Awesome Wedding Dessert Pairings, Continued

Small weddings don’t need big dessert buffets, we pointed out in an earlier post of 10 great wedding cake dessert pairings. One carefully chosen food to accompany the wedding cake makes the dessert course special. Here are four more awesome wedding dessert duos:

1. Milk Chocolate Cake & Mint Julep Ice Cream
2. Cheesecake with Pistachio Crust & Poached Pear Half
3. Honey-Soaked Semolina Cake & Stuffed Dates (Parve)
4. Lemon Pound Cake & Lemon Almond Tuiles
5. Mocha Cake & Gourmet Chocolates

See the full list of 10 great wedding cake dessert pairings.
If They’re Special Enough to Make Your Small Wedding Guest List, They Deserve an Awesome Dessert
Scrumptious Macaroon Recipe for Dessert or Hors d’Oeuvres Reception (Parve)

The Lace We Had to Have for Our Battenburg Wedding Huppah

When we saw this beautiful lace, we knew we it was the perfect finish for our Battenburg Lace Huppah. It’s substantial and sophisticated, with beading and just a light touch of iridescent sequins – so light that it’s hard to see in the photo. To preserve the quality of the lace, we sewed it to the canopy’s valances by hand.

Get more details here. Check rental availability for your wedding date here.

Photo Huppahs.com | Photography Jason Weil, Maryland | Location Woodend Nature Sanctuary, Audubon Naturalist Society, Maryland

And see more huppahs:

• Real Life Ivory Silk Huppah in the Park
• A Wedding Chuppah for All Venues: The Simplicity Huppah
• Real Life Wedding: Organza Huppah at Brooklyn’s Prospect Boat House

If They’re Special Enough to Make Your Small Wedding Guest List, They Deserve an Awesome Dessert

A slice of flourless chocolate cake. And yeah, it was really good.

Having a small guest list means that the people who made the cut must be pretty special. It also enables you to be adventurous with your wedding menu. Flourless chocolate cake is a non-traditional but certain-to-be-appreciated wedding cake. Bonappetit.com serves up a recipe for this bête noire topped with chocolate ganache. It’s not only sophisticated and decadently delicious, but if you’re catering the wedding yourself, it’s one of the easiest cakes to make.

The only fiddly part of the preparation is covering the outside of the baking pan with three layers of foil. The first time I tried the recipe, I managed to put small, unseen tears in all three layers, apparently, because water seeped into the batter during baking. Not good. Here’s a tip that solved the problem on my second try: Handle the foil as little as possible to avoid tearing it. The recipe…

And take a look at our previous post: 10 Scrumptious Wedding Cake Dessert Pairings

10 Scrumptious Wedding Cake Dessert Pairings

Small weddings don’t need big dessert buffets. Simple can be celebratory. Start by choosing a wedding cake with personality. Then add a second, complimentary dessert to the plate. Think seasonal fruits, home made ice-creams, sherbert, refined cookies, and the many manifestations of chocolate.

Consider these wedding dessert matches made in heaven:

1. Coconut Chiffon Cake & Sour Cherry Compote
2. 

   Chocolate cupcakes with chili chocolate frosting.

   Chili Chocolate Cupcakes & Vanilla Bean Ice Cream
3. Croquembouche & Honey Lavender Ice Cream
4. Hazelnut Cake & Chocolate Mousse (Both parve)
5. Flourless Chocolate Cake with Fresh Whipped Cream & Fresh Raspberries
6. Angel Food Cake & Spring Berry Compote (Both parve)
7. Vanilla Pound Cake & Ginger and Lemon Sherbert
8. Orange Almond Cake & Chocolate Almond Truffles
9. Ricotta Cake & Broiled Honey-Glazed Spiced Figs
10. Lilikoi Layer Cake with Fresh Passionfruit & Ginger-Macadamia Nut Snowballs

Thinking of another great pairing? Share it in the comment section!

