Time will tell if small, modest weddings will
remain popular when the pandemic ends. When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
declared in mid-March that the country must self-quarantine in order to contain
the coronavirus, brides and grooms were forced to rethink their plans.
Indeed, many couples found unexpected
satisfaction in how their celebrations turned out. Hadassah Tzach, who moved to
Israel from New Jersey in 2018, had a large wedding planned for March 16.
Following Israel’s first-round of regulations on March 12, stating that no more
than 100 people could gather, the plans were suddenly changed.
“Like every bride, I spent many months planning
our wedding plus years of imagining what it would look like. I never expected
the way it would turn out,” Tzach, who refers to her last-minute event as
“Coronavirus Elopement Wedding,” she said.
Watching the news about the coronavirus, she
could see her dream wedding disintegrating before her eyes. “I tried to stay
optimistic as much as I could even when most of my family and friends had to
cancel their flights. Thankfully, my mom and brother got to Israel before the
ban,”
There is a Sefardic tradition that a few days
before a wedding, friends and family gather for a pre-celebration, called a
“Henna,” where the red substance is put on the palms of hands as a symbol of
posterity for the young couple. Additionally, the bride prepares a challah
dough with the appropriate blessings to symbolize the expansive blessings that
should fill their lives. A festive meal is served along with sweets and
dancing.
“During the henna party, we found out that new
restrictions were starting at midnight. I thought there was zero chance we
would have our wedding under the circumstances,” Tzach said. “I excused myself
from dancing and started to cry in the kitchen. My soon-to-be mother-in-law
came in and said, ‘Why don’t you get married right now while everyone is here
together?’ I was shocked but then thought, ‘It’s now or never.'”
The bride was whisked away to her house to put
on her wedding gown and the groom was told to get ready for his nuptials. They
called the rabbi to quickly come and officiate.
“Everything came together beyond what I could
ever have imagined,” she said. “And I never thought my wedding would cost only
800 shekels [about $230].”
Ayelet Mor, who moved to Israel from
Connecticut in 2018, said that after shedding many tears and discussing the
changes in her wedding plans with her parents and siblings, she “felt good and
excited” about her big day.
“After receiving so much support from my family,
we officially decided to do a small, intimate wedding in Tekoa on our original
wedding date and a bigger one with family and friends in the – hopefully – near
future,” she said. “It was the prettiest wedding I could have ever asked
for, as Tekoa overlooks the Judean mountains. It was bittersweet not having my
family there, that was hard for me. But having just a few people in the most
beautiful setting was so, so special.”
One charity organization did a survey
called “The 100 Person Wedding” to evaluate whether people are open to holding
more affordable affairs long after the pandemic is over.
“One positive point that came out of the
‘corona era’ is that weddings have become limited in scope, focus more on
family and are more economical,” noted the survey. “This has created public
discourse about today’s customarily accepted elaborate weddings, whether they
are justified and correct or whether corona weddings revealed that it was
possible to do things differently.”
“There is a lot of peer pressure [to make fancy
weddings], and this is an issue that needs urgent and substantial improvement,”
noted the survey.
No matter what the future brings, one thing is
certain. We wish all the new couples years of health and happiness.
