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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Former NSYNC star Lance Bass and husband Michael Turchin dropped by the HuffPost Live studios earlier this week to talk about their interfaith marriage, and to promote the amazingly titled 90-minute E! TV special “Lance Loves Michael: The Lance Bass Wedding,” which aired last night.

The couple, who married underneath a chuppah in a lavish ceremony in L.A. in December, are from totally different worlds: Bass is from a family of conservative Southern Baptists, and Turchin is Jewish.

Bass is hopeful that the broadcast will help to diminish the stigma around gay marriage, particularly in his family’s community: “Religion is the reason why we’re still fighting about the word ‘marriage,’ and I think this is going to be so important for people to see. Take religion out of it, it’s all just about love, and when you see my Republican, conservative, Southern Baptist parents… walk their gay son down the aisle, it shows you how everyone should act. You should just focus on the love and not worry about anything else.”

As for the interfaith aspect of their relationship, the couple plan to take a ‘spiritual but not religious’ approach to parenting.

“We’re going to introduce them to everything, and it’s up to them whatever they are drawn to. But I want to show them every walk of life and every culture and let them decide for themselves what they believe,” said Bass.

“I’m definitely going to teach them and show them their Jewish past, just so they have the understanding,” added Turchin. “But I’m not going to force them to believe anything or to adhere to any specific religious laws or anything like that. I think there’s more harm in that than good, I really do.”

(Image: Michael Turchin and Lance Bass, après-engagement, December 2013. Credit: Robin Marchant/Getty)

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A few weeks before my sister’s wedding, she was discussing ordering kippot, trying to figure out how many she would need for the big day. How many might be too many? Well, I said to her, if you order too many you could use the extras for when guests come to your home.

Within a second of saying this, I was immediately transported back to my family’s kippah drawer. It’s been a long time since I opened this drawer, which was located in a dark brown wood unit in the dining room. The top portion of the unit had glass doors that held candlesticks and the Seder plate. The bottom part of the unit was made up of three drawers. The kippah drawer was the top drawer and it had a very distinct wood smell; if I concentrate, I can still smell it.

It was outfitted with brass handles that made a sound when you pulled them up from their resting position. And as the drawer opened, it made an ever-so-slight noise. Inside this drawer my family kept all the kippot we acquired. A few were from weddings, but most were from bar and bat mitzvahs. We opened the drawer when a family member or a guest needed a kippah. And when a kippah was chosen—sometimes it was selected based on color to match an outfit—the inscription inside would be read aloud. You know, today’s kippah is brought to you by so and so who became a bar or bat mitzvah on this date in this year. This might have been followed by a factoid about the person, or information on the party’s theme. Such details are important.

What’s interesting about the kippot in this drawer is how they got there. Often we were invited, or someone in the family was invited, to the simcha. Hence the sharing of factoids and themes. Sometimes the kippah was from a bar or bat mitzvah at our synagogue that we attended because we happened to be there that day. In this case, someone in my family took a kippah from the basket outside the sanctuary and brought it home. Occasionally, we simply acquired a kippah and added it to the collection. Who knows how it got there, but it got there. That’s the beauty of the kippah drawer—kippot will mysteriously find their way to it.

Regardless of their exact route to the drawer, the kippot were in our home, and if someone needed one, we could provide it. Our kippah drawer signified that our home was a Jewish home.

There’s another way to look at the drawer. Beyond a kippah’s color and material (I am partial to non-nylon), a kippah from a bar or bat mitzvah is a historical link to an important day in a young person’s life. Forever stamped with the date and year, a bar or bat mitzvah kippah symbolizes my moment, your moment, her moment, the moment of someone we might not even know. A kippah is a Jewish artifact. Whenever it is worn, it connects the wearer back to that day, regardless of whether they knew the honored bar or bat mitzvah. There is something truly powerful about a drawer full of Jewish history.

Currently, my family has many kippot lying around at each of our homes, and some of them are in drawers. They may not be in the drawer, but they are in drawers nevertheless. I’m not sure how many we have. The good news is that wedding season is upon us, and there are many kippot that are about to make their way into my home. I’m thinking of designating a drawer to be the drawer.

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Well, here’s a story to warm the cockles of your heart.

Jewish actress Ginnifer Goodwin (who rose to fame on the cult HBO show Big Love) just tied the knot with her Once Upon a Time co-star Josh Dallas. But as Goodwin explained on Jimmy Kimmel Live last week, their wedding plans almost went awry the morning of the big day, when Goodwin’s wedding planner called her in tears, informing her that her car had been broken into and the couple’s ketubah (Jewish marriage contract) had been stolen. The star was all set to draw up a makeshift document, when fate—and two random Jews in Hollywood with really good Hebrew skillz—intervened. And they all lived happily ever after.

Get the full story here:

http://youtu.be/0s_xHJXDGuQ

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This weekend hosted the union of quite the array of food and fashionistas in this weekend’s Jew York Times, and one incredibly intelligent/nerdy interfaith marriage.

Let’s start with the good stuff. We here at the Jewcy HQ are admittedly, in love with love – and proud of it. That being said, the union of the seemingly Jewish sounding Barbara Ann Hirschman of the not-so-Jewish sounding Winterset, Iowa to her groom Krisda Chaiyachati of Tucker, Georgia was diversity worth stumbling upon in this week’s Simchas Section. The nerdiness of this couple struck me more than the idea of a Hirschman wedding in a Presbyterian Church – the adorable couple both studied medicine, the bride cellular biology at Yale and the groom internal medicine and public health from Yale and Harvard respectively. Now they’re starting to sound like true blue Jews… or could they be WASP’s? Upon deep contemplation, the discovery of the magical word “CHAI” in the groom’s name sealed the deal – it seemed only natural a Hirschman would join forces with someone whose name came jam packed with guttural ch’s. Challah bread, Mayim Chayim, Channukah, Chiyachati.

Next, we send a hearty siman tov u’ mazal tov to the typical Jewish fashionista who married her predicted bashert – the classic I-banker. A match made in Long Island (read: Gan Eden), Elana Osterman wed Jared Kaplan this past Saturday in the Five Towns, Lawrence (read: Laaah-rence) to be specific. The bride, a publicist at Coach, seemed bound to find her investment banking Prince Charming in the heart of Jew York City after her time at Emory and his at University of Michigan. Just in case readers failed to understand what said Prince truly does for a living, the announcement was kind enough to spell it out: “He finds and makes investments on behalf of the firm.” – (insert sigh of relief here) now I get it.

And in non-Jewish yet pop-culture news, as we here at Jewcy like to consider ourselves arbiters of culture as well as Jewy Jewishness, restauranteur and acclaimed food critic Donatella Arpaia wed cardiac surgeon Allan Stewart this past weekend. The following factors certainly make this couple deserving of a place in a Jewedding Round-Up: the culinary countess started her career by checking coats in her father’s Woodmere restaurant and the couple were wed by both a Reverend and a Rabbi – enough said. The happy couple are already expecting their first child together.

Mazals all around!

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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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