My mom's wedding

[mamadeb]

My mother's wedding plans change weekly. Seriously. And it's driving everyone nuts.

Part of the problem is their budget and the fact that she wants the wedding dinner to be kosher for me and Jonathan - pretty much the only people who will care - my inlaws eat everything but pork and shellfish (and overt meat/milk mixtures) out, and no one else she's likely to invite keeps kosher.

Last night, I told Lenny A. Jonathan and I are willing - *happy* - to help out with the catering if necessary, but if she's sold on a caterer whose level of kashrut is not up to our standards, we'll do the tv dinner thing. If we must. I really don't want to, but it's not worth making her upseet.

Jonathan wants her to get married in Brooklyn, but I'm very much worried that they won't allow mixed dancing and she very much wants that.

So far, they've rejected two kosher places for charging too much and not liking the premises and are currently looking at a Conservative synagogue in Perth Amboy. That part doesn't bother me since we won't be praying there, and I'm not bothered by the female rabbi, either.

They're not likely to have kosher witnesses anyway - and, really, at their age, I'm not so worried about that. I'd prefer it, but I can't drag two friends with me to the wedding. (Unless, I suppose, we pay for their meals completely. Which isn't the worst idea. Except, who would go to a strange place to a witness for a friend's parents for a tv dinner?)

Comments

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

"Mixed dancing" = men and women dancing *together*, especially in pairs. You know, what the rest of the world calls, well, "dancing."

Many Orthodox Jews do not touch members of the opposite sex, other than blood relations or spouses. And not always spouses. But we do like to dance at celebrations. So we dance in single-gender circles. It's a lot of fun - at my wedding, for example, many of our guests were either not Jewish or not religious, and they all preferred the circle dancing, which requires no skill at all, just the ability to hold hands and run around vaguely to the music.

However, my mother is not religious and wants to have that first dance with her bridegroom and I wouldn't deny her that.

[bobquasit.livejournal.com]

"Mixed dancing" = men and women dancing *together*

Oh, it's the Orrin Hatch meaning of "mixed dancing". :D

We (Armenians) dance in circles too, sometimes with the sexes separated, but sometimes mixed. I don't know if it was like that in the old country.

It IS a lot of fun though, and the easiest kind of dancing I know. I love watching the faces of non-Armenians at our weddings when they see circle dancing for the first time. Some think it's something out of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and ham it up painfully; some of them fade into the walls and watch in bemusement; and some of them dive in and have a lot of fun.