If you missed the precursor to the actual wedding day, check out the first wedding series post to get caught up!
So the morning of my wedding day was no different from any other morning in the sense that I still had a 6:30ish am wake-up call via my 6-year-old.
I text SLS to let him know some info from the rabbi who just called me and he says, “Just got into a car accident.”
WHAT THE WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!??!
I call him immediately, he sounds (and is) completely fine and says someone rear ended him while he was pulling out of a bagel place with an obstructed view to the exit. Coincidentally, it’s the same bagel place that my mother has had many an issue with for her catered Jewish holidays. Remember the twisty tie incident? Same place. So anyway, the car needed to be towed and the Groom and Father of the Groom needed to be rescued by the Mother of the Groom.
After regrouping and catching my breath, we kicked off the day with a room service breakfast totaling $50. Seriously…50 bucks for eggs, potatoes and a bagel and cream cheese? But I figured..it’s wedding day – “Treat Yo Self!” (Shout out to my fellow Parks and Rec fans who get that reference)
Then before I knew it was it was time for the primping to start. With a little caveat. My gown had a full corset back and required a certain amount of patience and agility to do. My mother’s anxiety before a big event is not conducive to this type of thing so I had to call in a reinforcement. Thank effing god for Cara. She literally saved the day. She was like a freaking girl scout. Getting my daughter food, getting me ginger ale (with a straw so I didn’t ruin my lipstick), running down to the rabbi to give him stuff for the ceremony. She was a lifesaver and amidst all of the craziness, was able to expertly tie me into my dress.
P.S. I’m not sure if my ridiculously amazing photog photoshopped my arms to be more toned, but if you did thank you.
Here’s the thing about most Jewish weddings. They rarely start on time. But we did not have that luxury with this one because almost everyone – the rabbi, the piano player, etc – had to be somewhere else and we also had to finish before the restaurant actually opened to the public. My mom and I were in the hotel salon getting hair and makeup done. I LOVED mine. She HATED her hair. So the super talented gal who did both my hair and make-up told her not to worry and she would fix her hair when she did her makeup. Well, it took longer than usual and my mom was running ridiculously late. How late? I was dressed and ready upstairs and she was still MIA at 3:40pm. The ceremony was supposed to start at 4. I call her and can hear in her voice she’s losing it. She herself will admit she does NOT do well under pressure. Need an anecdote to solidify that statement? When my brother was really little – maybe 5? She was in a store with him and he was standing on the back of the shopping cart facing out. She kept telling him to get off because it was gonna tip. But even then he was a little rebel and didn’t give a shit about following rules. So…it did tip, he did fall. And my mom ran out of the store. That was her fight or flight response. (You can all relax, she came back like 3 seconds after and he was absolutely fine.)
So she’s already panicked, still needs to get her dress on and the tone is NOT calm. She finally walked in the room. With blood dripping down her leg. Because she was so crazed she tripped and fell down a couple of stairs. True Story. So, she starts to get dressed and Cara, who has now added nurse to her resume, is swabbing her cuts with a Qtip. And now my daughter, in a pristine white dress wants to help as my mother is yelling, NOOOOOOOO!!! Your dress!!!
I call SLS to tell him I’m coming down to make sure he’s out of sight and doesn’t see me. He says not to, that I need to wait.
“Oh no, what now???”
“Nothing babe, just give me a few minutes, everything is fine.”
Well, it wasn’t fine. The cake that was supposed to be delivered at 2:30 still wasn’t there and it was 4. And there was no answer at the bakery and no messages were being returned. FML
SLS is standing outside, in the heat, in a dark suit, because he can’t get reception inside. It was a shit show. The delivery guy was totally confused when they finally did get in touch and finally the cake arrived. After that moment – it could NOT have gone more smoothly. The ceremony was short and sweet but meaningful and intimate. The rabbi (who also moonlights as a trampoline teacher – can’t make this shit up) was perfect. He was equal parts funny and serious with the appropriate amount of Jewishness and feathered, salt & pepper rockstar hair. We were surrounded by 37 family members in a candlelit room and it was just beautiful.
Our Chuppah consisted of four birch poles with Jason’s talis from his Bar Mitzvah as well as his father’s. It was so simple but so incredibly beautiful. And four male family members hated us for making them hold it for 20ish minutes.
When we planned our wedding we knew we were abandoning a lot of tradition and adding our own flavor. I didn’t wear a veil, we had no wedding party, there was no hora or dancing with our parents. We traded all of it for an intimate and ridiculous dinner at a phenomenal restaurant. Because we kept it limited to family only and had a smaller guest list, we were able to plan one hell of a meal where we actually LOVED everything put in front of us instead of eating mass prepared mediocre food from a buffet like cattle eating from troughs.
I wore leopard Louboutins and had freshly black lacquered nails, because to wear anything else would not have been me.
My brother, who bears the brunt of typical family antics in the form of jokes like, “Wait, who’s Noah?” because of his ninja skills where he’s in a room one minute for obligatory family hellos, and then magically and stealthily disappears, was there the WHOLE time and even clocked some serious face time with the cousins. They scored a pic, which to them is better than capturing a real live Yeti on film.
And, the cutest matriarch ever, my 92-year old grandma (gram to 7 and great gram to 15!!!) got to celebrate another grandchild’s wedding (she lives for this shit).
We didn’t want a traditional looking Ketubah and opted for an Andy Warhol style one using matzo ball soup cans…because why not.
Our favors were carefully curated CDs including songs from Biggie, WuTang, JayZ, Sting and Journey (talk about eclectic) and birthday cake truffles from Momofuku Milk Bar, which my mom butchered the pronunciation of to something profane (use your imagination). And it only took 3.2 seconds for my cousins to open the box, see the two truffles side-by-side and start making jokes about how they were Jason’s balls. There was an actual cousin text chain about it, happening live during dinner including pictures of them doing vulgar things to the “balls”. God I love my family.
One thing I didn’t want to completely give up with our non-traditional nuptials, was our first dance. So, without SLS knowing, I booked a solo piano player. But not one of those awful bar mitzvah cocktail hour ones who plays painful covers of Kenny G and Just the Way You Are. This guy (also sporting a rockstar feathered coif) plays current, awesome music. I walked down the aisle to Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’, because it’s totes one of our jams and also completely appropriate in a cheesy but cute cliché kind of way. And immediately after Jason broke the glass and we kissed, the guy belted out John Legend’s All of Me for our first dance. At one point when the music wasn’t stopping, he said, “Wait, are we dancing?” Surprise SLS!
[vimeo 126180201 w=500 h=282] <p><a href=”https://vimeo.com/126180201″>IMG_8263</a> from <a href=”https://vimeo.com/user39626820″>Rachel Sobel</a> on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>
It was perfect. All of it. And we sealed it with a kiss.
We couldn’t have scripted it any better…except maybe sans the fender bender, my mom’s bleeding leg and the MIA cake.
It wasn’t an all-night rager. We were back in our room by 9 something (just the way I like it). Exhausted, full and happy.
And then after the brunch and when we were on our honeymoon, our incredible photographer surprised us with this gem of a photo and brought us back to the day just like that!
Next up? Part 3: The morning after…