Destinątion
continued Beach wedding
PHOTO BY MONICA GALLARDO
PHOTOGRAPHY wedding. That includes musicians, photographers, tour compa-
nies, boat captains, hotel managers and caterers.

“I know everyone,” she said. She laughed, adding, “I know who
gets drunk by 5 p.m. and doesn’t return phone calls.”
Goldman has planned more than 100 weddings. In December,
she will coordinate a Jewish wedding for Danielle Rayzberg and
Nathan Brandys. Goldman is bringing in a rabbi for the ceremony.

The event will include a full chuppah and ketubah on the beach
for 91 guests, who are coming from as far away as Sweden, Poland,
Israel and Canada.

Goldman has some people coming in herself. The rabbi is from
Mexico. The wedding photographer is well-known, respected
Philadelphia photographer Rebecca Barger.

For Goldman, who once was a vice president at a Philadelphia
company, there are similarities between her old job and new one.

“I still herd cats,” she said.

ISRAEL STARTING A NEW LIFE
BAR-BAT MITZVAH
FAMILY TOURS
Logo designed by ©studio Kalderon
Small Groups - Personal Attention
Fine Hotels - Unique Itineraries
TOVA GILEAD, INC.

www.tovagilead.com 1-800-242-TOVA
It’s not just an airline. It’s Israel.

28 OCTOBER 26, 2017
In just 46 years, Goldman has experienced a meteoric corpo-
rate career, small business success, personal tragedy and a new
phase as an expatriate entrepreneur.

Goldman was born in Northeast Philadelphia in 1971. Her
family moved to Bucks County in 1980 as part of what she calls the
“great Jewish migration.” She graduated from Council Rock High
School in 1989 and earned a bachelor’s degree from what is now
Arcadia University in 1993. By 29, she had risen to the position
of vice president of employee relations at large, public company.

Her job got phased out in 2003 when the company was sold
and a new executive team moved in.

“I decided the next idiot I was going to work for was going to
be me,” she said.

Goldman opened an antiques shop, La Tela, in Berwyn. Her
husband, Tom Lennon, pitched in to help. He had been laid off
as an airline pilot following 9/11, and was flying cargo planes. He
helped her make deliveries and supported her around the shop.

The couple had renovated a 1920s Tudor house in Drexel Hill.

Things were going well. Then, on a Friday in 2004, the phone rang.

The MU-2 plane Tom was flying had gone down. He managed to
crash land without hurting anyone on the ground, but he died.

Goldman spent the next 18 months grieving, then trying to fig-
ure out what to do with her life. After a long period, she began to
jokingly ask friends about the cost of moving away to a tropical
island. Finally, her sparring partner at the gym — she had taken
up boxing — took her seriously and talked to her about the low
cost of living in Central American countries such as Costa Rica
and Belize.

SIMCHAS JEWISHEXPONENT.COM




Belize intrigued her, although she wasn’t exactly sure where it
was. She listed her Philadelphia house for rent. She wrote in her
journal that if a person wanted to rent her furnished home for a
year, she’d take it as a sign to go. Literally the next day, a couple
contacted her and asked to rent the home. For an entire year,
fully furnished.

“The universe made it very clear to me that I needed to go,”
Goldman said. At that point, she realized the only thing holding
her back from making a move was fear. She concluded that “fear is
not a reason.”
She got on the plane and cried during the flight.

“Not because I was leaving home, but because I felt like I was
going home.”
Two weeks after hearing about Belize, she had moved there.

BACK IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD
Goldman said Belize in 2017 reminds her of growing up in
Northeast Philadelphia. There’s a neighborhood quality in Belize
where everyone knows everyone else. She loves that aspect of liv-
ing there.

Goldman first went into business in Belize with Lemon Crush
Belize, a lifestyle brand that started with bikinis adorned with vin-
tage costume jewelry. She began to market to brides, and quickly
learned that brides needed help with much beyond just bikinis.

They wanted help with all aspects of the wedding.

Romantic Travel Belize was born. It is now a full-service desti-
nation management and event design company.

After more than 100 weddings, Goldman will hold her first
Jewish wedding Dec. 8. The couple are first-generation Americans.

Their parents immigrated to the U.S. as adults.

“I have a rabbi who will be doing a small Sabbath. The couple
are hosting a catamaran trip for their guests to snorkel the world’s
second-largest barrier reef, then with some sharks and stingrays,
then to a neighboring island, Caye Caulker,” Goldman said.

That all sound fabulous. But it’s the norm for Belize weddings.

Exotic settings are part of the attraction. Get married in Be-
lize, and you can swim with sharks, get married underwater,
take a zip line ride in your wedding dress or get married on the
beautiful beach. Goldman said a recent wedding took place on
a sandbar in the ocean, with the chef cooking while standing in
the water.

Craftspeople in Belize are willing to make anything people need
for their weddings.

“Things are handmade and handcrafted by people who actually
care,” Goldman said. She noted that there are no mega-resorts and
multiple weddings each day. Couples get the complete focus of the
people working there, who take great pride in putting on a beauti-
ful wedding.

Goldman is busy enough that she typically asks for people to
contact her six months in advance for weddings in the high season
(November through April) and three months during other times
of the year.

Goldman said she now focuses more on “design brides,” or cou-
ples “who have a specific vision, service level desire, and taste level
but who realize you need to trust someone who knows what they
are doing.”
As for Goldman, life did not go the way she anticipated when
she was younger. But she truly enjoys coordinating weddings and
working with couples to realize their vision.

And she enjoys her newfound home, not just for the natural
beauty, but the wonderful people.

“I love that it is a true community, like old-time Philly,” she said.

“At the end of the day, no matter where you live on planet Earth, it’s
all about love and you don’t have love without people.” l
GIVE GIFTS OF ISRAEL BONDS
F O R A L L C E L EB R ATO RY O C C A S I O N S
Mazel Tov
BONDS STARTING AT
$100 eMitzvah*
BONDS STARTING AT
$36 INVEST IN ISRAEL BONDS
ISRAELBONDS.COM Development Corporation for Israel
Harold F. Marcus, Executive Director
Sharon Richman and Susan Schiffrin, Registered Representatives
1500 Walnut St., Suite 1302 • Philadelphia, PA 19102
philadelphia@israelbonds.com • 215.545.8380 • 800.752.5671
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM *Available only online. This is not an offering, which can be made only by prospectus.

Read the prospectus carefully before investing to fully evaluate the risks associated with
investing in Israel bonds. Issues subject to availability. Member FINRA.

SIMCHAS OCTOBER 26, 2017
29