Category Archives: Tales from the Veil

Tales From The Veil: Sweetest Bridesmaids Proposal

Posted on May 7, 2012 by Alison in Featured, Tales from the Veil

Don’t forget to get your entry in so you can win a fabulous flower hair accessory from Fascinate Me! The giveaway is going on now through May 14th at 11:59 p.m. PST, and you can enter with a comment about your favorite piece on the Fascinate Me Facebook page AND The Wedding Yentas post here for a maximum of two entries! The winner, who will be chosen at random, will be announced May 15th. Read here for all the juicy details!

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Lanae Brody hails from Scottsdale, Arizona and has lived in Los Angeles for 4 years. She graduated from the University of Arizona with a BA in Journalism in 2008. She and her fiance Dennis have been engaged since December and look forward to their November nuptials!

Over the course of my years growing up, I’ve always had visions of what I would and wouldn’t want my wedding to be like. From the Cinderella ball gown to the perfect flowers, chuppah, aisle, etc., I’ve always thought about it. Of course, something that always excited me was who the girls next to me, my bridesmaids, would be.

When the ring finally hit my finger, the plethora of questions began. How would I choose? What if someone’s feelings got hurt? What if I made the wrong decision? How many bridesmaids are too many? What if someone said no? I was terrified to ask my friends and family to stand by my side on the day I say I do. I wanted each of the girls up there to have a purpose and meaning in my life. No matter if I had known them for one year or since the day I was born, I thought long, hard, and carefully about who to ask and then how (more on that later)! My fiance and I stayed up for 3 nights in a row making a list and talking about it. I wanted us to be on the same page so there were no surprises for either of us. Luckily, we totally were. Of course we had the discussions of how many is too many, should we have the same number of bridesmaids and groomsmen, my mother yacking in my ear about how I should have no more than 4 or 6 (in this day in age, yeah right!), but in the end, I realized how important it was to do what WE wanted to do because it was OUR day. Nobody else’s opinions mattered but ours. This is something that I’m finding that I need to keep reminding myself throughout this entire process, especially coming from a household full of Jews.

There’s a lot to think about when picking a bridesmaid. You want friends and family who will step up to the plate and be there to pick up the pieces when the Maid of Honor is off doing a thousand other things. Someone who is not only a team player, but truly loves you, your friendship, and most importantly, is happy that you have found the one. Because of how special all of these ladies are to me, I wanted to do something to make them feel special as well.

Since I’m a reporter by night and work at Sweet E’s Bake Shop by day, I decided I wanted to combine both of my worlds into one big, creative, different way to ask my girls. I was so excited, I couldn’t even wait. We do so many different things here at Sweet E’s, so I couldn’t wait to use my imagination and love of sweets to create something for the ladies I love most. I had already seen cookies with “Will you be my bridesmaid?” on them and even little cute poems that we had done, but I wanted something different. After all, I worked there and needed to show off how great of a bake shop we are! We do these great cookie images here, and I thought it would be great to give them something to physically do with them. So after thinking long and hard, I decided to create a giant image cookie for each bridesmaid with a fun picture of us together and have it all jumbled in a box for them to put together. I had already chosen my wedding colors and made sure to incorporate those into the puzzle for the girls. Some of them pieced that part together, while others did not! I also made sure to pick really fun pictures with my bridesmaids. I tried to choose photos that were either inside jokes, fondest memories, or anything else that was just a special moment that I shared with them. Some were silly while others were more serious.

So on to how I decided to ask: I hosted a very small birthday dinner a few weeks after the proposal, and the girls didn’t know that THEY would actually be receiving gifts on MY birthday! My amazing fiance arranged for the restaurant to do a very special unveiling of the table. One of my bridesmaids is notorious for being late. She’s a former Arizona Wildcat and AEPhi alum and I swear I was losing my mind waiting for her to arrive! When she finally got to the restaurant, we were led to a table where the boxes were on the table, wrapped in a pretty box with a covered window, waiting to be opened. They all had their names on them so they knew where to sit. They all looked confused but seemed to have a little idea as to what was going on. I gave a little speech and told them how much I loved them and they meant to me, and on the count of 1, 2, 3, I said, “Go ahead and open them!”

Inside the pieces were all jumbled up. One of my bridesmaids put it together in a matter of seconds while others spent five minutes on them! Nobody said yes, though my Maid of Honor shed some tears, she was so excited. I had to ask for verbal confirmation if they all were saying yes! They did, and some celebratory sangria was immediately brought over to our table! I later found out that the girls had all been Facebook chatting daily about who I was going to ask to be in my bridal party. How cute/funny is that?!

Because I have three bridesmaids who lived out of state, I had to ship their cookie puzzles to them. They all had so much fun with them, too, and I wish I could’ve been there to see the looks on their faces when they put the puzzles together.

