Category Archives: Tales from the Veil

Ali is newly engaged and was proposed to at her dream location: the empty stage of a Broadway theatre! The 20-something-year-old actress met her soon-to-be husband while working on a show together, and they love to spend time seeing theatre, taking in a baseball game, and playing pop culture trivia. Ali also nannies for several families in the Los Angeles area, looks forward to Disneyland trips, and enjoys a good deli lunch. She is excited to begin the journey of planning her wedding and learning about the details that go into the big day. In order to successfully achieve her vision, Ali plans to use resources like The Wedding Yentas, family and friends who’ve been-there-done-that, and bridal magazines. Ali is aiming for a Fall 2012 wedding in Southern California.

I’ve always seen it in the movies when the female main character knows with a simple glance who she will marry someday, and this seemingly cinematic storyline is my reality. It was almost two-and-a-half years ago that I first saw Michael performing on stage in a show for which I was about to start rehearsing. At one glance I thought to myself, “I’m gonna marry that guy one day.” Just like that. It didn’t matter that I had never met him. You know where this is going.

We met after the show, and as they say, the rest is history. He is my perfect man in every way, completing all the things I lack, and is my stronger, better half. For me, getting engaged was the next logical step in our relationship, and I knew that he felt the same way. It was just a matter of when.

He has made it clear to me through our few years together that Thanksgiving is his favorite time of year. I had a feeling that a proposal might happen that week. By “that week,” I mean last week. (This is all very, very recent). It was also the perfect time since we would both be back in New York for Thanksgiving, which is where we had met (we have since moved to California) and where Michael is from. It was Tuesday night in NYC, and Michael had planned an incredible date night for us. First, we had dinner at one of his favorite restaurants, and then he had plans to take me to see a Broadway show; the quintessential evening in New York.

After an incredible dinner had ended, we walked in the rain to the Majestic Theatre where we had 8th row center seats to see a childhood friend of mine who was starring as Christine in The Phantom of the Opera. The show was truly incredible. I had seen it a few times before, but this particular performance really made me more emotional than usual. It might have been due to the fact that I was sitting next to my incredible man and I had a feeling that something was up. Perhaps it was the fact that he was wearing my favorite outfit, or the way he insisted on taking his jacket everywhere with him that night instead of checking it or leaving it with me. Either way, seeing Phantom again resonated something sentimental.

After the last notes of the show were sung and the curtain call had ended, we went to the stage door where my friend met us and took us up to her dressing room and gave us a full stage tour. Being the theatre people that Michael and I are (it is, after all, how we had met) we were inspired and excited to see the behind-the-scenes of one of the most famous Broadway shows. We finally arrived at the stage of the theatre, which was absolutely bare. No people. No sets. It was just us on stage, and the giant chandelier was hauntingly raised above the first few rows of seats.

My friend had conveniently found a reason to leave so that Michael and I were completely alone on the stage. I looked out into the empty seats where just moments before an audience had enjoyed the show. It was then, with every possible emotion at its peak, that he turned to me and said, “I think this is the perfect time to ask…” and got down on one knee. Everything was so wonderfully overwhelming that I couldn’t even answer his question. He showed me the exact ring that I had wanted as we stood in my dream location, down and center on a Broadway stage. How does one speak at this moment? All I could mutter was, “I think you know the answer,” and I threw my arms around him in a state of complete joy and shock. He finally asked me to please at least say “yes,” so he could hear it, and asked if I wanted the ring, since, you know, it was for me. I was kvelling to such a degree that I had forgotten to take the ring, which had fit perfectly.

So now, as we begin to plan the wedding, I just can’t stop smiling about my perfect moment from my perfect man! I am going to enjoy being engaged for a while and then dive deep into planning with Michael and, of course, The Wedding Yentas. This is such an exciting time in a bride’s life, and I’m so glad it’s finally my turn.

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.

Tropical weddings are stuff that fairy tales are made of. You fly your family and close friends across the world (or, if you’re me, halfway across the Pacific Ocean) to say your vows in a new and exciting place. The colors are brighter, the ocean more sparkly, and yes, despite the cliche, the grass is even greener.

However, just because you are taking your wedding to a place you choose, it does not mean that your destination is accustomed to Jewish weddings. Or Jewish traditions. Some people at your venue may have never heard of the horah or the idea of signing a Ketubah. Getting married in Hawaii four years ago was a learning experience for all of our vendors.

