According to this recent article in The Wall Street Journal, the Hava Nagila, known to be the most popular Jewish wedding song and one that often accompanies the Hora dance, is on its way out. Some have blasted the tune as being “too cliche” and too old fashioned to play at their wedding. What do you think? Did you, or will you have the Hava Nagila played at your wedding? Is it a classic song that you can’t do without, or do you think that the song is “in danger of becoming a musical relic”?

In my opinion, there are enough renditions of the Hava Nagila to suit everyone’s musical taste. Do you know that artist such as Bob Dylan, Neil Diamond, Bruce Springsteen, and Ben Folds have performed the tune? (Click the links to see their renditions.) Because the traditional version was not really our style, we chose to play this techno version of the Hava Nagila at our wedding.

If you are planning to register for wedding gifts, you might consider registering for a menorah.  Unlike an ice cream maker or formal china, you know a menorah will come in handy at least eight days a year! Menorahs also make wonderful family heirlooms.  Whether your taste runs traditional or modern, there is a menorah out there to suit everyone’s style. ModernTribe.com, Amazon.com, GalleryJudaica.com, JewishMuseumShops.com, and Judaism.com are just some of the online shops where you can register for menorahs and other Judaica. Here are some of my favorite picks:

1) This classic modern menorah is a reproduction of one that is part of the permanent collection in The Jewish Museum. Because it is fashioned of argentum pewter, you don’t have to worry about it tarnishing! $250 at The Jewish Museum Shops

2) Nice Jewish Boy Jonathan Adler designed this Relief Menorah – a simple form accented with rippling texture and a matte white glaze. $98 at ModernTribe.com

3) This hand polished menorah by Nambé is stunning enough to be used as a centerpiece or candelabra year round. $160 at Amazon.com

4) This peace sign menorah is the most affordable of the bunch, and reminds us what is truly important during the holidays. $14 at ModernTribe.com

5) This pewter baroque style menorah by Quest is hand-painted with enamel and adorned with Austrian crystals. Gorgeous! $270 at GalleryJudaica.com

6) At first look, this Olive Branch Menorah by artisan Michael Aram does not appear to be a menorah at all, but at closer inspection you’ll realize that it is designed for the Festival of Lights! $210 at The Jewish Museum Shops

Passover is just around the corner, and if you are planning to register for wedding gifts, consider registering for a Seder plate!  There are some really unique Seder plates out there – from classic to funky.  Seder plates are not only useful during the Passover holiday, but they truly embody the meaning of “functional art.” I’ve rounded up some of my personal favorites with details on where you can register or purchase:

1. Moon Crater Seder Plate
This Seder plate design is inspired by the craters on the moon’s surface and is crafted out of polished aluminum by designer Laura Cowan.  Handmade in Israel. $199 at ModernTribe.com

2. Folding Seder Plate
This beautifully hand-painted design by Isreali Artist Yair Emanuel folds up in to a cube for compact storage or travel.  Each item is hand painted with acrylic colors and lacquered with several layers. $134.95 at Judaism.com

3. Celestial Bronze Seder Plate
Like thousands of stars sparkling in the sky, this golden bronze, fused flat plate is fashioned of copper and glass, with six clear dishes that rest atop a black metal stand.  It is designed by artist Sara Beames and handmade. There is also a matching matzah plate! $148 at Judaism.com

4. The Jewish Museum Vienna Seder Plate
This is a beautiful reproduction of a Seder plate from Vienna, c. 1900. Extremely popular at the time– porcelain exported by the Chinese inspired both the blue and white color scheme as well as the decorative elements. Vines, blossoms and birds perch on branches surround a center Star of David, with six heart-shaped indentations that hold the symbolic Seder foods. Made in England for The Jewish Museum of New York. $175 at Judaism.com

5. Red Pomegranate Seder Plate
Glossy red ceramic Seder plate is hand made by Dani Goren in Israel. The Seder plate has six little pomegranate dishes for your Seder foods. There is also a matching matzah plate! $118 at ModernTribe.com

6. Tall Vertical Seder Plate
Copper, gold, brass, fused glass, and other metals combine in this modern Seder plate design by Artist Gary Rosenthal. Like a stairway to heaven, the Seder dishes spiral gently upwards, with the names of the Seder foods silk screened in gold on the fused glass.   $300 at Judaism.com

In November 2007 I received the following email from a friend who had recently moved away (the subject line read “Blind Date?”):

Hi Elisheva,

 How are you?  So nice to see you last month.   Question: are you interested in being fixed up? My good friend’s brother is a 40 year old architect in sf.  Cute, nice, great family.  What do you think?

