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.

I have one brother. I have one sister, too, but it’s the one brother thing I want to kibbitz about today. I bring it up on The Wedding Yentas because my brother is religious. Super religious. Super, super-Jewish-religious. All it takes is one relative, especially an immediate family member, to make you think outside of the box when it comes to Jewish wedding planning. Different food requirements, different clothing requirements, and different comfort levels were all part of my agenda to satisfy this important family member. While it was not my brother’s wedding, and he didn’t want any special attention, there were some things we needed to do to make him comfortable.

I started by saying I have one brother. It’s important to mention this early and often because when you get married, sometimes it’s hard to remember what is important. You get sucked into this little world of “it’s my wedding and I’ll do what I want” and it’s easy to lose sight of what is really a priority. While this is the most important day of your life, people can’t just let go of who they are in order to mold themselves into what you want for your one day. Let me explain more with a little anecdote.

I bought adorable velvet kippot back home in San Diego in preparation for our wedding. I spent a lot of time deciding what to inscribe in them. Well, as much time as can be spent on three lines.

Should I order them to say hubby’s name first, then my first name and new last name? Or my first name and hubby’s full name? Or just our first names? Or Mr. & Mrs.? Hebrew date only or the American date? Both? The city and state we were to be married? Or more details, including the hotel name? It almost required as much thought as my wedding dress search.

A few hundred dollars and lots of dark blue velvet later, it was set. Our kippot names would be immortalized forever. Decades from now, a family member would find our kippa at a random Bar Mitzvah (maybe for our child?) and think back to our wedding day. Just one little detail that seemed traditional and important to me at the time.

Well, things didn’t go as planned.

First, it turns out that as an observant Jew, kippot must be a certain size in order to be acceptable to wear. Of course, I had no idea and bought the small ones, not the bigger ones. I found this all out the day before we got married. In other words, 24 hours did not leave any time to make any real changes, or so I thought.

At first, my brother said he couldn’t wear it, which upset me slightly. But then I thought, “what difference does it really make to me? It’s really important to him, and I want to respect him and his religious requirements.” I figured he would just be the only one who didn’t wear the velvet blue kippa.

Then, it got really interesting. My dad and brother passed a Hawaiian Chabad on the day of my destination wedding. Day of! They saw that they had Hawaiian flower printed kippot. And of course they were the right size and everything. My dad saw this as win-win opportunity. When he approached me, suggesting that we hand out the new kippot instead of my traditional velvet kippot, I wanted to disagree at first, but I saw how excited he was to accommodate both my brother and my wedding day in Hawaii.

So, I quickly thought of the short and long term implications. On the one hand, I was losing something that was semi-special to me. On the other hand, wasn’t it worth doing one small thing to include my brother in my day?

So I made the big decision that any big sister would on her wedding day. We chose the Hawaiian print kippot even though my brother still didn’t end up wearing it (he says he simply forgot to switch his everyday kippa for the wedding version. Oh well!).

It’s funny because looking back, everyone kvelled over those Hawaiian flowered kippot and still do. Even I had a change of heart soon after our wedding. I love seeing them in our wedding photos and our wedding video. This simple act of accepting a last minute detail made the day even more special.

(Side note: recently while speaking with my brother about the right size for kippot, he laughed and said that four years ago, he was just being difficult and totally could have worn the velvet kippa as it was. Hindsight is 20/20 for everyone!).

And now I have 100 velvet kippot that we will never use… Who wants one?

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.