It started with the wedding coordinator and setting up our “out of the non-traditional box” Jewish wedding and the accoutrements. Explaining the need for a location for the Ketubah signing was a little complex. We realized quickly that even though we wanted to share the important reasons behind the ceremony, that wasn’t going to make it easier for the coordinator. We got to the point where we broke it down by what we needed, who was invited, and how long it would take. Ketubah signing ceremony meant needing a table, an easel (for the Ketubah after it was signed), chairs for the grandparents, and a private area for 30 minutes pre-chuppah ceremony.

Explaining the Ketubah to our videographer was a challenge, too. He had no idea what to expect so when he videotaped it, he was unable to edit it in the same artsy, shmancy, fancy fashion that he did with the wedding ceremony. The video of our ceremony, however, is super artsy.

Yichud proved to be another road block. Again, we went with simplicity with the coordinator. Yichud translated to “we need a private room for ten minutes immediately after the wedding ceremony. Have the caterer bring in a small plate of cheese and crackers.” Done and done. Easy.

My favorite Jewish wedding obstacle in Hawaii was explaining our customs to our disc jockey. While DJ Fudge (could there be a better name?) was not only a native Hawaiian recommended by our wedding venue, he didn’t know nothin’ about Jewish customs, let alone about Jewish people or their needs. However, DJ Fudge was a professional and did a great job following our lead. We hired him three days before our wedding (my dad decided that since the hotel threw in a dance floor for free, we needed a DJ!). Oy. Before we did the official entrance into the reception, we sat outside of the ballroom and explained to DJ Fudge how to pronounce Horah (hoe-rah) and to let it go on and on until the music ran out or we passed out from exhaustion.

So, if you are either a mainland bride getting married in Hawaii, the Caribbean, or anywhere that has one synagogue (or none), here is my advice:

1. Assume they know nothing. Literally nothing. It’s okay. They would rather you over-explain than have a wedding day disaster (like no chairs for the grandparents during the ketubah ceremony, grrrrr, don’t get me started).

2. Try to explain the custom first. If it is difficult to explain or difficult for your coordinator/vendor to understand, resort to simplification. Just explain what you want exactly: what, where, when, and for how long.

3. Go with the flow! Give these places some credit for trying. If you really wanted a super Jewy wedding, you’d be getting married at your family synagogue. Well, you aren’t, so be nice. Trust me, they appreciate it.

4. Do your research! I really wanted to go to the mikvah (ritual cleaning in a religious bath house) before we got married and thought, I’m sure they have one on Oahu. Um, yes, but super far away. Didn’t happen. Should have done it at home.

5. Prepare for your religious relatives. This one requires another story for me as the rabbi I flew in kept kosher, as did my brother. We were able to find a kosher restaurant (halleluyah!) after we got there. We bought our big rainbow-sprinkled challah and all kosher meals from them. That could have been a disaster!

6. Rabbis! If having a rabbi ordinate is important to you, as it happened to be for me, you may need to fly your rabbi with you. That’s right. Rabbi Lewis got an all expenses paid trip to Hawaii as a thank-you for officiating our wedding. Oahu has one rabbi and one synagogue, but it isn’t associated with the Conservative movement, so due to our personal requirements, we had to bring a rabbi with us. Trust me, it comes with a price, but we got the wedding we wanted.

7. The dress. Oh the dress! FYI, you will be carrying your dress on the plane with you. Unless you have a plan to get the dress steamed upon arriving at your destination, the safest thing to do is carry on. That means you’re schlepping that sucker through the airport and onto the plane, doing your best to ignore the fact that your hands and arms are going numb. This is super important, but also a biiiig pain in the tushie. This is not advice. This is me begging you to carry your dress on the plane because who else can you trust more than yourself? No one. Not mom, not dad, and certainly not fiance/soon-to-be husband.

(Cute anecdote: as we boarded the airplane, me with my gigantic wedding bag in front of me, the cute old man in the first row first said, “congratulations” to me as I passed by, then to the fiance, “it’s not too late to run.”)

8. Respect your family and friends. If people are traveling for you, thank them. Help pay for their room, give them a goodie bag, invite them to the rehearsal dinner, invite them to the Ketubah signing ceremony, whatever you can do and afford. They are spending hundreds (or thousands) of dollars to be with you. And no, they didn’t have to. They chose to.