 All the best,  serena

Soon after replying in the affirmative, I received the next email:

Elizheva,

Greetings, I am Karen’s brother who is friends with Serena, who I understand to be your friend as well, and it seems as though the two of them are trying their hands at match making so it seems like the only polite thing to do is for us to get together and test their match making skills.  Other than the fact that you know Serena the only other thing I know about you is that you are a member of the tribe, might be a teacher and that I don’t know how to pronounce your name.  But I suppose that what first dates are for.

What do you think dinner?  Drink after work?  Let me know what your schedule looks like or if you have a questionnaire you would like me to fill out first.

Bob

It made me laugh. There were a few grammatical errors which I overlooked. And even though he might be a super nerd, it was worth at least meeting this brother-of-a-friend-architect-single-guy-in-San-Francisco.

So I replied:

Hello Bob–

I’m very pro-dinner, generally speaking.  Usually on the late side. And company is always better than eating alone.

So, yes, I’ll take you up on the dinner offer.

No questionnaire for you to fill out (though it sounds like you’ve had some … uh… ‘experience’) I’m sure I could think of some deeply important questions to ask online, but probably the most relevant would be when and where?

I am indeed a member of the tribe– and often I say about myself that I’m the Jewish Yahoo, in that I’m pretty connected to the “Jewish” part of my identity.

We can discuss this more in person (or on line).

I continued the reply, sharing how I knew our mutual friend, joking about the questionnaire—even asking a question (if you could meet one person in history, who would it be and why?) and finished the post…

As for my name, it’s pronounced like this:  Ellie-Sheh-Vuh (and rhymes with “whatevah”)

I look forward to meeting you, Bob.

We can tilt our glasses to the matchmakers, whether they are on to something or not.

-E

And charmingly, his response to the “questionnaire” began:

So if you weren’t free I would have to choose Albert Einstein as my dinner companion. . . .

Our first date “didn’t happen.” After spending an evening in a bar thinking I might be stood up, I left thinking that he’d better have a good apology or excuse.

In my version of the story, he stood me up. In his retelling, there was a miscommunication about the date and he believed it to be the following Sunday. On Monday I received a very sweet, very apologetic voice mail (and email), saying that if he hadn’t blown it, he would still like to get together.

An older friend, twice married, once told me that if one paid good attention in the first three dates, you could learn everything you needed to know about a person. I’ve tried to take that advice and to be objective in my dating, taking a person for how he presents himself and listening closely to what he says and how, rather than trying to figure out if he is the person whom I want him to be. It helps me to stay very present in conversations.

We met shortly after Hanukkah, and this was the beginning. While I don’t remember everything we talked about, I remember Bob talking about his family on our first date—his parents, his sister, his nieces and nephew. He told me about his parents moving from the house he grew up in, into a condo that he designed. He may have talked about Jewish Youth Group.  I was looking for someone who had good familial relations. I took this as a good sign.

Another jump in time:

On our way home from sharing Thanksgiving 2008 with his family, we decided to move in together. I remember seeing him soon after he’d told his parents the news.

“Were they excited?” I asked.

He hesitated. And started to say, “well… they are kind of traditional…”

“. . .and they’d be more excited if we were engaged,” I finished his unspoken report back. And I continued, somewhat self-righteously (I now realize) saying, “I don’t care much about getting married. That’s really not so important to me. I’m more interested in a good relationship. I think they’ll just have to accept that.”

And that was all we said to each other about a wedding. Or marriage.

However, we did move in together and we did muse about the future names and Jewish education of our unborn children; we did joked growing old together. We enjoyed cohabiting and had no intentions of breaking up.

So one Shabbat afternoon I came home from visiting with some friends, planning to change clothes so we could go to dinner and a movie. Bob was sitting on the couch doing something with his computer as I walked into the living/ dining room. “Hi” I said, as I whisked by, thinking I was on my way to the bathroom. I noticed an envelope on the table hand-addressed to me.

I picked it up and said aloud, “It’s a letter for me. From you!” Then I sat on the couch, next to my boyfriend, and began to read:

My dearest e,

This is a long overdue response to the beautiful letter you sent me months ago. Writing to you like this feels like some ancient ritual; familiar, seemingly simple, yet such a monumental act when actually carried out. I am basically writing to tell you that I love you. . . .