If you’re looking for a fun way to ask your bridesmaids to be part of your wedding, feel free to “steal” my idea! It was a hit. And if you’re looking for more sweet inspiration, you can always get in touch with Sweet E’s and brainstorm other ideas for your bridesmaids or the wedding events in general. You can always place orders by emailing info@sweetesbakeshop.com or by calling 323-422-8885.

All Yentas readers will get 15% by mentioning this post, too! My bridesmaids had so much fun getting asked this way and I’m sure yours will, as well!!

Tales From The Veil: Learning From Other Weddings

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Alison in Inside Scoop, Planning, Tales from the Veil

Another “Tales from the Veil” story is brought to us by Rachel Kitt who is the Executive Assistant at the Jewish Federation of San Diego County. She loves to run competitively and for pleasure, bake gluten-free sweets, and hang out with her hubby, a San Diego attorney. After eloping to the island of Oahu in December of 2007, Rachel finds herself looking back on her Jewish destination wedding adventure and laughing out loud. Her story will show you how any bride can take wedding disasters and turn them into wedded bliss. Lemons into lemonade. Grapes into Manischewitz. We’ll be hearing more from Rachel as a regular contributor to The Wedding Yentas.

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Once upon a time, your first girlfriend got engaged and you were, shall we say, hmmmmm, a tad jealous. Not jealous, like, you are angry with her. But more like, seriously, why can’t the boyfriend hurry up and propose so you could be the one in her shoes. We may not admit it out loud, but we’ve been there. Anyway, you sucked it up (or drank some wine) and a year or so later, you went to your friend’s happy occasion. You thought, “the flowers are so pretty” and “wow, look at her dress.” Maybe you were thinking, “yikes, I wish the food tasted better.” But mostly, you thought about how beautiful it all was. How happy you were for your girlfriend! And then with each friend’s wedding, the cycle continued and continued and continued.

Until the day you got engaged.

The day you get engaged definitely changed your life, but you also began to see weddings you attended in a whole new light. Instead of “wow, she looks beautiful!” you started thinking “hmmmm, that looks good, but maybe I’ll do looser curls.” When you saw the bridesmaids, you thought “ooh, knee length looks less formal! I like that!” or “do I want a black-tie wedding?”

Me as a bridesmaid with my sister-in-law at her and my brother's wedding.

What I’m trying to say is that your weddings of your friends and family will be more than just their special day: it will be a walk-through for you. A mini trial. It’s a free and safe test run. You need to not only enjoy the festivities, but take note of what you liked and didn’t like.

When I was engaged, I actually would go home after a wedding and write down what I liked and didn’t like. You know, it’s almost like a real, live (but private) Pinterest. It’s not a critique on your friend’s wedding, or anything personal about her. It’s not about your friends, the bride and groom, at all, actually. It’s about you getting real world experience from a guest’s perspective with a bridal point of view. You may have never thought twice — or even once! — about the difference between passed hors d’ oeuvres versus an appetizer station. Food was food and you were eating it. But now, with a wedding to plan, you are thinking more about these very decisions you’ll have to make yourself.

My husband and I with our friends Lindsey and Jody at their beautiful wedding in 2010.

So go in there with an agenda. Borrow your friend’s experience. And when your wedding day comes, hopefully you won’t realize it, but rest assured that as you are walking down the aisle, at least one of your girlfriends will probably be looking around and thinking, “I love the flowers she chose!” or “Wow, natural looking make-up is the way to go!”

Tales From The Veil: Reflections On A Wife’s Identity

Posted on April 18, 2012 by Alison in Tales from the Veil

Today’s Tale is from Lauren of San Francisco, whose bride experience began in the most non-traditional way, and she continued blending tradition with uniqueness for her wedding day. Lauren has been married since September of 2011 and now that the planning of her wedding is over, she goes on to thoughtfully plan her life as a wife.

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Whether it is for two years, one year, or six months, wedding planning consumes you, takes over who you are, and changes your identity. In fact, you are so consumed with planning, that your new timeline in life is in relation to your wedding date, and you lose all sense of seasons, holidays, and real time.

Then the day comes, and it is the best day of your life, or shall I say the the best six hours of your life. It comes and it goes, and that is that. Then what? Well, seasons and holidays return, and your sense of time goes back to normal. But, at the same time, you may suddenly feel blue. For some, like me, feeling blue may have nothing to do with the wedding ending at all.

My post-wedding blues have been entirely unrelated to wedding planning or the wedding celebrating being over. In fact, I was ecstatic the day after the wedding, because my to-do list was finally non-existent, and I finally had a husband. Yet, post-wedding, I find myself blue as I reevaluate my overall life in its entirety. Am I happy with my career? Am I happy with those that I surround myself with daily? Becoming a wife triggered a mini, and quite early, life crisis when I discovered that the answer to these questions is “no.”

