Product Description

Wedding planning can be a stressful experience. Keeping track of all the details--deciding who to invite, choosing a caterer, arranging the reception--can sometimes lead to a couple forgetting about the bigger picture and the significance of this day in their lives: A joyous occasion that should reflect not only your personality, but your values, as well.

The Creative Jewish Wedding Book brings your complete wedding planning into focus. Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer helps you express your individuality and spirituality on your wedding day. Whether your plans are traditional or alternative, whether you are planning your first or second marriage, she provides the tools you need to look at and think about ritual and tradition in new and innovative ways, including:

• Insights and reflections from a broad range of couples who have created their own distinctive weddings
• Practical hands-on techniques and ideas for creating many of the ritual objects connected to a Jewish wedding from designing your own ketubah, to making paper for invitations, to fashioning the chuppah
• How to express your spiritual life and values through your ceremony
• An up-to-date guide to wedding resources in the Jewish world

Inspiring and useful, The Creative Jewish Wedding Book can help you reclaim your wedding day from the whirlwind of details and bring out the honesty and integrity you desire in your wedding experience.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #214355 in Books
• Published on: 2004-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 254 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This guide to Jewish weddings will be best appreciated by those who are new to Judaism, those who wish to adapt tradition to personalize their Jewish wedding or those who want to incorporate elements of the Jewish tradition into an unconventional or interfaith wedding ceremony. Kaplan-Mayer writes accessibly and engagingly, leading readers through Jewish customs such as the ketubah, the marriage contract that she encourages them to modify according to their own backgrounds and needs, and the chuppah, the wedding canopy that she helps them envision and create. She tackles food, music, family dynamics and ritual objects ("something oldish, something newish, something borrowed, something Jewish"). Kaplan-Mayer pays special attention to the needs of interfaith and same-sex couples, with practical suggestions for diminishing possible tensions and helping family members and guests feel at ease.
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Customer Reviews

Creatively Carrying Through Intention
Reading through this book is like getting advice from a clever, witty, creative and deeply spiritual friend. There are wonderful examples of how different couples have created meaningful rituals for their weddings, giving the readers starting points to create their own deeply personal simchot. There is an amazing sense of openness and inclusiveness throughout. "The Creative Jewish Wedding Book" will be a standard engagement gift for my Jewish friends.

ENDLESSLY HELPFUL
The Creative Jewish Wedding book has been a life saver. My partner and I had read every book, magazine, web site there is. As a Lesbian couple we were searching and searching for texts that included us in a way that was just inclusive and not so abrupt and exclusive or not included as an afterthought. Gabrielle makes all kinds of Judaism included and honored and makes the reader feel like whatever their beliefs it's all good. As a gay couple we can't express our appreciation enough of our inclusion and her way of writing that is so easy and pleasing to read. Gabrielle also introduced us to new ways of expressing words of god that put us at ease and honored our belief system. Her writing is compassionate and open, she offers excellent resources and information, and the book offers new insights and has been a delight to learn from and read.

Not the best book for a mixed wedding
My fiance is Jewish and I am not, and we were looking for a book that explained some of the Jewish traditions in a way that could be used in a mixed wedding. This book, however, is solely for an all-Jewish wedding and assumes a background knowledge about Judiasm that was not helpful for us. For example, we wanted an explanation of the meaning of the breaking of the glass that we could offer up to our guests, but the book just assumed people knew what the ritual was all about and did not offer much language we could use. I did give the book 3 stars because it seemed to be very open to variants of Jewish weddings (for more modern couples), but had no real info of use to me.