9. Have fun!! You are getting married in your own personal paradise! Live it up, be flexible and remember how lucky you are to have the wedding of your dreams.

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.

Like life, weddings are not meant to be perfect. Our wedding, our wonderful wonderful wedding, was filled with so much calamity and hilarity that I think it deserves its own post to explain why and how we turned lemons into lemonade and made some disasters into laughter. Our 40 attendees got a wedding they will never ever forget. And why not get married with a bang? Or, um, a fire? Yes, there was a fire at our wedding, but I’m saving that one til the end. For now, though, here’s a list of moments we are now able to chuckle at as we remember our quickly-planned Jewish wedding in Hawaii.

Someone called my mother my grandmother and thought I would die. After a long day at the beach, a friend, who shall remain nameless, accidentally assumed my mom was my grandmother. And he called her my grandmother in front of me. But worse, in front of her and a hot tub full of wedding guests. “You look so much like your grandmother,” the friend said to me. Heaven help us! He almost died of embarrassment and she almost died too. It became a hilarious joke throughout the weekend. Our friend is such a sweet person that he spent the rest of the time in Hawaii calling my mom Mrs. Hoffman and telling her how beautiful and wonderful she looked. “Oh Mrs. Hoffman, you look so lovely this evening.” “Mrs. Hoffman, what a beautiful dress!”

Our rehearsal dinner was a big group of people. By “big group of people,” I mean the whole group. How could we not invite all 40 people who had flown from California to Maryland to be in Oahu on 3 weeks’ notice? We selected a nearby restaurant and created a special menu to make it easier on the kitchen and faster to get our food. You can imagine the laughs we had when instead of seeing “Rehearsal Dinner for Rachel Hoffman and Tim Kitt” it said “Tom Kitt.” This is funny because they mixed up a letter and my dad’s name is Tom! Oops, wrong man! We unassumingly said that if this was the worst that would happen, that would be great. Little did we know… little did we know.

My dress was too big. I was so afraid that I wouldn’t be able to stay in wedding dress-shape during our pre-wedding vacation that I changed my diet to fruit and yogurt only. So those last five pounds I lost were not on purpose, not welcomed, and not happy with a strapless dress. It is actually possible to lose too much weight for your wedding, ladies. Trust me.

It rained. We were on Oahu for ten days and the only time it rained was during the 30 minutes of our ceremony. Thankfully my dad was smart to cover the ketubah so it didn’t get wet, my brother-in-law sat in the wettest seat but didn’t care, and my mascara did not run. All was okay!

There was crazy wind! It was so intense that I thought my sister was pulling my veil as we got ready to walk down the aisle, but it actually the wind, pulling my veil out of my perfectly coiffed hair. Sorry again, sis! I really didn’t mean to get mad. I now know it was the wind’s fault!

Our wedding album has no beach pictures. Seriously. Have you ever heard of a bride having a destination Hawaiian wedding and not have any beach photos to show for it? Thanks to the rain and wind, I was not in the mood to go to the beach and get dirty and sandy. So, we don’t have any photos with tropical scenery, but we did find a nice little piano to take cute photos on at least.

The hotel caught fire during our ceremony. This is not a joke. There was literally a fire. In the hotel. During our ceremony. Apparently a towel got caught in the laundry room at the hotel and caught fire. And the hotel alarm went off. And then a fire engine roared to the hotel. Three times. Then we saw black smoke. Apparently the hotel wanted to stop our ceremony but our wedding coordinator, in her smart move of the day, stopped them since we were far enough away from the hotel. Thank goodness we did not get married inside or we definitely would have been evacuated. There’s truly nothing more romantic that stopping a wedding ceremony, right? You get thirty minutes in your life that’s completely devoted to you and your love, and during our thirty minutes, the fire alarm and three fire engine sirens interrupted. Awesome.

So when you have a snag in your planning or on your wedding day, just know it could always be worse. It’s these crazy moments that make your wedding the most memorable wedding you or your guests will ever attend. Just ask our friends if they remember a wedding more than ours. Rain, wind, and fire showed up at our wedding as uninvited guests and the rest of the invitees are still talking about it! Always expect the unexpected even on wedding days and happily ever afters. Then, laugh!

