Here are some ways that Instagram changed the wedding planning process as well as the wedding planning business. We’ll also include a recent collage of Instagrabs from some of the wedding professional that we follow.

Keeping up with the Joneses

Well, I guess it depends how you look at it. Yes, it can put more pressure on a couple to step up their wedding planning efforts. And yes, that can be unhealthy. But, you could also say, it gives couples access to more choices and wedding ideas. (Perhaps, too many choices?) It probably does all of those things. Without a doubt, for many many brides to be, scrolling through Instagram is now part of the wedding planning process. Double tap this, double tap that and then review the photos you liked in your account profile. You can tag your friends and get their input right on the spot too.

{Florists, Caterers, Party planners, Party Rentals.}

Included in the collage:

Hostess International – @hostessinternational
Michicas Celebrations – @michicascelebrations
Renee S. Erreich Events – @rsevents
Chani Greenbaum Events – @chanigreenbaumevents
Rentastic Party – @rentasticparty
Kosher Party Planner – @kosherpartyplanner
New York Kosher Caterers – @nykcaterers
Papaya Events – @papayaevents
Shevy Weiss Party Planner – @shevy_weiss_party_planner
Frumi Metz Event Planning – @fmeventplanning
Shaikes Catering – @shaikescatering
Birch Event Design – @bircheventdesign
Devorah Deutch – @devorah.deutch
Mimulo – @mimulo
Creations Catering by Nosson Schultz – @creationscatering

More Exposure for Small Business

Instagram is open for all. It doesn’t (yet) have a firewall that keeps commercial pages away from non-commercial ones like Facebook does. This makes it an incredible tool for businesses to reach their customers. It also levels the playing field for big and small businesses. Small businesses, like make-up professionals or starting out photographers, can quickly grow their fan base if they have some Instagram prowess. Or if they can at least plaster each post with a bunch of #hashtags. Of course, this also means that wedding professionals are also their own PR people, and that can be quite overwhelming at times.

{Make Up}

Included in the collage:

Miriam Follman – @makeupbymiriamfollman
Periva Charach – @makeupbypriva
Racheli Shagalov – @racheli_makeup
Gitty Berger – @gittyberger
Abigail Kolb – @missabby_mua
Chava Farkash – @makeupbychava
Ahuva (Sanik) Itzkowitz – @ahuvasanik
Chana Hertz –@chanahertzmakeup
Batya Hess – @makeupbybatya
Miriam Sokol – @miriamsokolmakeup

Business Website, That’s So Yesterday

There’s so much that a small business can do via social media these days, that many wedding professionals have no permanent website at all. Who needs the headache and the costs of constant website maintenance, web security worries, etc, when one can have up to date information, real client engagement, instant exposure, and all absolutely free. Everything a wedding business needs is right in the palm of their hand.

{Photographers}

Included in the collage:

Koby Yedgar – @koby_yedgar_photography
Mendel Meyers (Monsey) – @mendelmeyersmonsey
Nir’s Expressions – @nirs_expressions
Simchavision – @simchavision
Benjamin Kohen – @benjaminkohenphotography
CJ Studios – @cjstudiosphotos
Andre Reichmann – @andrereichmannphotography
Chana Blumes – @chanablumesphoto
Ulrich Studios – @ulrichstudios
Eli Robinson – @elirobinsonphotography
Laibel & Chana Schwartz – @laibelschwartzphotography
Jerry Meyer – @jerrymeyerstudio
Eliau Piha – @eliaupihastudio

Remember OnlySimchas?

Once it was all the rage. A couple would post their wedding picture on OnlySimchas, and let the Mazel Tovs roll in. It was a great way to share a simchah and the only way for out of town relatives and friends to be a part of it. (In a way it was ahead of its time.) Social media changed all that. Wedding pictures hit Facebook, Instagram, well, instantly, and everyone near and far can shower their emoji filled Mazel Tovs to the happy couple. Now, OnlySimchas is a Jewish news website. However, it’s reclaiming its old role via Instagram (@onlysimchas), together with a newer kid on the simcha sharing block – @SimchaSpot.

{OnlySimchas.com from 8 years ago.}

Can you add something to this list?

Plan on attending your cousin’s Bar Mitzvah party next week? Or your neighbor’s daughter’s wedding next month? As an increasing number of semachot are catered at non-kosher hotels, it is important for the kosher consumer to be aware of what takes place in hotel kitchens. Indeed, oftentimes guests enjoy a lavish smorgasbord (replete with roast rack of lamb and endive and radicchio salad) at a catered hotel affair but have little idea of what, from a kashrut perspective, goes on behind the scenes.

It is important to keep in mind that as a guest at a kosher affair you should never hesitate to question the mashgiach. It is your right to know the standards of the kashrut organization and to feel confident that the mashgiach is doing everything necessary to adhere to the highest kashrut standards.

