Our wedding is in 18 days. 18 DAYS I SAY! I can't believe how soon that is.We have planned our wedding relatively fast. One of my brother's best friends from elementary school used to work for the Knot.com... when I told her we were getting married in 5 1/2 months she was shocked and then proceeded to tell me that the average engagement these days is one year. ONE YEAR! Oy! Anyway, we held our invitations back until we made final decisions on our meal at the wedding. We wanted to give more detailed choices and I am glad I listened to Dan's urging to wait. We ended up going a different route completely than I had anticipated. That being said...Drum roll please...
We are having a dairy wedding. While I am sure some of you totally understand that sentence, I am sure many of you don't. Let me explain.Dan and I keep kosher. We don't mix milk and meat, we don't eat shellfish, we don't eat pork... anymore. We had our last traif hurrah and now none of that is on the menu. Honestly, we pretty much kept kosher the whole time we knew each other other deciding to start our lives together and build a Jewish home together, we decided there was no wiggle room. We would have a last day for traif and that was it. Anywho, we had to make a decision for our wedding. We could have a fully kosher meal, with kosher protein. That means the cake would have NO dairy in it (aka fake icing and no butter). Everything we serve would either be meat based or have no dairy in it. This would double the price for our catering, we would have had to cut back our guest list even further and to add "insult" to "injury" we could not serve the delicious wine and booze we want to. It would have to be kosher wine and only liquor that is kosher as well (no sherry casks for the scotch). There would be someone on site monitoring everything and it seemed rather... limiting.After much discussion, we chose to go the path of a dairy meal. Yes our guests would have to forgo the traditional steak or chicken but we could offer them a much more exciting meal with more food and more options. We could also then have a delicious dairy cake with buttercream frosting and the most delicious wine and booze we could buy. This also enables our kosher keeping guests to have the fish or pasta option OR if that doesn't work for them (because there is no kosher supervision) we will order a special glatt kosher meal for them from the kosher deli.Additionally, it allowed us to give further options to our guests. Instead of a meat and a vegetarian dish, we offered a lovely fish dish and two pastas! If I may say so myself, all of the food is amazing.The fact of the matter is this, we are so excited to celebrate with our family and friends and we wanted to provide the nicest meal we could. In this case, that meant offering fish and dairy in abundance. I know it is different than usual, but we hope that our friends are coming to celebrate with us... not just to eat the food.
61 Days Until The Wedding!
I just can't believe how fast time is moving! We are two months away from the wedding and we are trucking!Last week, we booked our photographer. They look amazing! Very nice husband and wife couple who run the business Dox Photo. You should check out their blog here - www.doxphoto.com/blog. We are so excited to have them shoot our wedding day. It was a nerve wracking experience to choose a photographer. These are possibly the most important pictures of my life! It was very reassuring when Khala (the wife) told us about her wedding photographer... she mentioned that it wasn't the best experience and that the woman missed most of the details of the day. Subsequently, she makes an extra effort to catch everything that she wishes she had from her own wedding! While I totally feel for her, I am so thankful that she is committed to the details.We also have contracted with our florist. I have had two meetings with Paula at Newberry Brothers about our flowers. She is a delight to work with, very creative, and understands our budget restraints. Since our colors are navy blue and yellow, we have some really fun options for our flowers. I don't want to give it all away but expect to see yellow roses (Talia's favorite flower since she was little), some tulips, blue hyacinths, and other fun flowers. She is also bringing the chuppah for us. It's made from grape vines which is a nice tie in for us.All in all, we are going for an indoor garden party feel. We know, we need to get those invitations out ASAP and we promise we will but we just want to head over to the Grand Hyatt for a tasting of the meal. They are not hosting our guests but will be providing catering at our wedding venue. They do amazing work and Marta is an invaluable resource.Just so everyone knows, because this is a Jewish event, we had to make some choices regarding the Kosher status of the food. We have decided that our special day will be all dairy and fish, allowing more of our friends and family to eat the meal and we will have special Glatt Kosher meals provided to those who need them. Please let us know when you send back the RSVP card that you need a Glatt Kosher meal. The event will be Kosher-style and all dairy. But this means we will have a dairy wedding cake and who doesn't prefer butter-cream frosting to some margarine imposter? :)We are this ___ close to booking a band and then, I think, all the major details are done! We can't wait to celebrate with you on March 10 but more than anything, we can't wait to start our new lives as husband and wife and celebrate every day with all of our friends and family, beyond the wedding guest list!
Food is expensive... Heck... A wedding is expensive!
I know I am not telling anyone anything new here but... man! We just started talking to caterers and florists... and wow! Things can really add up. Dan and I are both pretty money conscious so it hit us hard when we saw the first catering proposal. Wow.Here's the thing... normal weddings are expensive... our wedding will be even more so because it has to be kosher. Thus, we have to pay for a person to be onsite the whole time to supervise the kashrut and we have to pay for special dishes and silverware... Kosher meat is 2 to 3 times as expensive as non-kosher meat... oy! What we do for our beliefs... but that's the point, right?I (Talia) believe that kashrut, keeping kosher, and a lot of Jewish halacha (law) is about being mindful. I can't just eat in any restaurant or any place. I have to be mindful.So ... Judaism is keeping us mindful at our wedding too. :) Unfortunately, it's not all good mindfulness. We had to cut down our guest list for the final time the other night... oy... that was hard. There are definitely people that I would love to come to the wedding but I just don't have the space. I hope everyone understands... making my wedding guest list was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do in my life!We are sending out save-the-dates soon and many of you have been contacted by us with the password to the wedding details section.Anyway, wedding is trucking along!