetician for commercials, print, fashion, and television, guest blogs today to discuss the importance and ease of wrinkle prevention. In order to have the perfect, blushing bridal skin you’ve dreamed of on your wedding day, it’s crucial that you practice excellent skincare. The tips Aura shares will not only help you achieve the look you want on your wedding day, but will help you look like the same youthful bride at your 50th anniversary party!

Let us start with the nemesis of all women: wrinkles! People pay thousands of dollars to get nipped, tucked, and injected in order to make wrinkles disappear. Can we prevent all the needles? Can we prevent all the yanking of skin? Can we prevent having to put our butt cheeks into our faces (yes ladies, women really do this) at a reasonable price? The answer is yes! Take care of your skin and it will take care of you! Treat your skin and body well from early on, and it will treat you well way into your elderly years.

The fastest and best improvement I have seen in people’s skin is when someone starts drinking a lot of water. Chug that H20 and your skin becomes as supple as a baby’s bottom. But of course there are the creams! With so many makes and models, choosing a cream can become a headache.

Recently, a 25-year-old woman asked me when those sun-kissed lines start to appear around the eyes, and why, oh why does everyone insist wearing eye cream that costs the same as the month’s rent? Do expensive moisturizers really prevent lines better than the generic brands?

How much do you really have to spend to get a good face cream? It really is flexible! Most makeup artists or fashion consultants will tell you to invest in a staple or two that you wear the most and then add the rest of your collection at a reduced price. Same goes for skincare!

Drug store brands are very good especially Oil of Olay. Olay has been around forever and has proven itself worthy to be in every woman’s medicine cabinet, but — and there is a but — brands like LA MER and Cle de Peau are exceptional! The problem is LA MER and Cle De Peau are very expensive, so here comes the trick. Get the one product you need most. Whether it’s an anti-wrinkle cream for your lines or moisturizer if you have incredibly flaky skin, get that one product from one of the more expensive brands and then go get the rest from the drug store.

The other catch is if you are young and just starting to show signs of wrinkles and sun damage and you go ahead and take care of your skin early on, I do believe you can go with Olay or other generic face cream brands. Just keep drinking lots of water and your skin will be glowy and beautiful for the rest of your days!

They say the eyes are the window to our souls, but they forgot to mention in this beauty-conscious world how much it costs to take care of the windows of our souls. Your drapery doesn’t have to be palatial. Just squeegee the windows and cover ’em up.

Here are a couple of my favorite products:

Aveeno: Ultra-calming daily moisturizer with spf 15
Oil of Olay: Age defying anti-wrinkle replenishing night cream
Ren: Cosomatic infusion ultra moisture day cream dry skin
Kiehl’s: Abyssine eye cream and ultra-facial cream
Cle de Peau: Anti-wrinkle eye balm
LA MER: The eye balm and The oil-absorbing lotion

A Groom with a View: Advice From A Married Man

Posted on August 24, 2011 by Alison in From the Expert, Inside Scoop, Planning

Ladies, today you might want to — oops! — leave The Wedding Yentas up on your fiance’s Internet browser. This day is dedicated to him. Well, and you, too. Special Guest Blogger and Mr. Yenta himself, Bryan, is here to share a little inside information from the groom’s point of view. In short, he wants you to know that your wedding day should be about you both… as a couple. It’s easy to get caught up in a different frame of mind, but maybe this will give you two a little reminder of what the day is celebrating in the first place!

Unlike my wife, I did not grow up planning my wedding or picturing what it would look like. In fact, I used to think that once I bought the ring and popped the question, my job was pretty much done until I was told where to show up and at what time. It didn’t take me long after the proposal to find out just how wrong I was, but it wasn’t until after I was the groom that I fully understood just how important my role was in planning the big day.

If you’re a groom who thinks like I did, you probably pretty much figure the wedding day is all about the bride. It’s understandable. I mean as men, we are practically taught to believe that. Think about it – nobody stands when the groom comes down the aisle; the song isn’t “Here Comes The Groom”; the groom isn’t who people stare at when the photographer is taking portraits in public areas. It’s all of these kinds of things that make it so we grooms have it engrained in our heads that we are merely an accessory – a “monkey in a suit” so to speak.

And while I’m sure many brides will cringe at the thought of reducing their poor man into nothing but arm-candy, the one making the magic happen for the wedding day is the bride because she is usually the one perusing the wedding blogs and scouring the Internet for photos to get ideas for color schemes, dresses, flowers, hairstyles, centerpieces, chair covers, and you know the list goes on and on. For the most part, the groom doesn’t particularly care too much about these kinds of details. I know I didn’t really have an opinion one way or another when it came to that stuff.

