1. Both Allison's parents (Ellen Zwibak and Steven Zwibak) and Dan's parents (Judith Turner and Lester Turner) are wonderful people and wanted the wedding to be wherever Allison and Dan wanted it to be.
2. Allison and Dan live in DC, and they chose to have it near where they live, since they are doing most of the planning (read "work").
3. None of the hotels in Washington worked out (they're all flabby).
4. Northern Virginia doesn't have enough (any) places with Kosher food.
5. Bethesda/Rockville has, amazingly enough, two hotels with Kosher catering. This one was prettier and closer to DC.
6. It's also in Bethesda, which means it's literally surrounded by restaurants. It's a great place to spend a weekend, and it's a short excursion to downtown DC.

The interesting thing is that it's not actually required that we have all that stuff to have a Jewish wedding. The Ketubah, witnesses, Kippot, and ideally a meal are necessary. The Rabbi is not.

Maryland law is also interesting in that anyone can marry us who we believe is a "religious figure". So if I worship my plumber I could conceivably have him perform the ceremony...and Judaism would be just fine with that.

Generally, Judaism has no requirement that you get married in a synagogue. In fact, you don't have to be a member of a synagogue to get married. You don't have to use a rabbi. You don't have to do 90% of what we're doing.

But what's the fun in that?

(If you REALLY want to bring someone, call us and ask. We might have forgotten about them.)

Seriously.

Tisch is Yiddish for "table." Here's the logic in all of this: It's customary for the prospective bride and groom to fast (at least until midday) because this day is a symbolic "Day of Atonement" (sort of like Yom Kippur) for them as they end their separate lives and start one together. (Dan and Allison won't be fasting that day because they're getting married on Saturday, shortly after Shabbat ends, and it's forbidden to perform `traditional' fasts on the Sabbath day. (`Major' fasts, like Yom Kippur, can happen on Shabbat.) We could fast on the preceding Friday, which would make us cranky and argumentative, but we haven't decided yet.

Traditionally, when the groom would daven Mincha (recite the daily afternoon service), it would be customary for him to have a quorum of ten adults (a minyan). After the recitation of the afternoon prayer, the groom can eat and drink, so he shares this with his fellow guests and prayer buddies (traditionally men).

But what, really, is a meal without words of Torah and Judaism to accompany it? Logically, the host of the tisch, or table, should be the one to say these words. Dan has arduously prepared a pedantic and esoteric soliloquy, but he's under such stress already (what with the marriage thing and all). So his friends and family will interrupt his words with laughter, songs and more -- mostly to ease the tension and get everyone in a joyous mood. Yes, this is rude, but hey - all's fair in love and prayer!^MK

At the groom's table refreshments and hors d'oeuvres are served, while everyone chants, sings, and tell jokes.

The bride is surrounded by women in another room. She may be seated in a special chair to receive greetings and blessings from her guests. Everyone entertains her and keeps her calm. Do not mention to her that the bathroom is out of toilet paper. She may kill you. That would get her dress dirty, and THAT would be something to worry about. Do not taunt happy fun bride.

When the bride is ready, she sends a delegation to the groom's table to invite the men to the bedeken.

We're shortening it a bit from the tradition by having the Tisch at the same time as the Kabbalat Panim, which will be just for the queen, Allison. That way the Kallah has something to do during the Tisch, and the Chatan doesn't have time to run away and hide ("pull a Chandler"), because he's always busy.

Despite the woman's-rights leaning of the ketubah, the "traditional" Orthodox ketubah does not include a section newly-added to the Conservative movement's ketubot (plural of ketubah). The new section, the Lieberman Clause, states that the husband must give his wife a Jewish divorce in cases where she gets a secular divorce. This is done because a woman cannot remarry within Judaism until she gets that religious divorce (a get). The man has no such restrictions, so he can use the get to blackmail the woman if she doesn't have the provision. Fortunately, the Orthodox movement has a similar clause that's signed separately from the ketubah.