And you might want to take a look at these:

• 

  Garland on the stairs. Source: Fiftyflowers.com

  How Big of a Wedding Cake Do I Need?
• Our 100 Favorite Backyard Wedding Themes
• Vintage Champagne Wedding Punch Recipe

Wedding Reception in a Biker Bar?

Did you see the recent episode of Worst Cooks in America where the contestants had to feed a pack of hungry bikers? Show hosts Bobby Flay and Anne Burrell brought their cooking-challenged challengers to Brooklyn to duke it out at the East River Bar.

The contestants served up some grilled figs and chicken wings, and the production crew served up some biker-worthy wall flair in the form of hubcaps and skulls. But last year, my littlest brother and his bride held their wedding reception at that bar, and I can tell you the place cleans up real nice.

See for yourself, with wedding and reception photos by Jacob Arthur.

(BTW, is it really fair to make people who didn’t know anything about cooking a few weeks earlier come up with their own original chicken wing recipe in 90 minutes?)

And here are pics from another real-life wedding: Natalie + Richard Wed Under an Ivory Silk Huppah in a New York City Park

A Wedding Chuppah for All Venues: The Simplicity Huppah

While finalizing the reservation of a Simplicity Huppah yesterday, I realized that of all our rental huppahs, we’ve probably shipped this style huppah to the widest variety of wedding venues, from backyards to bistros and hotel ballrooms. Its clean, classic design fits just about any setting (and like all of our huppahs, it’s easy to transport and set up anywhere).

Just for fun, we went back through the files and revisited some of the varied venues where couples have wed under Simplicity Huppahs:

• Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn, New York.
• The Foundry in Long Island City, New York.
• Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo.
• Virginia’s Meadowlark Botanical Gardens.
• The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia.
• Shell Island Resort in Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina.
• The Inn at the Round Barn Farm in Waitsfield, Vermont.
• An apartment balcony in Washington, DC.

You can check the availability of our Simplicity Huppahs for your wedding day or get more details at Huppahs.com. Or see all our huppah designs.

VISIT:

• DIY wedding dress in Grace Kelly style from Vogue Patterns
• How Big of a Wedding Cake Do I Need?
• What do the Jewish bride and groom wear?

The Jewish Wedding Ceremony, Step by Step

The Jewish wedding ceremony is richly layered in centuries of tradition, Jewish law, spiritual teachings, and customs from communities around the world. Here we’ve laid out the basic structure of the traditional Jewish wedding, with some of the most widely-accepted interpretations of the parts of the ceremony. We’ve also included some of the most popular customs and practices that couples have added during the past few decades. If we’ve missed any of your favorite customs or interpretations, feel free to add them in the Comment section.

Greeting the Couple

Traditionally, Jewish wedding celebrations begin with separate receptions for the bride and groom, together called kabalat panim. Many contemporary couples combine the activities of these receptions into one small pre-huppah ceremony attended by only a few family members and friends.

Attending the Bride. At the bride’s reception, referred to in Hebrew as hakhnassat kallah, the bride sits on a specially decorated chair and receives well wishes from her guests.

The Groom’s Table. At the groom’s reception, or chossen’s tish, two traditional documents and one newly-adopted document are signed.

1. The Tenaim. The traditional formal agreement between the two families that the bride and groom will marry.
2. The Ketubah. This is the wedding contract. In the most traditional of Jewish weddings, the purpose of the ketubah is for the groom to assume his legal and moral obligations to his wife. The groom and two witnesses sign it. Increasingly, couples choose ketubahs that lay out both partners’ obligations to each other, and both partners sign them.
3. Prenuptial Agreement. The Prenup is a new agreement, introduced in the 1950s and embraced by a wide spectrum of Jewish communities. It helps ensure that a woman who marries under Jewish law and decides in the future to end the marriage will be able to obtain a divorce under Jewish law. The Conservative movement incorporates this agreement into its standard ketubah through what is called the Lieberman Clause. Modern Orthodox communities generally use a separate prenup form.