I am an attorney. Although I am not sure what my destiny is, I am sure that it is not to remain in the legal field. Yes, this means taking my J.D. and, in a way, throwing it away. Meanwhile, my law school loans remain with me at the same time that my husband and I should be saving for our future home. And, it means leaving behind 28 years of shoving my face in a book, the only thing I really know how to do. But, post-wedding, I realize that I am meant to do something else in life. I am meant to be more creative, and to leave my academic comfort zone. I am tired of saying to myself, “One day I will…” Now, actually, is the time. So, six months into marriage, I’ve left the legal field, with current dreams of joining a tech start up — an environment that is the antithesis of law; organized chaos and undefined roles await me.

I also realized that as life goes on, we get busier and busier. The amount of time I have for friends diminishes quickly, especially as my family unit grows. I suddenly realized post-marriage that I felt as though I wasn’t giving the people who really matter as much time as they deserve, and at the same time, I was giving mere acquaintances too much time. My plan? Come to terms with the fact that as an adult, my intimate network decreases in number and is composed mainly of family and friends who feel like family. Then, when I’m not spending time changing the world through my career, spend most of my time with my intimate network. This has meant continuing to travel back home monthly to Southern California to see my family, planning a trip for them to visit my husband and me in San Francisco, and visiting my grandparents who live locally as much as possible.

Why is now the time to change my personal and professional life during this post-wedding stage? I don’t know. My best guess is that this crisis has hit for two reasons: (1) because my life is “complete,” yet I still feel as though something is missing; and (2) because I need to be complete before we have children. So, for me, post-wedding blues have taken the form of life reevaluation. I have my family unit, and now I feel as though it is time to assess other aspects of my life — the ones that I have not quite figured out.

Perhaps my marriage gave me the confidence and courage to look at the parts of me that are weak. I definitely don’t want any life crises hanging over my head when we bring a new little person into this world. Rather, I want to know who I am, who my support network is, and how to manage the craziness that is adult life. Now, post-wedding, seems to be the ideal time to re-assess, to fix, and to finish developing myself.

Tales From The Veil: When Wine Leads To A Wedding

Posted on April 11, 2012 by Alison in Tales from the Veil

Jodi is a medical student who’s been with Adam for three years. They even remained together during a long-distance portion of their relationship and knew the commitment was for, well, forever! However, she had no idea that a proposal would happen during her fourth year of school, so she wasn’t so much surprised by her engagement, but rather the timing of the engagement. No complaints here! Jodi is in full-fledged planning mode for her San Diego wedding that’s about 11 months away. Here’s her story!

As a fourth year medical student, I knew that Adam would follow me for residency because it had been discussed, so I knew a proposal was in the future.

On a Thursday in January, Adam asked me if I wanted to go wine tasting with our friend, Bobby, and his date. We are really the only couple in our group of friends who love wine tasting, so it made sense for Bobby to ask us to join him as we winery-hopped in a free limo that he’d won. I was really excited to go as I had been out of town on residency interviews on Thursday and Friday.

Saturday morning came, and Bobby called to tell us that he was running late — a regular thing for him. He said we should go and start wine tasting since he could not change the times of the limo. So Adam and I headed off to Temecula, an inland wine destination near San Diego, California. We started wine tasting, and then Adam disappeared to use the restroom. He was gone quite a while, but at the time I was enjoying my wine and wasn’t too concerned with where he was. When he returned to the tasting room, he suggested that we go outside to take pictures before continuing the tastes. This was nothing out of the ordinary as we often took pictures overlooking the vineyard when we had gone wine tasting in the past. As we approached the overlook, I saw our limo driver and asked him to take our picture.

As we start posing for pictures, Adam turned to me to tell me that he loves me very much and that he has known for the last three years (the length of time we have been dating), that I was the girl he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. At this point, I was a little stunned, and I watched him go to the camera bag and pull out a ring box. Almost in slow motion, I saw him go down on one knee, open the box, look up at me, and ask me to marry to him. I did not even look in the box. I just stared at his face. As most engaged girls would say, the next few moments got fuzzy, but I know that I said “yes” as he got up to give me a hug and kiss. After the shock slightly suppressed, I finally looked at the ring and then looked at him. I couldn’t stop looking at him, reliving the fact that he just proposed to me!

Meanwhile, during the proposal, the limo driver was snapping photos with the camera, so we have this amazing memory documented forever!

After the shock somewhat fizzled, Adam told me that our friend Bobby was never coming, and that it was all a rouse to get me to Temecula without suspecting that he was going to propose.

