Jlife Magazine reached out to our community and asked for memorable and funny moments during this blessed time. The results tickled our funny bones and we hope their stories do the same for you. Enjoy!
It’s a Wash
I always wanted to do the mikvah before I got married so I set it up the week I got married. I heard about what I should expect, but it was an incredible experience and probably my favorite one with friends. I asked my best friend and mother-in-law to join me. They got to observe the ceremony. I got there and they have you shower, wash your body and hair, brush your teeth, brush your hair, clean your ears etc. I was then led into a room by myself with a towel wrapped around me. I handed the towel over and submerged into a spa-like jacuzzi. Then they brought in my guest who could not see anything from where they were sitting. I said a prayer and the lady who ran the service said a prayer and then she instructed me up go completely underwater without touching anything. It’s said at this point the Jewish people are wrapping their arms around you and lifting you up. This is the original baptism. We went through this process three times and then she asked if I would like to say something and if my friends wanted to. I said a little something and was very emotional. My best friend said a few things and then it was my mother-in-law’s turn. She said, “Thank G-d for Match.com.” It was hilarious! That’s where my beshert and I met! Going through the mikvah (such a serious thing) this was such a great moment that I will never forget!
—Lisa Grier (Greenberg)
Let’s get ready
to rumble!….um, get married.
It’s becoming more commonplace for interfaith couples to have interfaith weddings. Each partner, and their families, wants their religious needs, dreams and traditions present for one of the most important days in their lives. And while the betrothed may be more flexible with how the ceremony will be performed, somehow the final product doesn’t always execute without a couple of hiccups (or in this case a major malfunction).
So what do you get when you mix a very sarcastic rabbi with a verbally windy pastor? Microphone mayhem! Even with the rabbi taking the slightly higher road, the entire wedding became a religious battle royale, leaving the audience to enjoy an almighty awkwardness that left one stuck between being socially polite and wanting to flee from impending persecution.
Let’s use the tune of “Old McDonald” to recapture the chaotic magical masterpiece that was this wedding…
With a little over talking here, a religious one-upmanship there, here a microphone grab, there a microphone grab, the Jewish groom receives a benediction and the interfaith audience was blessed by the Trinity….Old McDonald had a farm but this wedding made you go EEK, AY, UH-OH, NOOOOOO!!
—Amy Richards (Whitman)
Bride Before
the Bachelor
We were living in Manhattan Beach while our families were in New York and Pittsburgh. My favorite Rabbi was in New Orleans. He was not legal to marry us in New York, so my mother suggested that we do the legal marriage in Las Vegas two weeks prior to our spiritual wedding with our rabbi, family and friends. That is what we did. My brother came to Vegas, but only our parents and immediate family knew.
I attended my bachelor party already married. I had a great night with my friends, my father’s buddies and family. I came back to the hotel afterwards and who was in my bed? Cheryl. Cheryl and I are married for 32 years.
—Andy Mars
Other Wedding Funnies
My grandmother now of loving memory, was in her 90’s. She went alone to see a Broadway show. Then when we were going to the rehearsal dinner, we could not find her. Remember, no cell phones back then. Right when we were leaving she showed up because she decided to go see an additional show, again on her own. She was about 4ft 10 inches tall, but a real tiger.
My cousins had never been to a New York wedding. The amazing amounts of food. After the appetizer stations, they had filled up…and then came the sit down dinner.
—Andy Mars
Wine and Dive
My friends were saying the kiddush over the wine goblet and on video the camera guy captured a fly circling then committing harikari in the goblet right at that point in the wedding ceremony.
—Jackie Menter
Culturally Not
So Different
I once played (string quartet) at a Hindu wedding. The ceremony was under a ceremonial canopy and there was a lot of food all around. During the ceremony guests were standing all around and casually chatting the entire time. It felt a lot like a Jewish service.
—Jackie Menter
If it Ain’t Borodin…
My wedding: really long processional—large wedding party. The string quartet kept playing the same introduction over and over and over and never continued on to the second section of the movement. To this day I can no longer listen to Borodin’s “String Quartet No. 2.” Years later, during a concert intermission I was talking with a violinist sharing wedding stories. He told me about a wedding in LA where the wedding party never ended and they kept playing the first few measures of Borodin endlessly. I told him “that was my wedding!”
—Jackie Menter