But wedding planning isn’t all just colors and flowers. There are hundreds of decisions to be made, and they’re not all totally bride-focused. Even though the groom probably isn’t too concerned about whether or not there are roses in the bouquet or if there should be candles on the tables, there are plenty of things for him to be interested in, even if he doesn’t know it at first. For me, it took some time, but I did find myself becoming very interested in things like the order of day’s events, who was going to be giving a speech, what music the band should be playing, and who was sitting at what table. It sounds like a headache at first but table seating was my personal favorite part of the entire planning process. I guess I just had fun putting everybody into categories of 8-12 people. It’s like Google+ but for weddings.

Anyway, with all the decisions along the way, I guess planning a wedding is like making a movie. And while the bride may indeed be the director, the groom is the director’s right hand man — maybe the cinematographer, maybe the assistant director, maybe the creative consultant — but he’s right up there and he deserves equal billing. After all, the groom probably gets the best part of the whole day: he steps on the glass and prompts all the “Mazel Tov” declarations! The point is that the wedding day is actually about the bride and the groom. It’s about you celebrating each other with close family and friends, and about starting your life together as a married couple.

So if you’re a bride with a groom who seems disinterested, find something he can take part in and I bet he jumps in willingly. And if you’re a groom who’s sitting in the corner watching your bride stalk wedding blogs and change her color scheme ideas daily, maybe offer to take control of something you care about that you can handle, like the entertainment or the table seatings (for your own family at least). I think the most important thing is that you make your wedding day about both of you and do what you want to do as a couple, not just as a bride or as a groom. It’s one of the very first steps on your new long journey of doing everything together. So make wedding planning a fun process that you can share with each other. If you do, I promise your wedding day will be one of the best days of the groom’s life as well as the bride’s.

Pingback: A Groom With A View: Directing A Wedding | The Wedding Yentas™ | A Guide for the Jewish Bride!™

From the Expert: Interfaith Wedding Planning 101

Posted on August 8, 2011 by Alison in Featured, From the Expert

Thrilled to welcome, once again, Cantor Debbi Ballard of My Personal Cantor, who spreads her usual wisdom for a stress-free wedding-planning experience. This piece will hit home for interfaith couples who are nervous about the politics of family and religion when it comes to building a wedding ceremony. But, as usual, in her wise and funny way, Cantor Debbi explains how this experience can actually be delightful and eye-opening.

You might be thinking that planning your Jewish/Interfaith wedding will be all about the conflict, but you can create a ceremony that everyone will love. By focusing on the relationship, and choosing traditions and readings to honor both sides, your family and guests will love what you create.

Many of my clients begin their interfaith wedding plans with strong feelings of fear and trepidation. They often fear their family members will not approve, and they are overwhelmed with fear of offending a single guest by their ceremony choices. But today’s interfaith weddings can be crafted so that everyone not only feels comfortable, but honored, by your commitment to be fair and inclusive to both parties’ faith and heritage.

When a couple comes to me, most often one of them is Jewish. They are afraid that if they include Jewish traditions, they will offend the non Jewish partner’s family. Likewise, a mention of Jesus could be just enough to send that Yiddeshe bubbe flying for the nearest exit! You can create balance, but in order to do so, it requires a lot of open communication and a little strategy.

The first thing I recommend is keep everything as close to neutral as you can. Keep the foreign language to a minimum, and try not to “name” your spiritual reference. If you can agree that you both believe in G-d, then that will suffice when invoking a spiritual presence.

There are a few major components of a Jewish wedding that most people want to include. The chuppah, the ketubah, the wine, and breaking the glass, are all traditional rituals that are meaningful. Incorporate these into your ceremony, and ask your officiant to go into detail to explain what those rituals are, and why we include them. The more you explain, the less alienated your non-Jewish guests will feel, and everyone will appreciate the time you took to make them feel comfortable.

For every ritual or tradition from the Jewish faith you choose, choose another from your other faith like a song or a reading that invokes spiritual presence provides a beautiful balance. Incorporate a unification ceremony, such as a sand ceremony or unity candle. Readings such as the Apache Wedding Poem, or readings from Kalil Gibran also invoke spirituality without isolating.

Choose an officiant who is highly experienced in crafting wedding ceremonies that reflect your backgrounds. Ask to see samples of ceremonies that the officiant has written, to see exactly how he or she blended the rituals of past clients, and imagine yourself sitting in the room listening to the wedding you are reading. Was it fair? Did it honor both sides? Did you feel embraced and included, rather than out of place? Most people don’t mind hearing something new if you deliver it in just the right way.

I have found that the more I explain in a service, the more appreciative the non-Jewish guests are, and even the Jewish guests often learn something they didn’t know. Your parents will appreciate that you took the time to balance each side, and so will your guests. In the end, you will have a ceremony that focuses on your love, not your differences. Focus on the aspects that bring you together, and your guests will feel honored that they were asked to be a part of that. Stay true to who each of you are, and recognize that it is also your differences, as well as your similarities, that make each one interesting to the other. When both are honored, conflict cannot exist.