It is interesting to note that although the entire ketubah is written in Aramaic, the date is written in Hebrew. In particular, the Hebrew word for month, chodesh, is used. The word chodesh is derived from the word chadash, meaning "new," and it therefore denotes renewal. Every wedding begins a new world. (Kind of like Easter and the eggs, but that's a different story.)

During the wedding ceremony the ketubah is read out loud by the rabbi and is then given to the bride (who then gives it to her parents because who wants to carry around a document all day?) for safekeeping. Jewish Law requires that the ketubah be present (physically - not just as a digital representation on a laptop!) (though a digital representation is not specifically forbidden) in the couple's home for a Jewish man and woman to live together as husband and wife.

The Baal Shem Tov, founder of Hasidism and an eighteenth-century mystic, said that if a couple quarreled, they should read the ketubah to each other out loud. This would help them remember their wedding day, when they made these promises to each other, when they were surrounded by love and good wishes. Maybe it'll work. We'll try it.

But that's neither here nor there.

The witness thing you're thinking of is the people who sign the ketubah. It must be signed by two men (Orthodox, remember), unrelated to either party in the wedding or to each other, who observe the Sabbath and other Mitzvot, who possess unimpeachable characters, who are not involved or interested parties, and who don't race pigeons (that is, they're not known gamblers).

It's a symbolic marriage chamber, and can be taken to indicate that the bride is leaving her father's house and entering her husband's domain as a married woman. It's also open on all sides, like Abraham and Sarah's first tent, symbolizing our commitment to creating a home open to all.

We'll be using the Chupah made for and used by Jason and Elissa Schwartz in their wedding. We wanted to commemorate the day we met, and the friends we have.

There are other reasons, of course. Seven parallels the seven heavens, the seven wedding blessings (Sheva Brachot, described below), the seven days of the week, and the seven days of creation. The bride can be considered to be entering the seven spheres of her beloved's soul, whatever that means. Or maybe the circling defines a new family circle, with the bride creating the space the couple will now share, separate from their parents. Or perhaps she is creating an invisible wall protecting him from evil spirits, temptations of the world, and John Tesh.

Whatever the reason for it, someone will count for Allison, and will stop her when she's done. (And everyone will catch her if she gets dizzy and falls down.) (If she's lucky.)

Anyway, the ring has to have some value (a p'rutah - about a dime) and has to be of plain metal, without stones, so the bride can figure out the ring's true value by weighing and measuring instead of having to get it appraised. The theory is that getting it appraised could cause delays, might make the bride wonder about the actual wealth of her man, etc. Apparently Cubic Zirconia jewelry was around even then. Who knows what the value of a ring with a stone is? But everyone knows what the value of a metal band is -- at a minimum it's worth what it could fetch if melted down. (Think more Shabbat than Black Sabbath.) (You know, metal bands. The music kind? You know? Oh, never mind.)

The reality is that nobody cares THAT much anymore, but the requirement was retained because Jews never throw out anything that might be useful someday.

The nice thing is that using a ring instead of, say, a speedboat, has some homiletical (love that word!) interpretations. For instance:

Here are rough translations of the seven blessings:

1. Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who created everything for His glory.
2. Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, the creator of man.
3. Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who created man in His image, in the pattern of His own likeness, and provided for the perpetuation of his kind. You are blessed, Lord, the creator of man.
4. Let the barren city be jubilantly happy and joyful at her joyous reunion with her children. You are blessed, Lord, who makes Zion rejoice with her children.
5. Let the loving couple be very happy, just as You made Your creation happy in the garden of Eden, so long ago. You are blessed, Lord, who makes the bridegroom and the bride happy.
6. Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who created joy and celebration, bridegroom and bride, rejoicing, jubilation, pleasure and delight, love and brotherhood, peace and friendship. May there soon be heard, Lord our God, in the cities of Judea and in the streets of Jerusalem, the sound of joy and the sound of celebration, the voice of a bridegroom and the voice of a bride, the happy shouting of bridegrooms from their weddings and of young men from their feasts of song. You are blessed, Lord, who makes the bridegroom and the bride rejoice together.
7. Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, creator of the fruit of the vine.