Our day continued with wonderful wine tasting at multiple wineries, where the wine continuously flowed once we told people we had literally just gotten engaged. When the limo dropped us back off at our car, Adam informed me that we were not leaving because he booked a villa overlooking the winery for the night! He even had my mom pack me a bag for me the day before, and left it in the car, so that I had clothes and toiletries. He really thought of everything.

Our evening continued with a romantic dinner at the restaurant at the resort, followed by many phone calls to friends and family to share in our joy.

It was the most amazing day and night, and I know I will never forget any part of it. I could not ask for a better proposal or a better guy to spend the rest of my life with.

As I write this, still with the same grin on my face, we are in the midst of planning our wedding and we couldn’t be more excited. We are getting married in San Diego at the hotel where Adam told me he had feelings for me at the start of our relationship, over three years ago. Our wedding will have a traditional foundation with a modern flair. We both want strong Jewish components and the ceremony will include the more religious aspects like the bedeken, ketubah signing, breaking the glass, and using rings that have no beginning or ending. The reception will be more relaxed and less traditional. We are hoping for a fun and formal evening that we will never forget.

Getting Through the Post Wedding Blues

Posted on April 4, 2012 by Alison in From The Yentas, Planning, Tales from the Veil

After I got married, I got sad.

The wedding was over and while I was glowing from becoming a wife to someone who I thought — and still think! — is pretty wonderful, the let down of the end to a great adventure was hovering over me. My wedding planning experience was pretty easy and really fun. All the events, the shopping, the pampering — what girly girl could complain? And the wedding itself was the best day of my life — from start to finish, it went off without a hitch (well, WE got hitched) and it remains the topic of nostalgic conversation among family and friends today.

Eight hours after our wedding, we left for Kauai and Maui for our honeymoon. You know what? Hawaii doesn’t suck. We had an amazing ten days in paradise and came home to a pile of presents to open. That wasn’t too shabby either.

But then, that last present was unwrapped. We noted the gift and the gift giver, threw away the paper, and then… well, then what? Our wedding was really, seriously, totally, officially over. No more fiance. No more bride and groom. Our vendors had already forgotten about us and had worked other weddings and were onto planning the next ones. We were history. Friedmans, who?

Some of you may suffer from the Post Wedding Blues, but I’m living proof today that you get over it. Here are some ideas for helping you reenter society as a married woman and recover from your amazing day and subsequent blues:

Do something drastic to your hair. No really, it sounds so rebellious and living-on-the-edge (HARDCORE, MAN!), but most likely, you’ve been growing out your hair or maintaining its color specifically for the wedding. Here’s your chance to redefine yourself, physically speaking. Go a darker shade or cut it short. Get bangs. Treat yourself to weekly blowouts. Whatever you decide, know that it’s okay to start over with your best hair forward.
Join a temple. Not only will it make your bubbie plotz, but you’ll likely meet other young married or almost-married couples who are looking to continue their journey that started under the chuppah together. Most congregations have havurah matchmaking where you can link up with others with similar ages and interests. It could also be a way to shop for married friends. Don’t lie. You know you’ve “joked” about that before.
Date night, date night, date night. Can’t express how important this is! Okay, so remember how much you planned and looked forward to your wedding? You should enjoy the same anticipation with your new [girl squeal!] husband for a date night! It doesn’t always have to be elaborate. You can have pizza-and-PJs date night, but as long as it’s special time together that’s all about you, that’s all that matters. No distractions. Just you two.
Enjoy girl time! Go out with your girlfriends and this time, it won’t be about you. Or your bridal shower. Or your cranky Aunt Roz who insists on bringing her new date du jour from Boca to your wedding. The conversation is not wedding-related, but devoted to you and your girlfriends. Newsflash: it’s more than likely that the past year of your wedding planning was also the topic of conversation with your girlfriends. Not that it’s a bad thing, but now it’s time to give up the throne and not make it all about you and regroup your friendship to its core.
Be a cheerleader! It’s an easy bet that you probably have other friends who are also planning their weddings. Offer advice. Be an open ear. Help them out. Here’s your chance to share your expertise and pass the torch to the next bride in line.
Travel and make new memories. Plan trips with your loved ones and experience all new adventures that aren’t about weddings! You can plan to climb Machu Picchu or enjoy a day up in wine country. There’s no amount of travel that validates the trip. But a day or two or more away will give you something new and exciting to plan.
Blog it. It’s free. It’s easy. It’s therapeutic. Start a blog about your wedding planning adventure and discuss your new life as a wife. Not only will it help you find an outlet for your blues, but blogging will also help keep your family and friends in touch with your household. Blog about vacations, new restaurants, home improvements, and, ya know, when the time comes, that double line on your pregnancy test.