To better understand the world of kosher catering, let’s take a look at a fictitious evening wedding held at the Sharriot Hotel in New York City.

6 AM: Two mashgichim enter the hotel kitchen to begin preparations. Depending on the size of the event, sometimes as many as three or four mashgichim are needed.

Read more here: OU Kosher

You may say: “well, I never cared about what’s popular anyways.” Not so fast. Fashion trends affect us all. Whether we like it or not, they define, or at the very least strongly influence, our perception of beauty. Just think, what looked good in the 80s or 90s, looks incredibly awkward now

(Here’s an 80’s wedding dress flashback to refresh your memory).

Oh, those puffed shoulders!

In the era of the strapless wedding gown, tznius wedding dresses often looked top-heavy and somehow less elegant. It was significantly more difficult for a frum bride to alter a non-tznius dress without significantly decreasing its appeal. Recent trends in wedding gowns, however, make building up a non-tznius dress a lot easier. Not only because higher necklines such as the jewel, the bateau, the v-neck are coming in, but also because the fabrics are changing as well. More of the wedding dress is made from tulle and lace.  Using these fabrics, designers are adding more airiness and lightness to their wedding gowns.  3-d appliqués and feather adornments over the tulle that are in style further accentuate the airiness of the fabric.

Gown by Israeli Designer Chana Marelus

The lighter fabrics work better with gowns that cover arms and shoulders and make them more pleasing to the eye. Tznius gowns look as elegant and as stylish as the non-tznius ones. Many dresses that are sold in regular bridal stores are easily made tznius by adding sleeves without any additional adjustments. On the downside, large princess ball gowns, which our kallahs like so much, are less common as a result, but that’s a trend we’re prepared to accept. A-lines, sheath, and mermaid (the latter ranking lower on the tznius spectrum) silhouettes are more common.

Perla gown by BHLDN – $1,800

Mary by Illume Gowns

Beaded Lace Gown by Oleg Cassini – $1,250

Gown by Chana Marelus

Trends will surely swing back, but for now let us appreciate the additional options available to the frum bride.

This gown is by Illume Gowns which specializes in modest wedding gowns.

They also should have included gowns from Chana Marelus – an Israeli designer whose dresses are redefining Tznius bridal and evening wear.

The text of the Ketubah has remained much the same throughout the ages, but the script and the decorative elements have change with the times and the locations.

Browsing the site, the ketubahs of Amsterdam caught our attention. The Jewish community of Amsterdam has a fascinating history. In the 1600s, after the Dutch won their independence from Spain, Amsterdam quickly became an important European economic center. This was in part to their policy of religious toleration. Sephardic and Portuguese Jews had found a community there – a refuge from the expulsion from Spain; Ahkenazi Jews started to arrive to escape the Chmielnitzki massacres and the horrors of the Thirty Years War.

Seventeenth century Amsterdam is famous for the Amsterdam Stock Exchange – the first of its kind, the Dutch East India Company, and the artist Rembrandt van Rijn, who resided in the Jewish quarter of the city for a number of years, as well as Menashe Ben Israel whose efforts helped Jews gain permission to resettle the UK.

The collection shows that Ketubahs in Amsterdam were of two kinds – the fancy, custom-made kind and the cheaper template kind.

Amsterdam at this time is also a place where contradictory artistic tastes are present in the city. The Protestant north tends to favor simpler, more subdued art, while the south prefers baroque – an over-the-top, dramatic style of art.

Here are two colorful ketubahs from the period of the first kind:

1617

1671

Most of the ketubahs in the collection were using one of the following two printed templates:

Blank Ketubah – 5500s or 1740-1839

This one seems like the no frills, budget option. The one below seems to have been the next step up.

1809

This ketubah template appears often at this time not only in Amsterdam but in the nearby countries as well. And apparently is can be upgraded to a color version.

I’ll end off this post with two photographs by Leonard Freed – a Brooklyn photographer, who spent the late 50s and 60s (that’s 1950s and 1960s) photographing Amsterdam and  the Jewish community there.

Succoss, Amsterdam 1958

Jewish Wedding, Amsterdam 1958

We continue our analysis of the survey responses with question 5, namely who paid for what.

FLOP, what’s that?

Only 16% of respondents split the wedding bill using the FLOP system. In case you belong to the 84% of people who did not use FLOP, let me fill you in. FLOP stands for Flowers, Liquor, Orchestra, and Photography. It is one way to divide the wedding bill between the two parties: the groom’s side pays for FLOP, while the kallah’ side pays for the rest (which is mainly the Hall and the Catering). This system is (or perhaps was) popular with a more “yeshivish” crowd, but only 16% of this blog’s readers used this approach. The most popular way to divide the chassanah expenses, used by almost 50% of couples and families, is the 50/50 split.