Veiling the Bride. Also called bedecken. The groom lowers the veil over the bride’s face. The groom is the person who lowers the veil so that he can make sure that the bride is the person he intends to marry. The practice recalls the Biblical story of Jacob, who was tricked by his father-in-law into marrying the sister of his intended bride.

The Huppah Ceremonies

In a traditional Jewish wedding, the groom puts on a kittel, a white robe, before the festivities move to the huppah. Wearing white, for both the groom and the bride, signifies that for them this day is a new spiritual beginning. The kittel has no pockets, symbolizing that the bride marries the groom for who he is rather than for what he owns. For the same reason, the bride removes her jewelry before the huppah ceremony.

The wedding takes place under a huppah, a canopy that represents the couple’s physical and spiritual home. The huppah is open on all four sides, like the tent of the first Jewish couple, Abraham and Sarah, to associate the couple’s home with the hospitality for which Abraham and Sarah were known. Historically, a bride was escorted from her home to the ceremony while walking under a huppah carried by four huppah-bearers.

The Procession. For a ceremony using a traditional hand-held huppah, the huppah bearers carry the huppah into the ceremony space. Then, as with other modern wedding processions, any special honored guests are escorted to their seats, and the members of the wedding party enter and take their places. The groom is escorted to the huppah by his parents, and the bride is escorted by her parents.

Kiddushin, The Betrothal. When the bride reaches the huppah, she circles the groom seven times, creating the spiritual space that will surround them in marriage. The number of circles can vary. Today, both partners may take turns circling each other to symbolize their mutual obligations to each other. After circling, a bride stands to her groom’s right.

• Opening Blessings.
• Blessing for the First Cup. The rabbi recites a blessing over a cup of wine, and the wedding couple each take a sip. Some couples may pass the cup to their parents or other guests for them to sip.
• The Ring Ceremony. This is the central act of the Jewish wedding ceremony. The groom places the ring on the bride’s right index finger while reciting the following, in Hebrew or his native language: “By this ring you are consecrated to me in accordance with the laws of Moses and Israel.” Today, some brides also give the groom a ring at this time, while reciting a similar statement to that of the groom.
• Bride’s Acceptance. Two people must witness that the bride accepts the ring willingly.

Reading the Ketubah

Reading the ketubah is not a formal part of the ceremony, but today most couples incorporate it into the ceremony at this point.

Nussuin, Nuptials

The sheva b’rachot, seven blessings, are recited. These prayers place the couple within God’s continuing act of creation and celebrate the many voices of joy that God created in the world, including the voices of the bride and groom.

Breaking the Glass

The groom smashes a glass on the ground with his foot as a reminder of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Everyone yells “Mazel tov!”

Yichud

The newly married couple spends some time in seclusion — at least eight minutes according to strict interpretations of tradition — breaking their wedding-day fast and sharing their first married moments alone together. The bride puts on the jewelry she took off before the huppah ceremony.

For modern couples who do not have a double ring ceremony under the huppah, this is a good time for the bride to present the groom with his wedding ring.

After the yichud, it’s time to join everyone else at the party!

Ivanka Trump: Her 2009 Jewish wedding started the popular trend toward more demure gowns.

ALSO VISIT:

• What do the Jewish bride and groom wear?
• 21 Things Rabbis Wish Wedding Coordinators and Couples Knew About Planning a Jewish Wedding (Huppahs.com)
• Kosher-fied Royal Wedding Hors d’Oeurve Reception Menu with Recipes

Backyard Wedding? Embrace Decor with a Touch of Nature

Photos courtesy of the Green Bride Guide.

