View the couple’s full story on Smashing the Glass:
https://www.smashingtheglass.com/a-grace-loves-lace-bride-for-an-ultra-personal-jewish-wedding-at-home-in-old-westbury-new-york-usa/
Elana and Seth, along with Elana’s parents and other family and friends, spent months preparing the property for the big day, doing everything from growing flowers to clearing paths and rigging infrastructure. The couple’s intimate Jewish ceremony, which took place on a Friday, featured so many personal touches, from a pre-wedding bathtub mikvah to an elemental procession involving all the guests to Seth’s family chuppah to the couple’s fabulous ketubah from Smashing The Glass Recommended Vendor Once Upon a Paper.
The duo worked with artist Elena to create a bespoke design, and, in Seth’s words, “She welcomed every out there idea we brought to her and created something that felt both ancient and entirely personal. The final result is a true reflection of us.”
Seth and Elana’s Wedding. The Still Point of the Turning World Ketubah
Elena!We did it! Thank you so so so much for the remarkable, sacred piece of art you made for us. The Ketubah blessed our wedding and will continue to bless our lives. It is without question the most beautiful, enlivened version of the piece we could have imagined and we are so grateful for the time and talent and many iterations you made with us for it to land just right. Wow.
Toda!
Seth and Elana
Our ketubah was one of the most meaningful artistic collaborations of the wedding. We worked with Elena of Once Upon a Paper, whose Hebrew calligraphy and hand-drawn artistry immediately felt aligned with what we wanted.
Seth: She welcomed every out there idea we brought to her and created something that felt both ancient and entirely personal. The final result is a true reflection of us.
The ketubah is circular, with red as its central color.
Elana: For us, the red represents blood: the seriousness of the covenant, the devotion binding us together, and the ancestral bloodlines flowing into our new family.
Because we married at the summer solstice, the sun symbolically appears at the highest point of the design, and the waxing crescent moon is positioned according to its actual astronomical relationship with the sun on our wedding day. The ketubah also includes the five Hebrew words of the soul and a passage from T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets about “the still point of the turning world,” poetry that has long carried deep meaning in our relationship.
With the guidance of Rabbi Jodi Siff of the Reconstructionist Synagogue of the North Shore, we wrote our own shared commitments to one another. We called them our devotions rather than our obligations. The process involved each of us first writing what we wanted to promise the other. Then we found where our visions overlapped and crafted the final language and nine devotions together.
Videography – Dustin Wolfe
Ketubah – Once Upon a Paper {offers 10% discount to all members of Smashing The Glass’s Brides Club}
Planner – Tory Stolper of CAMP
Bride’s dress – Grace Loves Lace
Rings – David Rigby-Leigh
Hair – Hair by Tamia
DJ – Mel Semé of Gone Gone Beyond, DJ Dreeemy, Oveous, Gio Israel, Ehren Hanson
Catering – Yes Babe NYC and Bhavani Jaroff
Cake – Bhavani Jaroff
Invitation photography – Michael Christopher Brown
Officiant – Sarah Waxman of At the Well
Rabbi – Rabbi Jodi Siff of the Reconstructionist Synagogue of the North Shore
Design & site planning – Jaroff Studio
Tents – Long Island Tent & Party Rental
Gifts label design – Carson Linforth Bowley
Registry – WithJoy