Jackie Sion works in the digital marketing world and has used her digital knowledge to help tackle the many facets of wedding planning. She is lucky enough to have the opportunity to spend the majority of her time researching and interviewing vendors. Besides wedding planning, Jackie enjoy spending time with her fiance, family, friends, watching movies, BBQing, swimming, and YouTubing funny videos. Jackie has been a regular writer for tech blogs and her own personal blog, and is glad to be helping out other Yentas in need with The Wedding Yentas! Stay tuned for more stories during the planning for her upcoming nuptials.

The first piece of advice I was given, on the day I was proposed to, was “Take the time to enjoy being engaged.” Easy enough, but I chose not to listen. No one really tells you how conversations and people change once you get engaged. First, everyone wants to see your hand, which I am more than willing to show off. Second, they ask questions — lots and lots of questions. When I got engaged in April, the kinds of questions I was asked took a total 180. It used to be, “When are you getting engaged?” and now it’s “When is the date?” “Do you have colors yet?” “Will kids be invited?” The list goes on. With the barrage of questions I felt like I always needed an answer and “We’re not sure yet” wasn’t good enough. It was this need to have all the answers that was the real reason I didn’t listen to the great advice I’ll now pass on to newly engaged brides.

Only a few months into my relationship with my now-fiancé, I knew I was going to marry him. In fact earlier this year, before I had the ring (it’s beautiful and perfect!), I was already secretly reading wedding blogs and picking colors. If I’m going to be completely honest, I’ve been planning my wedding since the first time I watched Cinderella, but it was a completely different story when I knew who it was going to happen with. It’s one thing when you’re 5 and your favorite color is pink with sparkles than when you’re 26 and the previously blurred face at the end of the aisle wakes up next to you every morning. I knew it was no longer about what I wanted and I had to take his opinion into consideration. In my previous game of wedding-planning solitaire, I never had to consider anyone else’s opinions, but now there’s a real groom involved and he has put the kibosh on anything too princessy. Okay, okay, do I really want to be in a full ballgown with real glass slippers with my hair in tight curls? No, not really. But hey, it was fun to dream.

Completely ignoring the sage advice of a bridesmaid, once I became engaged, I dove deep, head-first into magazines, blogs, trends, colors, and the list goes on and on. I didn’t have a budget, date, or guest list yet, and I was already worried about which colors would match and what theme we would have. And when we did have a budget and guest list, I found that the slew of magazines and blogs I read on a daily basis completely hindered our creativity. The hardest part for me to swallow was that what I wanted for all those years, regardless of the fact that I was 5, was probably not feasible. Due to budget restrictions and the way that some of our decisions were unfolding, what I wanted was not going to happen. The little girl in me had a mini meltdown because the wedding in my head was perfect and beautiful. And as our engagement progressed, the wedding in my head was moving farther and farther away.

What I was thinking in my completely overwhelmed and stressed out mind was if the perfect wedding I envisioned wasn’t possible, then what was the wedding I was planning going to turn into? Soaking myself with inspiration from the magazines and blogs was actually hindering my creativity and ability to see my own wedding and that scared me. How could I not see my own wedding? How was it possible that I didn’t know what I wanted anymore? I should have 21 years of “planning” under my belt and now when it was real and happening why was I having problems making a decision?

It took only one conversation with my fiancé to bring me down to earth — way down. Should I have listened to that first piece of advice from the get-go? Absolutely. Did I kinda-sorta need that moment where I channeled my 5-year-old self and tried to plan the wedding of my dreams in one afternoon? Totally.

Back down to Earth and a with few more weeks of planning under my belt, I now love being engaged and love even more imagining the rest of my life with the man I’m going to marry. What I’ve learned so far is that there is no cookie cutter wedding and therefore no one way to plan. For some brides, maybe it is living out the 5-year-old’s dream, and for others it could be using their creativity and unique style to do everything themselves. The key is to find out what works best for you as a couple and within your budget. I’ve figured out what works best for me and now planning a wedding is a completely different experience than what it was when I started.

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.

To see Part I of Rachel’s feature of Tales from the Veil, click here.

Needing the perfect wedding dress with only three weeks to go before a wedding? Yes, you-know-what hit the fan.

When the going gets tough, the tough gets going. I had one weekend to find a dress. One.

Friday after work, I went to David’s Bridal and found a lovely dress that fit, was fantastically cheap, didn’t make my heart sing, but became The Back Up Dress. It was good enough. I told myself that if I hadn’t found the “right” dress by the next day, Saturday at 5 o’clock, the David’s Bridal dress was going to be The Dress. And it would be, you know, fine.