If you’re planning a backyard wedding, play to the outdoor setting with decor and accessories that embrace nature’s themes and use eco-friendly materials, like the items in the Garden Wedding line from the Green Bride Guide. We’ve highlighted some of our favorites in the pics above. Clockwise from top left: upcycled garden wedding invitations; jasmine head wreath for bride, bridesmaid, or flower girl; felt rose garland, plantable favor cards shaped like love birds and infused with flower seeds, lavender in a box wedding favors, and love bird wedding cake toppers. We love that the Green Bride Guide provides modern designs for eco-conscious wedding couples, and Huppahs.com is proud to be an approved vendor of the Green Bride Guide.

ALSO VISIT:

• Get free printable templates for charity wedding favor cards (Huppahs.com)
• DIY wedding dress in Grace Kelly style
• Our 100 Favorite Backyard Wedding Themes

The Surprising Thing Missing from Many Jewish Wedding Planning Checklists

This is the season when engaged couples start looking in earnest for — and media start posting and publishing — wedding planning checklists. Each year I’m surprised at the number of Jewish wedding planning checklists that leave out a critical item: the huppah. I suppose it’s a bit self-serving of me to mention this, since my company rents huppahs, but I guess I’m hoping to get this item included in as many guides as possible or get it hand-written onto as many couples’ lists as possible to help ensure that the huppah is a source of joy for couples rather than a last-minute worry.

Last-minute huppah rentals are something of a specialty of Huppahs.com. In fact, we love being able to tell panicked clients who contact us just a few weeks before the wedding that they will have a huppah, delivered to their door, no problem. But every once in a while we have to say that we no longer have anything available, which is heartbreaking for couples and for us.

We also work with clients who reserve their huppahs more than a year before their weddings. The nice thing about working with brides and grooms as far in advance of the wedding date as possible, for them and for us, is that we can give them as wide a range of huppah styles to choose as we can.

The check box for reserving a huppah should ideally lie just under the check box for choosing the ceremony location. When you know where your ceremony will be — whether it’s a synagogue, beach, country inn, hotel, backyard, bistro, or zoo — you have a good idea of the style of your wedding and the style of huppah that you would most prefer.

So we recommend that couples contact us to check huppah rental availability soon after they choose the location for their ceremony. That’s when you’ll have the widest selection and the best chance of securing the huppah that works best for you.

And we do try to make your huppah rental the easiest box to check off your to-do list.

How can we make huppah rentals even easier for you? Leave us a note in the Comments section.

VISIT:

• Real Jewish Wedding: Natalie + Richard Wed Under an Ivory Silk Huppah in a New York City Park
• 7 Tips for Designing Stylish Long Tablescapes on a Budget
• 7 Ways to Decorate a Huppah (Chuppah)

Recipe: Chili Chocolate Cupcakes to Spice up Your Dessert Buffet

Chocolate cupcakes with chili chocolate frosting.

Guest blogger: Agnes Goldrich, Age 14.

As the resident baker in the Bywater family, I recommend these chili chocolate cupcakes for a wedding cupcake buffet (or a great dessert for your Mom’s birthday). Also, I’m told they go well with champagne.

(What was the best cupcake flavor you ever had? Share it in the comment section!)

For the chili chocolate cupcakes, start with Devil’s food chocolate cupcakes from a mix, then add this chili chocolate icing:

Chili Chocolate Frosting Ingredients

• 4 sticks butter, softened
• 4 cups powdered sugar
• ¼ cup milk
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ¾ teaspoon chili powder
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• ¾ teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
• 10 ounces bittersweet chocolate, melted and cooled

Baking tip: When baking the cupcakes, fill the cupcake pan liners a little more than 2/3 full. You’ll only get 20 cupcakes instead of 24, but the cupcakes will be a nicer size.

Instructions

1. In a large bowl, beat butter until creamy.
2. Add powdered sugar, milk, cinnamon, chili powder, vanilla, and cayenne pepper. Beat until fluffy.
3. Add bittersweet chocolate and beat until blended.

