Summer Celebrations – Wedding Pictures from Israel

Well, the ice coffee warning was right on time. Quite the heat wave yesterday, hot and humid outside (although I think it’s supposed to take a drastic change into hot and dry today – so far just cloudy).

Evening time is lovely though, after the mosquitoes finish their own rounds. Tuesday evening we went to one of my cousin’s wedding and the weather was pretty perfect. Weddings are quite the theme in our household right now, with my dear brother-in-law (IsraeliDad’s twin brother in fact) getting married in September. The plan is to have the wedding right here in my parents-in-law’s backyard (where our small rented house is also located), making myself and IsraeliDad wonder about the actual capacity, in terms of square meters per guest. Still, the rest of the family seems confident enough that they can pull this off, so who are we to argue.

Israeli weddings are notoriously large. An average wedding has 300-400 guests, and larger weddings are not unheard of either. In my cousin’s wedding, I’m sure there were nearly 400 people there. They did it in a huge and very beautiful place. I am not even sure what you call this kind of a place in English? The literal phrase in Israel is “Garden of Events” or “Garden of Celebrations”. These places are huge, beautifully landscaped and are where they hold the Chuppah, which is the actual wedding ceremony, and then the entire party, dancing, food, you name it.

There’s a kind of buffet before the Chuppah, quite varied and containing meats and fish. Personally, we usually get full enough from that and leave right after the Chuppah, and this is what we did this time as well. I mean, they started the ceremony at half past nine. At ten, our Dan literally fell asleep in his dad’s arms – way too late for our kids – so we left. The rest of the guests stayed on for a full dinner, dancing and all that.

Here are some pictures from the wedding – late or not, the bride sure was beautiful -

The next picture shows the bride and groom under the Chuppah. The guy in the black suit holding the mic is the Rabbi. That piece of paper they’re holding is actually the sales agreement where the groom buys the bride. I think it was 52,000 shekels this time (about $20k or so). No worries, he doesn’t actually pay anything. It’s just a traditional formality:

I absolutely love this picture of Ron and Dan – they sure did have a good time at the wedding! And I cherish every toothless smile picture too

The night after the wedding, we had another late night for the boys. We had a late night date for Ron with his dentist, or all people. She’s a very busy children’s dentist and we jumped at the opportunity when they called us that day and suggested that we come over in the evening. I actually took a picture of Ron there. That doctor is so good, she actually convinced him that going to the dentist is fun (well, ok, she did use hypnosis to do that lol).

Anyway, another late night last night – a BBQ at the beach, bonfire and all, so the kids stayed up late. Today is actually the Eve of Shavuoth, but I think I’ll leave that for another post tomorrow – this one is getting way too long!

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