There were many instances (these were mentioned in survey comments) where one side paid for 100% of the wedding bill. The bride’s side was the paying side more often than the groom’s, but the occurrence was frequent enough to be significant. When does one side pay for the entire wedding? Does this happen when one side is significantly less advantaged than the other? Or when one side wants a lavish wedding reception, while the other is looking for a budget approach?

We also wanted to know if parents still foot the wedding bill like they did back in the day.

And the answer is yes, in 56% of cases, the parents paid for the whole thing. Baruch Hashem for mom and dad (or abba and ima or mommy and totty)! That’s not to say that many brides and grooms do not contribute. In the rest of the couple contributed or paid for the whole thing themselves in the rest of the weddings (besides the three percent of weddings where a sponsor paid for it).

What about borrowing? With wedding expenses being what they are, are families forced to borrow to make it happen?

We found it pleasantly surprising that 65% of respondents said that they did not need to borrow to cover the wedding costs. Out of the 35% of couples that did borrow to afford their wedding, 17% borrowed upwards of $20,000.

This is worth contemplating. In question 10, where we asked for the total wedding cost, almost a quarter of respondents said that they managed to make a wedding for less than $15K. Which means, that the couples borrowing more than $20K for their wedding either were not blessed with this magical ability of squeezing the giant of an affair as a wedding into a $15,000 box or they preferred debt to going skimpy on this once-in-a-lifetime celebration. Of course, it is also possible that they had a larger guest list. But this also raises that question if one is really obligated to invite that many people. Who are we to judge people for the voices they make? A lavish wedding reception is certainly alluring, and it’s been that way for as long as there have been weddings. There’s just something special, almost supernatural about the grandest of all life-cycle events that is a wedding that elicits such feelings.

Now let’s get into the more sensitive aspects of paying for the wedding. We asked: Did conversations about wedding finances result in tensions between the couple or between the two families.

The Gemara in Shabbos says that “there are no Ketubah [discussions] that do not result in a fight”. This, of course, is not be taken literally.  As we see from our survey, in overwhelming majority of weddings tensions were almost non-existent. In only 12% of weddings, did conversations about money result in serious problems, and that’s good news.

{Perhaps it is necessary to point out the obvious. This survey is in no way scientific. It is an open, voluntary survey of visitors of this website. We don’t know much about the respondents nor about the truthfulness of their responses. Still the results are certainly interesting and worth a discussion.}

Let’s begin with end, with the last question of the survey: “How much did your wedding cost?”

There were 7 possible categories to choose from: from below $15,000 to above $75,000. Interestingly enough, the two categories that got the most responses were these two extremes. Almost 26% – more than 1 in 4 – of respondents kept their wedding costs down to below $15,000 and almost 20% shelled out more than $75,000.

Do you think $15,000 gives too broad of a range? Is it that easy to pull off a Jewish wedding for under 15 grand? We certainly didn’t think so when we drafted the survey and don’t think so still. Between the hall, catering, music, flowers, photography, videography etc. it seems nearly impossible to put together a wedding under $15,000. But, to our great surprise, more than a quarter of the survey participants managed it. What do you think?

The smallest response was given to the $65,000-$75,000 range. Could that indicate that if one spends one really spends? Perhaps. Although, with more kallahs filling out the survey, things may even out.

Now let us take a look at the survey’s first question: “Did you budget plan for your wedding?”

Yes, we know proper English would be: “Did you set a budget for your wedding?” But we felt that this version was more appropriate, more closely descriptive of the process of trying to set a budget for something that really requires professional and experienced planners. Whilst most people sort of learn the trade of figuring out the various options and their costs as they go along not unpleasantly overwhelmed.

As you can see from the chart, almost half the survey participants took their budget quite seriously. Only 20% of respondents did not set a budget at all. Wait, are those the same 20% with wedding costs exceeding the $75,000 mark?

In the next question the survey wants to know: “How successful were you in setting a budget?”

Here again 26% answered – making it the most frequent response – that they managed to fit into their budget. Whoever heard of fitting into a wedding budget??? Who are these people? Wait, are these the same 26% that managed to pull of a whole wedding under $15,000? Hmm, there does seem to be a pattern of sorts.

This next question is a personal favorite: “The price tag of which wedding service surprise you the most?”

I was rooting for photography, but it only came in third. The winner is “Flowers”, with almost 32% percent of people surprised by the cost of wedding florals. Isn’t it a wonder that one can get a beautiful, large bouquet for about $50, but if it’s a bridal bouquet, well that’s $150-$250?

Many (almost 28%) were also surprised by the price tag of food. It’s generally the biggest of all wedding expenses. Prices for catering (which sometimes include the venue and sometimes are in addition to the cost of the wedding hall) can range from $25 per person to $200 per person. The total cost here is dependent, in large, on the amount of guests you are expecting at your affair. To set table at a large frum wedding with 500 guests or more even at $50 per person adds up to a hefty $25,000.