ALSO VISIT:

• Recipe: Mini Orange Almond Cakes, Dessert Hors D’Oeuvre (Parve, Non-Dairy)
• Recipe: Hazelnut Wedding Cake with 50 Servings (Non-Dairy, Parve)
• Dessert Hors d’Oeuvre Recipe: Chocolate Truffles (Parve, Vegetarian)

Wedding Huppah Rentals “as Easy as Zappos.com”

Lace Wedding Huppah

We love all the positive reviews we get for Huppahs.com, and one of my favorites said we “make it as easy as Zappos.com to receive and return your chuppah.” Zappos is a company that we thought of as we designed our services. We try to make it as easy to rent and return a wedding huppah as it is to buy and return shoes for Zappos.

Here’s how we do it:

• We ship the huppah by FedEx to arrive by the Wednesday before the wedding so you can be confident you’ll have it when you need it.
• We provide simple instructions for attaching the huppah canopy to the poles. It takes about three minutes.
• When it’s time to return the huppah, use the box the huppah arrives in and the pre-paid FedEx return shipping label we send. You can drop it off at a FedEx location or call for FedEx to pick it up, which ever is easier for you.

For more info: Huppahs.com | Check huppah availability for your wedding date

Is there a way we could make huppah rentals even more convenient for you? Send us an email.

RELATED:
Real Jewish Wedding: Natalie + Richard Wed Under an Ivory Silk Huppah in a New York City Park
Real Life Jewish Wedding: Under an Organza Huppah at Brooklyn, New York’s Prospect Boat House
Free printable templates: Do a favor for your guests and a good cause: Give a charitable donation instead of wedding favors

HE’BREW: Great Kosher Beer for Your Jewish Wedding

One big plus of moving Huppahs.com to New York has been finding out about HE’BREW beer, a line of great-tasting kosher craft beers. If you want to offer your wedding guests something different at the bar and give the beer lovers in the crowd something they’ll appreciate, serve up some Origin Pomegranate Ale, Hop Manna, Messiah Brown Nut Ale, or one of the line’s other amusingly-named but seriously good brews.

I don’t have the beer vocabulary to even bluff at describing the tastes, but one reviewer who presumably does have that vocabulary was reduced to the word “WOW.” In the 2011/2012 World Beer Championships, where HE’BREW’s maker, Shmaltz Brewing, entered fourteen beers, nine of their beers won gold medals and five won silver. It’s good beer.

HE’BREW beers are brewed in upstate New York, but you can find them in more than thirty states (as well as extremely selected locations in Canada, Australia, and Japan). A newer line of Coney Island Craft Lagers is available through a more limited number of outlets. Shmaltz Brewing’s website provides helpful lists of wholesalers, shops and bars that carry its products.

Related: Special Wedding Details: Catoctin Cocktail with Kosher, Organic, Rye Whisky

Generally, an unflavored beer made with only water, barley, yeast, and hops, without any additives, will be kosher even without certification (for this information, I go to Orthodox-Jews.com). But when you want to get at all adventurous with taste and still keep kosher, you have to look for certification. HE’BREW beers are certified by the Orthodox-grade Kosher Supervision of America.

I raise my glass to the folks at Shmaltz Brewing Company for advancing the art of beer for the rest of us to enjoy and impress our guests.

RELATED: Real Life Wedding: Alanna + Joe’s Brooklyn Neighborhood Wedding

Persian Pomegranate Sangria (Kosher Drink Recipe)

Recipe: Baked Pears for an Autumn or Early Winter Wedding (Parve or Dairy, Vegetarian)

These pears work for both elegant and rustic menus. Add homemade berry sauce and serve them as an accompaniment to a slice of light wedding cake or as a side dish for a wedding brunch.

Today my daughters and I packed a brunch and brought it to my parents’ house to celebrate their wedding anniversary. The planned menu included poached pears, but last night, when I should have started the poaching, I hung out with a bunch of brothers and sisters and in-laws instead, talking about, among other things, Bill’s latest ice sculptures. So this morning, my daughters and I prepared the pears by baking them. The prep for baked pears is less fussy and less time-consuming than than for poaching, which makes them an appealing dish not just for easy-going family weekends, but for small self-catered weddings, too.

