It being the summer, it’s wedding season. I admit, it’s also less than a fortnight to my own wedding, and I’ve tried to avoid doing productive things like find a florist by diving into the coolest wedding traditions I can find, more obscure gems than just breaking a glass. There are lots of amazing ones that you can’t seem to find on the Internet, which seems mostly focused on explaining for the 613th time what a chuppah is. And so, here a few favorites I have gleaned:

Helping your friends find a match

Throwing a bouquet to give luck in finding a match is way too limited. Why leave that up to chance, when your most deserving, most eligible friend has to miss out because they didn’t play sports in High School? Jewish weddings are peppered with chances to distribute matchmaking mazel, and what’s more, the bride has the power to pick the recipients.

For example, in Ashkenazi tradition, women don’t wear jewelry under the chuppah during the ceremony. The sweet explanation is that a couple is marrying for partnership, not material gain, but this may also be because a formal part of the ceremony is the giving of a ring; it may be “legalistically” confusing for the bride to have other jewelry at the time she receives the ring.

But of course you’re going to wear jewelry at your wedding, so what do you do? Right before the ceremony, the bride may remove all of her other jewelry and give it to friends to hold. Those who have the honor of holding this jewelry are said to have extra luck in finding a spouse of their own.

The same applies to Jewish weddings where a plate is broken before the ceremony. If you can get a shard (careful with that!), more good luck.

Another one is that after dinner, the bride and groom share a drink of wine during birkat hamazon (grace after meals). If you can get a sip of that too, you share in their luck (and germs).

Plus, some brides pray the morning of their weddings, and collect names of people who want matches, healing, et cetera. Apparently, her prayers are super potent that day. Get in on that.

Henna Party

In some Sephardic and Mizrahi traditions, before her wedding, a bride is adorned with henna, in a layered and deeply meaningful event. This can include drumming, ululation, and fertility rituals. Also, henna body art is absolutely stunning.

DEMONS DEMONS DEMONS

It is absolutely amazing how much of Jewish wedding traditions involve fear of demons. Of course, the famous play The Dybbuk involves a bride suffering demonic possession, but her position as newlywed was not only chosen to create high drama. Demons in Judaism famously love ruining happy moments (babies pre-bris are also vulnerable), so you have to be ON GUARD for about a week up to the big day, or something terrible and demonic (e.g. possession) will occur.

A lot of the Jewish rituals you do know have alternate explanations based in demonology. Carrying candles (like in Fiddler on the Roof)? Demons hate light. Marrying under a canopy? Protect the couple from demons. Breaking a glass? Demons hate that sort of thing, apparently. Circling your spouse-to-be at the start of the ceremony? Creating an anti-demonic force-field. The above-mentioned henna party? It also protects against demons!

But maybe my absolute favorite has been the role of bridesmaids in the wedding. I’ve heard a lot of variations on this custom, but the gist is that you can’t leave a bride alone, and therefore vulnerable to dybbuks or other nasties. Some say that for a week before the wedding, the bride needs constant surveillance, perhaps by a friend or family member serving as a bridesmaid. At the very least, the night before her wedding, a bride should not sleep alone (one friend had to share her sister’s bed to protect her for this very reason).

Imagine the movie Bridesmaids crossed with Ghostbusters— Kristen Wiig is in both after all, and has a Jewish boyfriend. She should definitely star in a movie about a friend asked to serve as maid of honor for her Jewish friend’s wedding, only to find out that fighting demons comes with the job description.

Hollywood, call me.

If you have other great Jewish wedding traditions, please comment below, or tweet us @Jewcymag!

Images: Still from film The Dybbuk. Henna image via Pixabay.

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The photos have provoked mixed reactions from commenters. Many were perturbed by the segregation of the sexes (there are no pictures from the women’s side of the mechitzah) and the images of small children smoking (not uncommon in some Haredi communities on Purim, though Purim is still a few weeks away). But the joy and vitality also captivated readers, particularly the smiles of the bride and groom.

It’s not the first time photos from an ultra-Orthodox wedding have gone viral on Daily Mail. (See here and here.) Why are these images so compelling? Do they exoticize Hasidic culture? Romanticize it? Disparage it? Tell us what you think.