Our wedding happens to be on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. On November 9 (and 10), 1938, Nazi youth roamed through Jewish neighborhoods breaking windows of Jewish businesses and homes, burning synagogues and looting. Hundreds of synagogues and almost 7,500 Jewish businesses were destroyed. 26,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps, Jews were physically attacked and beaten and 91 died. It was decided a week later that the Jews were responsible for these events, and so they were legally and financially responsible for the damages incurred by the pogrom. Accordingly, a fine of 1 billion marks was levied for the slaying of Vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, and 6 million marks paid by insurance companies for broken windows was to be given to the state coffers. Kristallnacht turns out to be a crucial turning point in German policy regarding the Jews and may be considered as the actual beginning of what is now called the Holocaust.

As we break the glass (possibly a light bulb, but possibly not -- it's hard to get the same feeling from a bulb as from a nice goblet) we will remember Kristallnacht and will temper our happiness with sadness and resolution to make sure there is never a time when Jews are so helpless. We hope it will be an impetus for us to help fix a world that sometimes feels broken.

So from the above you'd pretty much think breaking the glass isn't good. When it goes right, though, that's a reason to celebrate! There are other folkloric reasons to break a glass at a wedding (and to think that it's a good thing) -- perhaps it is to scare away the demons who are jealous of human happiness and eager to cause harm in moments of joy. Or maybe it's a sign of good luck. Or a sign of the breaking with childhood. Or the fragility of the glass could suggest the frailty of human relationships, and the glass could be broken so the marriage won't.

There's also an obvious sexual connotation to breaking the glass, which may be why the groom does it. In fact, in cases where the groom fails at his task and the bride does it, it can be taken as a sign that the woman will be wearing the pants in the family. Dan is OK with that, as Allison looks good in pants.

But there's more to "consummation" than just sex. (Not knocking sex, mind you.) There's an emotional consummation aspect to marriage -- the whole "being married" thing has to have time to sink in before things get crazy again, and this is the time to let that happen. It's an acknowledgement that a radical change has come about in the couple's personal status and their relationship to each other, and a chance to sit down and absorb what has happened.

And, of course, it's probably the only chance we'll have all night to eat. So we'll be eating.

But WHY do we do the chair thing?

The second part of the marriage ceremony is known as nissu'in. Nissuin and the related form, nasu ("married"), derive from the verb nasa ("to lift up," "to bear," "to carry"). Nissuin suggests that marriage involves lifting the other up.

This concept is illustrated beautifully at a traditional Jewish wedding. After the Chupah ceremony and Yichud (and after the initial appetizers, in our case), the bride and groom are lifted up on chairs by their guests, to the accompaniment of exuberant singing and dancing. This concept of marriage being an elevating experience thereby underscores the calling of husband and wife to support, bear, and lift up each other.^HY

Perhaps it is also illustrative of the need of the new couple to welcome the support of the community when they need it.

Or maybe the community just wants to see the happy couple throw up. The community IS a bit sadistic.

If that's not enough for you, the mitzvah (good deed or, literally, commandment) of being a wedding guest requires that you celebrate loudly, to entertain and enhance the joy of the newlyweds. Dance! Be silly! It's required!

And yes, the dancing will be "mixed" (shaking your booty with members of the opposite sex).

After that each person will decide whether they need another prayer book (many people have dozens of these from the weddings and b'nai mitzvot (non-sexed term for more than one bar/bat mitzvah) they've attended over the years) and those who think they do will grab one or maybe two on their way out of the reception. In this way, the benchers become half of the "party favors."

The second half comes when you look at your head. You will, if you are male or if you are one of the females who does this, have a kipah (yarmulke, yamaha, beanie. little hat) on it. If you brought your own, great! If not, we will provide them for you. Those we provide are a gift to you, so in thirty years when you need it again or find it in the back of a drawer you'll see our names on the inside and think, "Who on earth are these people??"

What, you want more than that? OK. If you like the look of one of the waiters or even of one of your fellow guests (single guests only, please) feel free to take them home with you.

Oh, you can also take home the food you have eaten and the alcohol you have consumed. Though if you have too much of the latter you may wish to leave the former in a bathroom before you leave...