Wedding in the Arava (on Friday night)

It was a dark and breezy night. You could see every star in the sky. The bride wore a slinky dress and flip-flops. The groom looked calm and unruffled.

This was a wedding the likes of which I had never seen before. Perhaps I just don’t go to the right sort of weddings. An Israeli wedding, in the middle of the dessert, on a Friday night. A far cry from the weddings I attended back in the old country. Back in the UK, at least when I lived there, weddings followed a standard formula;

If you have money: Tony Page plus one of several Central London Hotels and a horrific amount of money spent on flowers and upholstered chairs.

If you don’t have money: A dingy synagogue hall or the hideously tacky (or at least it was) Decorium. You took your chances with the food.

Or, the compromise: The Heathrow Park Hotel (which I suppose is fun if you are a plane enthusiast). The Watford Hilton (hooray for parking).

That’s your lot.

In Israel, every wedding I have attended has had a different flavour. There is often something unique, that really represents the bride and groom. Money is not the key factor here. There is no Keeping Up With The Goldsteins. Well maybe a bit, these are Yiddishe weddings after all, but in any case people are less conformist and seem to embrace originality.

This wedding was in the middle of nowhere. Quite literally. Nothing but desert in almost every direction, save for the Moshav next door. Even at the end of October the weather was ideal. Technically, you cant have a wedding on a Friday night (can’t sign a ketubah or mike up the music) so this was just a symbolic chupah. But great fun. They wrote their own brachot, added their own tanach references, and had a load of friends sporting biblical-type instruments posed in a line up to the chupa. There was a lot of banter. They also had a kids and relaxation tent with cosy rugs and arts & crafts.

Logistically it was somewhat difficult to attend being on a Friday, so we had a late night tiyul back to our zimmer with 3 small children, in the pitch black. We put the bigger ones in a borrowed double buggy (pushed by long-suffering Husband) and I carried the baby in a sling. Luckily the family issued us with a 17 year old guide who was lovely. The kids were initially a bit afraid of the dark, but we pointed out the night sky and they were soon relaxed and happily pointing out stars to each other.

Friday night weddings are apparently growing in popularity amongst Israelis, the idea being that more friends will be able to attend. All well and good but I have one complaint. Both Husband and I were totally exhausted all week and it took me until the following Shabbat to work out why. In short, we missed our restful Friday night. As self-confessed old farts, we are usually happily tucked up in beds with our books by about 21:00 on a Friday night. So missing out on this, plus the long drive home on motzei Shabbat, sort of threw us off kilter. So the following week, we went to bed even earlier. As an ex-night owl, I didn’t think this was possible. But it turns out late nights are just a state of mind. Especially with 3 small children who think 06:00 is a totally acceptable time to rise on weekends. I am officially a converted lark.