Serve these baked pear halves with a slice of light wedding cake and homemade berry sauce for a complete wedding dessert, or include them as a side dish for an autumn or early winter wedding brunch. We’ll make the berry sauce recipe our next post.

Menorah Ice Carving Hanukkiah

BTW, here’s a pic of the Hanukkiah ice sculpture Bill carved today during a demonstration at Yeshiva Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch in Manhattan.

Ingredients for Baked Pears

Serves 24

• 12 Bosc or Anjou pears
• Cooking oil spray
• ½ cup butter, melted (or for a pareve version to serve with a meat meal, use non-dairy margarine)
• 6 Tablespoons honey
• 1 Tablespoon pumpkin pie spice

Instructions for Baked Pears

1. Preheat oven to 375ºF (190ºC).
2. Lightly spray the bottom of two 9″x13″ baking pans with cooking oil.
3. Cut pears in half, cut out the core, and peel the pears.
4. 

   Make 4 slices in each pear half, stopping about a quarter inch from the narrow end of the pear.

   Optional: Make four slices in each pear half, stopping about ¼” from the small end. This will enable you to fan out the slices on the plate when you serve it. Or leave the halves unsliced for a more rustic presentation.
5. Place the pears flat side down in the baking pans.
6. Mix the melted butter, honey and spices. Drizzle the mixture over the pears.
7. Cover the pans and bake for 40 minutes or until the pears are tender.

The pears can be stored overnight, covered, in the refrigerator.

Croquembouche and Dragees, Traditional French Wedding Details – And Endangered Species?

Yesterday the BBC reported that French couples increasingly are abandoning traditional French wedding customs and adopting American and British-style wedding details. I find this alarming.

As a champion of small weddings, I like to know there are pockets of the world holding out against the big, bridezilla-inducing wedding machine. Traditional French weddings are intimate and elegant. Until recently, French couples typically have forgone bridesmaids, groomsmen, and the budget-straining trimmings that have become customary for American and British celebrations. That the French in particular, who generally are known for taking pride in their national culture, would now abandon their long-standing allegiance to elegant simplicity seems a fair reason for concern.

The BBC credits last year’s wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton for making the first significant cracks in the cultural defenses of France’s brides. When those blushing mariées saw Kate’s wedding dress of English lace, they deserted their silk dresses. Since then, French couples have been waving wildly in welcome as save-the-date cards, personalized wedding favors, and tiered cakes veritably march in victory along the Champs-Élysées.

Surely, this development is a net positive for France’s wedding vendors and the British vendors who are marching on Paris to take advantage of the trend. But couples around the world who want a small, elegant wedding are losing a style ally.

This was going to be the paragraph where I compared the traditional French wedding to an endangered species and made the case for the importance of preserving biodiversity in our wedding planning ecosystem. But at this point, I think we all want to move on to the pretty pictures.

So, like scientists who gather and protect species in danger of extinction, let us preserve here the details of a traditional French wedding, so they can be enjoyed by future generations — even if not in their native habitat.

Traditional French Wedding Details:

Wedding Dress: Silk. (Source: Alexandra King on Etsy, Bristol, England, United Kingdom.)	Le Vin d’Honneur: A mini reception directly following the ceremony. Many of the ceremony guests, such as work colleagues and friends of the couples’ parents, attend this vin d’honneur but not the main reception. The expected beverage: Kir Royale.
Drinks: Champagne, coffee.	Dessert: Croquembouche (Source: Fancy That Wedding Cake. Oxfordshire, England, UK)
Flowers: Roses	Favors: Dragées (sugared almonds). (Source: Milena Bertarelli, MilenaSupplies on Etsy)

Bridesmaids/Groomsmen/Save-the-Date-Cards: No/No/No.

Related: Our 100 Favorite Backyard Wedding Themes

Reader Question: How Do I Attach 2 Tallits Together to Make a Wedding Huppah?