Now we wanted to know if you think your wedding is costing too much. Duh, of course it is! Well, as you can see from the chart below, about 12% of people answered that they kept wedding costs to a minimum. Most respondents, however, indicated that their wedding expenses are high – some are just more OK with it than others; after all it is a wedding!

The second half of the survey we shall discuss in Part 2 of this article. Stay tuned, but add your two cents to the topic of wedding costs in the comments.

TenYad is looking for extra help this summer wedding season. No Kallah Left Behind.

Quite often, weddings, which are planned months in advance, get caught up in some unpredictable nature event (like this Blizzard wedding in Chicago last year or the Blizzard of 2010 in NY). For Jewish families a wedding is more than a celebration with friends and family, more than a lifecycle milestone; a wedding is a beginning of fresh branch within the House of Israel. It takes more than gusty winds to put the brakes on this occasion. Mazel Tov to the new couple!

Contact the Daf Yomi Commission at (212) 797-9000 ext 267 at least two weeks before the wedding date.

9:30 AM Crowd, waiting for the opening of the Fortune Wigs store in Brooklyn

Is it the latest iPhone? No. It’s the Fortune Wigs One Day Crazy Outlet Sale; and ladies looking to get a bargain wig for the holidays are making sure that they get there first. Sheitel shopping does weigh heavily on a family’s budget, and the idea of getting a quality wig at a deep discount has widespread appeal. Many wig retailers are running holiday sales at this time. Fortune Wigs’ sale is a one day only, ‘final sale’ event, only today – Sunday, Aug 5th. Are you going to be one of the fortunate ones to get a ‘cheap’ Fortune Wig?

Another famous wig sale is the Milano. Their holiday sales are held at various locations. To find the one near you, see their website. Happy Hunting!

Ketubah, although essentially a legal document (and legal papers rarely find themselves a source for artistic inspiration), has been an important outlet for artistic expression for hundreds of years. Before we explore contemporary Ketubah artists, let me post here a few examples of Ketubahs of yesterday. There are a few Ketubah collections on the web; here are just a few excerpts from these that caught our attention:

These are from the New York Public Library collection:

(To see more from this collection of rare, antique ketubahs, click here: NYPL Digital Library)

1881, Isfahan, Iran

Reggio Emilia, 1770

Reggio Emilia, 1774

Nizza Monferrato, 1782

Another Digital collection can be found at the Jewish National and University Library; here are a few excerpts:

Bayonne, France, 1695

Salonika, Greece, 1883

Rome, Italy, 1638

Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1661 (this printed ketubah appears in many weddings of the time.)

From all of us to all of you:

HAPPY PASSOVER!

!חג שמח

(images courtesy of Avraham Bank; Marc Berenson)

Here’s also a great video, courtesy of Gordi Studio:

While wedding day dreams do come true, don’t count on a fairy godmother waving her magic wand to make your fantasy a reality.

Making the hundreds of decisions for your flawless wedding day takes time and careful consideration. And if you speed along and don‘t watch your step, you’ll soon be on a collision course with stress and pressure, the two ingredients that can turn a fantastic fairytale into another episode of “Bridezillas.”

Read the full article here.

Happy Chanukkah to all the Chatans and Kallahs out there!!! Now that you’ve found a partner with whom you’ll share the rest of your life, and now that your life has gained a new measure of ‘certainty’, and the ‘uncertainty’ of not knowing if you’ll ever meet the one that’s right for you is a thing of the past, now that some of that ‘darkness’ has been illuminated, we wish you to continue to find illumination in all things.

Linens is another one of those chosson/kallah items. Check out the deals at Designer Linens Outlet; use Code FF2009 and get 30% off all orders (except Premier Boutique) & $4.99 Shipping.

Wedding shoes: you may find something at Shoes.com. Search for Bridal in the search box in the upper right hand corner.

Obviously the Department stores have a million specials, each one with its own ‘shtick’. Check them out for yourself for the items you need; though keep in mind that if you have time, there are items that are discounted even deeper once the holiday season is over. Check out the specials at your favorite dept store: Macy’s – Get free shipping on$ 75 use code CYBER. Target gives you free ship on $50 purchase.

If you found some good wedding deals, come back and share with the rest of us.

a Sweet, Sweet New Year!!!

Did You Know? When a traditional wedding invitation seems to be just so… – traditional, you can always do something like this? Gruda Design, an Israeli graphic desginer in NJ was the author of this wedding invitation for a couple who were willing to come a bit closer to the edge. (Perhaps a bit over the edge for most people.) The transformed Bazooka bubble gum comic strip works well for an invitation because, in addition to the cartoon, it contains a Hayadata? section where the date, time and place of the wedding can be put in.