This inspiring and useful guide brings your complete wedding planning into focus. It helps you express your individuality and spirituality on your wedding day. Whether your plans are traditional or alternative, whether you are planning your first or second marriage, it provides the tools you need to look at and think about ritual and tradition in new and innovative ways.

Enrich your wedding with your own creative use of Jewish ritual and tradition. Wedding planning can be a stressful experience. Keeping track of all the details—deciding who to invite, choosing a caterer, arranging the reception—can sometimes lead to a couple forgetting about the bigger picture and the significance of this day in their lives: a joyous occasion that should reflect not only your personality, but your values, as well. Updated and expanded, The Creative Jewish Wedding Book, 2nd Edition, brings your complete wedding planning into focus. Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer helps you express your individuality and spirituality on your wedding day. Whether your plans are traditional or alternative, whether you are planning your first or second marriage, she provides the tools you need to look at and think about ritual and tradition in new and innovative ways including: Insights and reflections from a broad range of couples who have created their own distinctive weddings Practical hands-on techniques and ideas for creating many of the ritual objects connected to a Jewish wedding—from designing your own ketubah, to making paper for invitations, to fashioning the chuppah How to express your spiritual life and values through your ceremony—now updated with more eco-friendly tips and suggestions An up-to-date guide to wedding resources in the Jewish world Inspiring and useful, The Creative Jewish Wedding Book, 2nd Edition, can help you reclaim your wedding day from the whirlwind of details and bring out the honesty and integrity you desire in your wedding experience.

Complete, authoritative, and indispensable, The New Jewish Wedding provides the couple with options--some new, some old--to create a wedding combining spiritual meaning and joyous celebration. Step-by-step, Diamant guides readers through planning the cermony and the party that follows--from finding a rabbi and wording the invitations to hiring a caterer.

This is the book for all of today’s couples. Explores the rich history of Jewish wedding customs and rituals throughout the centuries while providing contemporary interpretations and creative options. Published by CCAR Press, a division of the Central Conference of American Rabbis

From reciting the Kiddush (sanctification prayer) to building the chuppah (wedding canopy), the details of a Jewish wedding can be overwhelming! This wedding guide helps newlyweds understand tradition and plan a wedding they’ll cherish forever. Written by a rabbi who has performed many weddings, this informative guide will help people navigate: the Judaic concept of marriage; engagement etiquette; the proper way to introduce the families; how to confer with a rabbi and the ritual director; the business of incorporating family heirlooms; and more! Whether the wedding is joining two Jewish people or an interfaith couple, this book is a must-have survival guide for any chatan (groom) or kallah (bride).

There is nothing more daunting to a newly engaged couple than planning their wedding. For Jewish couples, balancing religious and aesthetic needs can be especially tricky. Rita Milos Brownstein provides inspiration and practical advice in Jewish Weddings, a lavishly illustrated guide to creating a wedding that both honors Jewish culture, ritual, and tradition and reflects the lives and personalities of the bride and groom. Beginning with a brief history of the Jewish wedding (including wonderful stories of barshert, couples whose love was clearly meant to be), Brownstein guides the bride and groom through the pleasures of the engagement party and Jewish bridal shower to choosing a ketubah (marriage contract), wedding ring, and invitations. She describes traditional Jewish customs and rituals, then suggests ways to personalize the chuppah, or wedding canopy; music; wedding programs; and even the chairs. Brownstein includes the joyous times after the wedding and gives the new couple tips on how to create a Jewish home and original ideas for thank-you notes. Of course, Brownstein doesn't forget about food, with menu suggestions for an engagement party and a bridal shower tea party, as well as for the wedding reception and Sheva Brachas, the traditional week of festive meals following the wedding. Delicious, mouth-watering recipes for Salmon Roll with Dill Sauce, Green Bean Bundles, Potato and Leek Soup, and Poached Pears will please even the most finicky couple. Brownstein supplies tips on how to keep a kosher kitchen as well. The book also offers glimpses of seven real-life Jewish weddings. From a jubilant outdoor celebration in San Diego, California; a dazzling New York City affair; a classic Hasidic wedding in Hartford, Connecticut; to an elegant affair in Palm Beach, Florida, these stories will inspire any bride and groom in planning their own wedding, no matter where they live. Illustrated with more than 200 gorgeous color and black-and-white photographs, Jewish Weddings is an indispensable book for any Jewish couple.

Planning your Jewish wedding? Here is your wise, warm, practical, and invaluable guide to all the personal choices that will express you and your partner’s unique qualities and deepest feelings about this wonderful celebration. Most importantly, through tips and stories, this guide to modern Jewish weddings helps you to incorporate your heritage and evaluate your priorities while preserving the essential meaning and integrity of the event for you as a couple. "Here’s a friendly guide to help anyone create a wedding experience with the deepest of Jewish traditions: innovation." –Douglas Rushkoff, commentator, essayist, professor of communications at New York University, and author, Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism "Make Your Own Jewish Wedding is a well-written, well-researched book providing very helpful information and suggestions on planning a Jewish wedding. It also offers important history and background relating to Jewish rituals and customs from the Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi traditions. I would recommend this book to anyone preparing for a Jewishly authentic wedding." –Rabbi Suzanne Singer, Temple Sinai, Oakland, California "Make Your Own Jewish Wedding, like the contemporary Jewish wedding itself, is a marriage between tradition and innovation. It performs the real service of accompanying the modern couple step by step on their journey to the chuppah and in doing so enables them to make their wedding distinct yet responsive to their backgrounds, traditions, and values." –Alan Abraham Kay, author, Make Your Own Passover Seder