Question: We are thinking of making a huppah canopy by combining the groom’s father’s tallit and his grandfather’s tallit. Do you have any recommendations for how we might do this?

Answer: The idea of making a wedding huppah canopy from more than one tallit, or prayer shawl, is a definite trend. At Huppahs.com we’re getting variations on this question more and more often.

Jewish couples have been marrying under huppah canopies made from tallits for centuries (Quick point: The Hebrew language plural for “tallit”, also spelled “tallith” would be “tallithim ” or “tallisim”. However, I’m using tallit as an English language word, so I’m using the plural “tallits”). Through the ages, the bride and groom stood under the groom’s tallit, in keeping with the symbolism of the huppah as the couple’s physical home and their shared spiritual space.

Many of our clients use our huppah poles with their own tallits or a tallit of a family member to create a very personal huppah.

Today, the idea of combining the tallits of more than one person is seen as a way to honor people who are special to the bride and groom and to represent the presence of these people in the couples’ lives.

As a huppah and tallit designer, I can recommend a few things to keep in mind:

1. Compatible Lengths: Make sure the two tallits you want to attach together are the same length.
2. Final Canopy Size: Every fabric canopy will drape in the middle. The larger the canopy, the more the drape. You’ll want to make sure that the size of the combined tallits isn’t so large that it drapes too low in the middle. Also, the larger the canopy, the more it will weigh, and heavier canopies pull more on the huppah poles. Be sure to use poles that are strong enough to handle the weight of the combined tallits without bending. For Huppahs.com’s poles, we recommend a canopy size that is no larger than 60″x80″ (1.5mx2m). That size yields a nice drape, and the poles are easy to hold.
3. Tallit Age: If you are using an older tallit, such as a grandfather’s tallit, look it over carefully to make sure the fabric isn’t frail or threadbare. Stitching two prayer shawls together will make small holes in the tallits, and when the canopy hangs the huppah poles, the weight of the tallits will pull at the fabric along the seam. Make sure the tallits are strong enough to hold up well to this kind of treatment.
4. Religious Nature of a Tallit: Keep in mind the religious role of the tallit. Wearing a tallit for prayer isn’t just a tradition, it’s a practice rooted in religious obligations laid out in the Torah. The Biblical and spiritual power of the tallit lies in its shape, with four corners, and the ritual fringes on the corners. Sewing two prayer shawls together changes this physical structure, and although doing so can create a huppah with great emotional meaning, my recommendation as a huppah and tallit designer is to use only one tallit for your huppah, to ensure you are preserving the tallit’s religious and spiritual power.

Given these practical and spiritual considerations, my recommendation in most cases is to use only one tallit for a huppah canopy and honor additional special people in other ways. Here are some options:

1. Ask them to hold a huppah pole.
2. Ask them to recite one of the seven blessings during the ceremony.
3. Acknowledge them during a speech or toast at the reception.

Update: Here’s another option for using two tallits that doesn’t involve sewing them together: Attach one tallit to the huppah poles, and lay the second tallit on top of the first. You would want to make sure that the fabric of the first tallit is strong enough so that it won’t rip at the point of the tallit where you tie it to the poles, especially since the fabric will be carrying the weight of two tallits.

This would be a way to combine two tallits without sewing them, and it would be a way to include a second tallit that is older and frail or too delicate to sew or carry weight.

This idea comes from a Huppahs.com client who wanted to use a grandfather’s tallit that was too frail to be tied to the poles. His solution was to start with a Simplicity Huppah and lay his grandfather’s tallit on top of it. A great idea.

Do you have any other suggestions for honoring special people on your wedding day? Please share them in the comment section.

RELATED:
Real Jewish Wedding: Natalie + Richard Wed Under an Ivory Silk Huppah in a New York City Park
7 Tips for Designing Stylish Long Tablescapes on a Budget
Free printable templates: Do a favor for your guests and a good cause: Give a charitable donation instead of wedding favors