Jewish Weddings: A Beautiful Guide to Creating the Wedding of Your Dreams (Hardcover)

by Rita Milos Brownstein (Author) "ACCORDING TO JEWISH TRADITION, FORTY DAYS before the conception of a baby girl, a heavenly proclamation declares exactly who the child will someday marry..." (more)
Key Phrases: kosher kitchen, poached pears, New York, Seven Blessings, Palm Beach (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

There is nothing more daunting to a newly engaged couple than planning their wedding. For Jewish couples, balancing religious and aesthetic needs can be especially tricky. Rita Milos Brownstein provides inspiration and practical advice in Jewish Weddings, a lavishly illustrated guide to creating a wedding that both honors Jewish culture, ritual, and tradition and reflects the lives and personalities of the bride and groom.

Beginning with a brief history of the Jewish wedding (including wonderful stories of barshert, couples whose love was clearly meant to be), Brownstein guides the bride and groom through the pleasures of the engagement party and Jewish bridal shower to choosing a ketubah (marriage contract), wedding ring, and invitations. She describes traditional Jewish customs and rituals, then suggests ways to personalize the chuppah, or wedding canopy; music; wedding programs; and even the chairs. Brownstein includes the joyous times after the wedding and gives the new couple tips on how to create a Jewish home and original ideas for thank-you notes.

Of course, Brownstein doesn't forget about food, with menu suggestions for an engagement party and a bridal shower tea party, as well as for the wedding reception and Sheva Brachas, the traditional week of festive meals following the wedding. Delicious, mouth-watering recipes for Salmon Roll with Dill Sauce, Green Bean Bundles, Potato and Leek Soup, and Poached Pears will please even the most finicky couple. Brownstein supplies tips on how to keep a kosher kitchen as well.

The book also offers glimpses of seven real-life Jewish weddings. From a jubilant outdoor celebration in San Diego, California; a dazzling New York City affair; a classic Hasidic wedding in Hartford, Connecticut; to an elegant affair in Palm Beach, Florida, these stories will inspire any bride and groom in planning their own wedding, no matter where they live.

Illustrated with more than 200 gorgeous color and black-and-white photographs, Jewish Weddings is an indispensable book for any Jewish couple.

About the Author
Rita Milos Brownstein worked as a graphic designer and art director for House Beautiful, Good Housekeeping, and many other publications. Her first book, Jewish Holiday Style, was published in September 1999. Since then she has been a frequent speaker to Jewish groups around the country. Brownstein is currently developing a line of Judaica products. She lives in Simsbury, Connecticut, with her husband and two children.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; illustrated edition edition (December 24, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743216075
• ISBN-13: 978-0743216074
• Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 8.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #190,176 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE Jewish Wedding Book Marries Tradition and Style, May 25, 2004

By A Customer

Don't get fooled by the exquisite photography and tasteful presentation. This book is packed with information to educate and inspire any Jewish couple with a chuppah in their future! Ms. Brownstein presents a wide variety of wedding traditions from around the Jewish world--New York City chic to a simple but elegant West Coast garden party. From mikveh to mezuzah, she packs powerful Jewish wedding customs into 176 pages, finishing with a useful resource guide. A must buy for the prospective bride (groom and mother-of-the-bride too!)who wants to begin her new life with tradition, style and meaning!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful in content and style, May 19, 2004

By A Customer

While planning my (Jewish) wedding I found it very difficult to find a book with ideas on both decorating and Jewish customs. Needless to say, I was thrilled when I found Jewish Weddings. The pages are beautifully laid out--a pleasure to read--and full of clever ideas. The prose is elegant as well. I learned a lot about more about Jewish customs (and I thought I knew a lot) and weaved many into our ceremony.It's an amazing book for all Jewish brides (and their families), whether they are reform or orthodox (like my family). I've now given the book as a shower gift as well, and I keep it on our coffee table too. Ms. Milos Brownstein's other book it worth checking out too. I've used many of her recipes and tabletop ideas while preparing for the holidays.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Heavy on aesthetics, light on substance, May 18, 2004

By A Customer

I give this book a B+ in aesthetics and a C+ in its ability to impart Jewish knowledge.

The author tries to combine a pseudo Martha Stewart "look" with some useful information and ideas for Jewish weddings, and the result is mediocrity. The photos are very pretty (much like those found in any of the myriad mainstream bridal magazines at your local newsstand), but I found the text hard to follow and not particularly informative. The author's background as a graphic desginer (not a rabbi or educator or even party planner) clearly dominated her approach to the book. I hoped to find historical context, information distinguishing Jewish wedding traditions from mainstream American traditions, and information further distinguishing Jewish law from custom. Instead I found full page photos of cakes and gowns and ideas about how your creative friends can decorate chairs as a gift to you. While some girly-girls might be into this stuff, as a prospective groom I found it mostly useless and often confusing.

To her credit, the author did manage to include a fair amount of information about Jewish laws and customs, but she failed to present it in a way that eases a bride's (and groom's) decisions about what to incorporate in our wedding, or where to find more information about specific practices. I did not find a single Hebrew word written in Hebrew in the book. Instead the author opted to translate almost everything, with the occasional translitteratation. The "chazen"/"chatan" confusion experienced by another Amazon reviewer stemmed from the author's further failure to distinguish Yiddish from Hebrew ("chozen" or "chossen" is Yiddish and "chatan" is Hebrew for "groom").

To sum up, if you're a girly-girl looking for a secular Jewish take on the Martha Stewart Weddings magazine, and you don't mind shelling out for a hard cover book, you've found your book.

But if you're looking for information about Jewish wedding laws and customs, with historical context and useful information, take a look at Anita Diamant's "The New Jewish Wedding" (revised), which my fiance and I bought after we returned this book. It lacks the pretty photography, but it's got the information we were looking for.