At All Costs?

How much do frum weddings really cost? Seven women unveil the hard numbers

Yardsticks was born on a Shabbos walk.

All my ideas are born on Shabbos, to spite me. Or in the middle of the night. I’ll wake up at 3 a.m. with a brainstorm and tell myself, this is fantastic, I’ll write this down first thing in the morning, it’ll win a Nobel Prize in literature.

But by the time I wake up, I’m like, “It was the best idea ever, but what was it?”

With this serial idea, I wasn’t going to risk it. “You serve so many roles in my life,” I told my husband, “I need you to be my paper now.”

So we walked and I talked, and my husband listened closely as my gown boutique vision started taking shape. Things started clicking in my brain. Divided loyalties, a strongly principled and ‘correct’ character, an embittered Russian seamstress.