Wedding Moments

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W hat is it about weddings? They elicit such a strange mix of emotions. Perhaps these feelings radiate from the chassan and kallah alternating between pure joy and raw terror fluctuating between radiant smiles and kavanah-filled shuckling. Emanating from within written all over their faces are their hopes dreams and fears for their future — and for the futures of the many others they’re davening for on this special day.

Look around at the guests. The single girls — happy for their friend and at the same time visualizing themselves dressed in flowing white walking down the aisle to their own chuppahs. The parents in the audience — davening for the new young couple’s hopes to become realized growing teary at memories of the chassan or kallah growing up reminiscing about their own married children’s simchahs davening for all the singles they know.

And surely there are grandparents among the guests. They’re probably identifying with a grandparent or the grandparents who are walking down the aisle — reliving their own experiences davening for the health and arichas yamim to enable them to do the same at the weddings of all their grandchildren including those yet unborn.

And of course there are the actual members of the wedding party — particularly the mothers. We sisters have been fortunate to know what it’s like to be mother of the kallah or chassan. We’ve experienced the overwhelming happiness of knowing our child has found his or her soul mate — combined with the bittersweet knowledge that it’s time to let our baby go. Most of all on each occasion we’ve felt overwhelming gratitude to Hashem. Join us as we relive some of our most poignant wedding moments.

Miriam joins the circle of…

Mothers of the Bride

I danced and danced my legs flying my heart flying even higher. For as I whirled and twirled with the kallah I finally knew we had made the right decision so many years before…