So Saturday morning I realized I had to give up on the budget. Entirely. I made an appointment at Here Comes The Bride in San Diego. I brought a girlfriend with me and the two of us grabbed couture dresses off the hangers and simply ignored the price tags. It’s like they didn’t even exist. Moral of the story #3: There is a reason that some dresses are $500 and some are $5,000. The price is usually determined by the name on the tag, but you get what you pay for, too.

These dresses with essentially non-existent price tags were phenomenal. So without a budget, I tried on a dress and really liked it. I liked it more than the David’s Bridal dress. That felt successful already! Baby steps to The One.

Then I tried on dress #2. Instantly I felt a glow and my cheeks flushed. I smiled so hard I could not contain myself. Looking in the mirror, the dress took my breath away. Price tag? What price tag? I literally had no breath. That’s got to be priceless, right?

I walked out of the fitting room and my girlfriend gasped. She just kept nodding her head and saying, “Yes, Rachel. Yes.”

I jumped up on the pedestal in the front of the store with the 180 degree mirrors, and I didn’t even notice the other wedding party behind me until I heard a “Oh yeah, honey” and “Giiirl, that dress is gorgeous.” Approval from total strangers? That had to count for something! The dress had stolen the show! It was The One! My fairytale moment had arrived! More exclamation marks!

!!!!

Then I finally looked at the price tag.

It was almost six times the budget before alterations. I didn’t know what to do. I went back to the dressing room for a personal phone call. My own personal 911 who always picked up the phone for my life’s conundrums: my dad, the most important (non-fiance) man in my life. As I stood in the dressing room wearing this gorgeous bright white dress with a little bit of beading in all the right places and the Swarovski crystal buttons all down the back, I said, “Daddy, it’s perfect. But it’s expensive.”

Now you may think I’m the luckiest girl in the world because my dad’s answer went a little something like “Whatever makes you happy, Princess,” but I knew that with a budget cap where Tim and I could keep every dollar we didn’t spend, I wasn’t about to cost him any more. By spending more on the dress, I’d have to cut the cost of something else in our budget. This was a painful problem for me.

What I didn’t know then was that the photographer we would hire in Hawaii for our elopement would charge exponentially less than the super expensive, fancy photographer in San Jose we originally hired. Financially, it all worked out. Eloping definitely had its perks.

My dress was expensive, yes. The dollar amount simply does not matter (plus I’ve sworn my parents and husband to secrecy for fear of social rejection from my friends who might think I’m crazy). Here’s the thing. All brides have a different budget, different parents, a different fiancée, and a different type of wedding.

For some brides, a dress more than $200 is crazy, and for some (thank you TLC’s Say Yes To The Dress) $8,000 is more of a starting point, if you will.

So for me, it was six times my budget and ended up being 20% of the entire cost of the wedding, but after it was all said and done, we still came 40% under the budget cap due to a last-minute small destination wedding, and we had a nice little nest egg for ourselves.

I am convinced everything happens for a reason.

And if you don’t believe me, then let me go ahead and finish this story.

I bought the dress on Saturday morning, just under three weeks before we got married. I narrowly dodged my 5 o’clock deadline that would have put me in a dress that I did not love. Because the dress I chose to buy was couture, it would take the standard eight months to create and ship. My only option was to buy the sample dress I tried on in the store. However, the dress was a part of the designer’s new line, which had come out only two weeks before I found it, so the store could not discount it. The most they could do for me was dry clean it, but at least I fit in it perfectly. So I paid full price, expecting to pick it up a week later, cleaned, and ready to travel to Hawaii.

Imagine my surprise when I got a call Sunday morning from the store.

The saleswoman was so excited about our elopement and my wedding story that she had called the designer’s warehouse in New York. Miracle of miracles, they had a dress, recently completed for a bride who had changed her mind (sound familiar?). The warehouse shipped the dress overnight to San Diego on Monday, and by Wednesday night I was back at the store, doing my first alteration on a brand new, never-worn, gorgeous dress!

Three alteration sessions and two weeks later, I was carrying a huge garment bag onto the plane for our flight over the Pacific Ocean, on my way to becoming Mrs.Kitt.

And as the fairytales go, we, Tim, The Dress, and I, lived happily ever after.