Greg's Wedding Journal 1

This Shabbat was one of the most meaningful of my life! Starting Friday night, my parents had Andi's family over for dinner - the first time that the two families have met each other (Andi has met my parents and I have met hers, but they hadn't met each other). With translation and lots of smiling and laughing we shared our stories as much as we could, sang, ate and generally felt our way towards each other. Then Saturday morning was our ufruf at the yeshivah - wow! More than 70 people crammed into our small bet midrash to davven, with singing and dancing, and Andi and I were called up to read from the Torah. Also, both our Dads were given aliyot as was Yoni, another student at the yeshivah who is getting married in Vancouver in August. Yoni and I have been studying together on weddings each week, a practical chavrutah, but we have also been able to share all the nervousness and excitement that comes with an approaching wedding. His aliyah was especially great as it meant that we were able to share his simcha with ours even though we will not be able to make it to his wedding. So it was all round dancing and mazal tov-ing and siman tov-ing, and it was just so beautiful.

And then we all sat down to a great lunch together - a great part of it arrived on Friday morning with two of Andi's cousins from a moshav in the centre of the country. They drove in with a car loaded with trays and trays of borekas, kugel, cakes and pies to feed a small army, which I guess we were. In order to avoid using disposable plastic cups, Andi and I, with the help of my long-suffering parents, had handpainted 75 small glasses with pictures and our initials on, and we invited people to take them home and bring them back on Wednesday to drink a l'chaim with us - if everyone takes us up on that, we might not see the end of the evening!

Then on Saturday night was the climax. We made havdalah with a small group of people who represent all different phases

of our background - family who have known us alone all our lives, friends who have met us separately or together, in Budapest, London, Jerusalem or South Africa,

couples and singles, people we hang out with, study with and connect with in different ways. There was of course lots of beautiful singing and it was so moving to hear from each person where they had met us (some at birth of course!) and what memories they have of us.

We lit two candles instead of one, as a symbol of the fact that havdalah is the separation between kodesh and chol, between the sanctified and the not yet sanctified,

as this was the last time we would be making havdalah as single people. Then we read out our t'naim document, one that sets out our commitments to each other, a kind of statement of principles for our relationship. For those who are interested, you can read these here on our website.
Three days to go…

L'shalom
Greg