It made me cry. And laugh. I sat beside him on the couch, so filled with the sweetness of the letter.

. . . I think it is appropriate that our first date was at “Lucky Lounge.” I think back to how life changing that night was for me. I think about our San Francisco adventure in those early days and how we have relatively so little behind us and so much ahead. This of the adventures we will have!

So, Elizheva, queen of the desert, with all of that said saving so much more for a rainy day, the next time we are alone, make sure to ask me about your gift. I have something for you that I could not send with this letter.

Yours always – b

I looked at him, tears rolling down my cheeks, and asked, “you mean I get this letter and a gift?!” (I didn’t quite get what was about to happen.) He nodded. And then, in what seemed like a slow motion act, he reached into the lower pocket of his cargo pants & pulled out a white box. I remember observing and thinking, also in slow motion, “Bob is pulling out a little box from his pocket. Bob is opening the box. Wait… there’s a bag in there and it’s sparkling… is that a ring? Bob is handing a ring to me….”

He sat beside me on the couch, casually handing me a sparkly diamond ring and asked me to marry him. I was somewhat shocked. In fact, I was not quite sure what to say, so I asked, “Aren’t you supposed to get down on your knee to ask me that?” “Do you want me to?” “Yes,” I replied, realizing that I could say the word.

So he got on his knee, placed the ring on my finger, and repeated the question. I leaned over, gave him a big hug, and cried some more. He joined me on the couch and asked, “I think I know the answer, but do you have a word to go with it?”

In my mind, one voice was actually kvetching already with “I don’t want to go through all the hassle of planning a wedding….” And another voice said clearly, ”Elizheva, that is not the right answer. The answer is….”

“YES!” I said.

I was stunned. And delighted. And learned more about the ring (formerly his grandmother’s), and his plans, and the letter he’d mailed from his office three days earlier, wondering when it would arrive and who might be in our home when I saw it.

Now, seven months, 17-site-visits, a few excel spread sheets, a few shopping days, and a ring design later, we are happily engaged, planning our Northern California wedding for next summer. I really look forward to sharing the fun and foibles of planning our wedding with others!

(photograph taken by Jessica Peterson)

This is totally how I feel right now, in regards to wedding planning. A bit overwhelmed, a bit over my head, a bit like I’m drowning. I’m suspended, not sure where up is, everything is going so slow and I just need a little air. While I was puffy and stuffy, which is such a terrible combination, I got absolutely no wedding planning done. None at all. So, now that we’re about 125 days away, we’re really pressed for time. We have to get everything done twice as fast which is a bit stressful.

Wedding planning has been fun of course, but now that we have to go into overdrive, everything seems to be falling apart. The person who was making my wedding dress? They completely bailed on me. Oh yeah, just dropped off the face of the earth. That is the thing wedding nightmares are made of. But, after a bit of soul searching and eBay searching, I found something else for a bargain. But, that was an ulcer I didn’t need, you know?

As if the Dress Mess and Swine Flu wasn’t enough, I’ve had even more aggravation  thrown my way in the form of  thinly veiled nuggets of anti-Semitism and ignorance. The kind that hurt you for a few days and you think to yourself “Ugh, I should have said such-and-such and that would have shown them”.

But, like any challenge you come across in life, you just have to put on your War Face and Stompin’ Boots. Wedding things are getting done and I still have my fiancé Matt by my side. That’s what really matters. Our wedding rings have been ordered, I hopefully just secured an officiant, I’ve been in regular contact with a photographer, I have all the doodads to send to one of my vendors (I can not wait to make a post about that!), I’ve found a ketubah I actually like, and all of the paper products are nearing their final design. So, things are happening. At just at a bit of a hectic pace.

Hopefully, my next post won’t have a huge gap like this one and the last one did. But, now that things seem to be coming at me at about five hundred miles an hour, I’ll have a lot more to post about!

Yes, there are still the details of the welcome bags, take home gifts, endless timelines, tastings and other things to complete, but for the most part, I would say I’m ready to be married!  The day after the wedding is looking pretty enticing right now.

