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!