Your wedding then becomes a celebration of your individuality, and the commitment you are making to come together as one. With tolerance, understanding, patience and communication, your Jewish/interfaith wedding ceremony will be absolutely beautiful.

After more than 20 years in corporate management, Cantor Debbi Ballard decided to pursue the passions of her heart, and combine her love for music, faith, and people into the most rewarding career of her life! Today, as a Cantor specializing in performing Jewish and Interfaith weddings, you might find her officiating a ceremony in Florida, The Caribbean, Mexico, or even on top of a mountain! Debbi is known throughout the world for creating personalized, spiritual ceremonies, filled with warmth and passion. Her deep sensitivity for people, eloquence, and dynamic personality, help her create wedding ceremonies her clients and guests remember for a lifetime! Visit Cantor Ballard online at www.mypersonalcantor.com.

From The Expert: Zooming In On Videography

Posted on August 3, 2011 by Alison in Featured, From the Expert

3, 2, 1, ACTION! Time to discuss wedding cinematography and why a videographer shouldn’t be the last vendor to call a week before the big day. Capturing your wedding on film is just as important as hiring a photographer and all of your other must-have vendors. Daniel Jankovic of Ahava Films has the creative background and passion for Jewish weddings to be able to share the four reasons why hiring a videographer should be at the top of your to-do list!

What will you remember about your wedding on your 10th anniversary? How about your 25th? In the midst of planning a wedding and its numerous components including catering, decor, music, and more, it’s important to plan how all of the day’s splendor will be captured… forever.

Both photography and cinematography are key elements in preserving the precious moments on your wedding day. In fact, it is crucial that the photographer and cinematographer work together as a team to get the best shots they can. This creates a friendly atmosphere for the wedding party and guests, and it also ensures that the pictures and video will not feature the camera man obscuring the most beautiful shots.

One bride shared with me that her photographer was actually front and center in all of the chuppah video footage. This can be easily avoided with the right team.

I strongly encourage brides and grooms to ask their photographer or cinematographer who they recommend for photos/video, as they can rest assured that the people who will be preserving their memories are in sync.

While wedding cinematography may not be such a high priority in your wedding checklist, I would like to suggest that cinematography should be given serious consideration for the following reasons:

Emotion
My clients (mostly the brides) tell me that they cry each time they watch their wedding film. The facial expressions, gestures, and words of the happy couple, friends, and family are captured forever in this medium. Often couples reflect back on their big day recalling the great joy of being surrounded by so many of their closest friends and family. The emotional impact of a wedding film comes through not only in the editing, but in the ability to capture extended periods of action. While families will always revel in the wedding portraits adorning their homes and albums forever, video can capture the tears rolling down a bride’s cheek as a groom pours out his love to his bride under the Chuppah.

Audio
It’s not only images we capture, but the sounds of the day. The speeches, the music, the sound of the breaking glass – these are just a few of the pieces of your wedding that are captured by a capable cinematographer. Most cinematographers go to great lengths to put a wireless microphone on the Rabbi to capture his momentous speech. We also connect to the sound system so we can have a clean CD-quality recording of the music played as you walk down the aisle, or as you dance together for the first time as a married couple. At a recent wedding, instead of a groom saying traditional vows, he played “Marry Me” by Train on guitar, which had the bride in tears. Thank G-d, this beautiful moment was captured not only visually, but aurally as well, which I’m sure will be a special memory for years to come.

Movement
Whether it’s the placing of the ring on the finger, the lifting of the chairs in the air, or the slicing of the white frosting-covered cake, cinematography preserves these actions in their entirety. The reaction of a groom seeing his bride for the first time in her wedding dress is priceless. And when a couple wants to remember the moves of their first dance together, their wedding film will be the perfect resource.

Memories
A common thought after a wedding is “It happened so fast!” After months, and maybe years of planning, it’s over in a matter of hours. For a bride and groom, a wedding can be such an intense experience that it’s nearly impossible to take it all in. I recently spoke with a bride whose wedding I shot, and she was convinced that certain people did not attend the wedding. When she saw the video and saw the people in reference, she realized how much she missed by being so wrapped up in the moment. Capturing these moments on video is a treat not only for you, but for future generations. My wife and I have three kids now, and they love watching our wedding video. It gives them a real sense for who we are, and where they come from, and also gets them excited about their own weddings.

All in all, I can’t count how many times I’ve heard brides and grooms thank themselves for investing in a wedding film. After opening up all their wedding gifts, their memories are often the most precious, and it’s a true privilege to be a part of preserving them forever.

Ahava Films Short Reel from Ahava Films on Vimeo.

After graduating from the USC School of Cinematic Arts, Daniel pursued his passion for producing cinematic, soulful wedding videos in Los Angeles. He started an event videography company called Famedia in 2005, and opened up Ahava Films in 2010 to focus on Jewish wedding cinematography in and around Los Angeles. When Daniel is not shooting weddings, you’ll find him sharpening his skills as he captures the memories of his wife and family of three children.