Images: Getty.

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Oh, The New York Times wedding announcements, a celebration of the lasting bliss for those who’ve found true love, and fodder for wannabe brides’ entertainment. But, as it turns out, it’s also a telling database filled with words and phrases that revealed matrimony trends since the early 1980s when explored by Todd Schneider, a computer programmer at Rap Genius.

Schneider used over 60,000 wedding and engagement announcements to document the changing patterns of New York nuptials, which complement current events and population changes. For example, since the financial crisis of 2008, there have been fewer mentions of investment banks, but more mentions of hedge funds. And when the city’s Indian population increased by 118 percent in the 1990s, Hindu marriages rose, while WASP mentions declined. But Jewish weddings— measured by the popular surnames of Cohen, Rosenberg, and Goldberg—have remained prevalent in the announcements.

L’chaim!

When Harvard Met Sally: N-gram Analysis of the New York Times Weddings Section [Rap Genius]

(Photo by Mila Supinskaya/Shutterstock)

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• If Tom and Katie had a ketubah, this is what it would look like.

• Move over Hitler apps: now there’s an Anne Frank app.

• Lindsay Lohan spent the Fourth of July with Jewish porn star James Deen. What did you do?

• Jerry Seinfeld has a new web series, and it looks like this:

The post Daily Jewce: Seinfeld’s New Show, TomKat’s Ketubah, and more appeared first on Jewcy.

Hey Jewcers — I’m filling in for Ms. Carrie this week, so bear with me as we walk through a weekend’s worth of mazals.

Firstly we’ve got to bestow a hefty mazal tov onto Vows couple Sarah Silverman (aka Sarah Aroeste, the Ladino-speaking musician) and her chasson Jeffrey Blaugrund.  The two met online and somehow got from bonding over The Fantasticks and Martin Buber to true love.  The two were married by Rabbi Mordechai Liebling on June 19th at Cat Rock Estate in Garrison, NY.  Guests, of course, drank mojitos, as if there were any other choice.

Next let’s congratulate silver fox Joseph Karn on his marriage to MediaVest executive, Allison Newman.  Mr. Karn is the owner of Advanced Alarm Systems Inc., which I’m sure is very interesting to his media planning kallah.  They are both from New Jersey, so it’s only right that the couple was married in West Orange (pronunciation: aaaah-range) by Rabbi Josh Goldstein, who we’re pretty sure we went to camp with.

Thirdly, we’ve got to mazal Elizabeth Epstein and Jonathan Miller, who met as ninth graders at Ramaz, one of Manhattan’s poshest Orthodox day schools.  They were married by their former principal, Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, who has an awesome name.  They both went to Columbia (shocker), the bride’s father is a lawyer (shocker!) and the groom’s father is–drumroll please–the dean of Ramaz.  Way to avoid detention for PDA, guys.
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Jews don’t have royalty, and when we think we’re safe enough to set up shop and build beautiful buildings, something bad tends to happen.

Without going into a complete history lesson, let’s just use the wedding of Genevieve Sheehan and Troy Meyer as an example, because the couple flew out to Ireland, got married in an old ass church, and had their picture taken for their New York Times announcement photo taken in front of a gorgeous old abbey.

Of course we’re sure that if we were to call up some old church in Ireland and ask “hey, is it alright if we bring in some kosher caterers and set up a chuppa and let Mr. Rosenblaum and Ms. Lefkovitz tie the knot?” they would probably be okay with that, but I’m guessing that won’t happen anytime in the near future.  So our peeps get hitched in places like Gurney’s Inn in Montauk — which is probably just as nice as any part of Ireland, but lacking any historical significance.

But hey, a wedding’s a wedding no matter where it’s at.

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Our pick for best wedding announcement this week, is between Hilary Zwerdling and Nicholas Papas, because they had a service that “incorporated Jewish and Greek Orthodox traditions.”

I closed my eyes and tried to picture how this went down, and saw images of broken wine glasses and plates piling up, hummus weighed in metric tons, and lots of hair.

Also, even though it was officiated by a Roman Catholic priest, thus eliminating it from Sunday Mazel contention, we must make mention of the wedding of Renita Jablonski and Joshua Podwoski.  May you have a blessed time combing your names together.

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