Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Blown away by a Summer wedding

Sunday was my sister's wedding - a beautiful windy summer New Zealand wedding.

The Chuppa was beautiful, although we were blow away by the ceremony - literally, there was a huge windstorm and each of the siblings ended up holding on to a Chuppa pole, just to make sure that the whole structure didn't get blown away.

A kosher wedding in New Zealand presented more than the normal logistical challenge - finding a chef prepared to work with the rabbi to make sure that everything was kosher. The solution to making a kosher wedding at a non-kosher venue - Barbecue. Rabbi Chaim Dovrat shechted lamb and chicken especially for the event, and spent the better part of the week before the wedding in and out of the venue to watch them prepare the side dishes and salads.

My older brother David (AKA "Rabbi Sedley") was the Mesader Kiddushin made the ceremony very personal and I think that it meant a lot to our mother to see her eldest son marry off her youngest daughter.


The music and dancing was very lebedik. Finding a DJ that could entertain a frum wedding was a challenge in New Zealand, but the happy couple put a disc together themselves and said to the DJ that if the crowd looks like they're having a good time, just keep playing this disk.


And most importantly it looked like my parents both had a wonderful time seeing their youngest daughter begin a life together with a wonderful young man like Simon.


May they know many years of health and happiness together as the build a Bayit Neman B'Yisrael.

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