The invitations and ketubah were the most exciting part of the process (other than the dress!)  I found an artist that I absolute love, Rachel Deitsch, who kindly helped my dreams become a reality.  She worked with me and my groom to ensure that the invite (which was the first that she had designed) was absolutely perfect.  It combines vibrant colors, Jewish texts, and an overall sense of who we are.  The inside also has the pomegranate theme, which is absolutely stunning. Rachel also converted one of her prints into a ketubah, which it has a similar feel.  Her work is incredible!

So with the invitations out, I’d say there’s no turning back!  The wedding tasting happened a few weeks ago when we went out to Boca. We decided to forgo the traditional wedding menu for something that is more of a representation of who we are and how we feel in love.   We’re doing stations during the reception with sliders, brisket sandwiches,  multiple varieties of french fries, tacos, dim sum, etc, etc etc.  It will be quite a kosher feast!  We wanted the focus to be on fun foods that will energize people to dance!

The dessert options are very similar. There will be a small cake for cutting, but the main desserts include donuts, little ice cream cones, popcorn, cookie sandwiches, etc etc etc!  I think we put more thought into the menu than anything else!

We’ll be back in Florida in a few weeks for the rehearsal dinner tasting, which I’m so excited for!  I just ordered personalized chocolate for the welcome bags, which I think are a cute touch (although probably one of my most unnecessary purchases.)  The Wedding Channel Store is having a huge sale right now, so I recommend picking these chocolates up soon if you like them.  They were on $50, now down to $20, with an extra discount on top of that!

Next up: How sample sales saved my wedding budget!

Hire Vendors Who Have Previously Worked at Your Venue
I got married at The Angel Orensanz Foundation, an event space on the Lower East Side of Manhattan that at one point had been a synagogue. The ketubah signing was at the basement level, the ceremony and reception on ground level, and cocktails on the upper balcony. There are no elevators at the venue, so the only way to get from one level to another is via the stairwell. Needless to say, it’s a tricky venue to navigate – particularly if you are the caterer and your waiters have to carry food and drinks from the basement level to the balcony, which is two flights up. We were about to sign a contract with a caterer we really liked, when all of this had been brought to our attention. The caterer had never worked at this venue before, so we would be his “learning experience” and there was potential for disaster. At the last moment we hired another caterer who had worked weddings at the venue on numerous occasions, and all worked out well. My advice is to stick with vendors who are familiar with your venue.

Communicate With Your Photographer
Our photographer took the most amazing photographs. So many friends have commented that they are the best wedding photos they’ve ever seen. We absolutely loved them, but were disappointed with one thing: many of our closest friends and relatives were omitted from the photos.  Photographers tend to be drawn to the most photogenic people. It’s only natural. In our case, we ended up with more photos of our neighbor who was sporting a mohawk, than our own immediate family and best friends.  It is always important to convey to the photographer who the most important people are at your wedding both prior to the wedding, and on your wedding day. Photographers who offer packages will most likely put together a shot list, but photojournalist style photographers like ours may not.  If you want a shot of you and your childhood best friend, be sure to pull the photographer over to take one of you, or that photo may be missing from your album like it was from mine!

Hire a Day Planner, If Need Be
Prior to my engagement, I never knew what a day planner was. Once I found out, it seemed to me like a needless expense and a great waste of money.  Boy, was I wrong.  A planner is much like the ringleader at a circus. He makes sure that the lions and tigers and bears come out on cue and that the circus starts and ends on time.  Many venues provide a point person like this for you. Our venue did not. We mistakenly thought that we would be able to coordinate our own rehearsal, and keep the timeline of our wedding going.  The result was that we ended up working really hard on our wedding day – we rounded everyone up for the rehearsal (it’s much harder than it sounds!) told the DJ when to stop playing the dance music and start playing the dinner music, and instructed the caterer when we should cut the cake.  We should have just been able to sit back and enjoy the experience, and you should too.  My advice – splurge on a day planner!

Newlyweds – do you have advice to share? Please post your advice in the comments section!

Ever since Ivanka Trump walked down the aisle in a demure wedding dress with lace sleeves, the fashion world has been buzzing about the impact her dress will have on the wedding industry.  Sexy gowns and low plunging necklines have been all the rage for the past few years, but modesty looks to be making a comeback.   “We’re so used to seeing brides in strapless dresses that Ms. Trump’s gown made a fresh statement,” wrote New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn.

Watch an interview with designer Vera Wang speaking about Ivanka Trump’s custom made wedding dress here.

Photo credit: Brian Marcus / Fred Marcus Photography / Getty