buying, to make a personal connection for their wedding,”
observed Jennie Love, who hosts DIY flower arrangement
workshops for brides-to-be at her Philadelphia urban flower
farm and floral design company, Love 'n Fresh Flowers. “They
don’t just want to go to Target and get a mass-produced item.

They want a physical connection with these objects.”
It’s the same impulse that has propelled the popularity of
farmers markets, where an understanding of the provenance of
organic rutabaga is now part of our culture. Love said her mil-
lennial customers bring that same artisanal ethos to wedding
planning: Hand-assembling centerpieces from locally sourced
peonies takes on significance apart from the financial savings.

“The seasonal and artisanal is really big,” affirmed Gabrielle
Kaplan-Mayer, author of The Creative Jewish Wedding Book
and an officiant with Journeys of the Heart, a Philadelphia
agency that provides interfaith clergy. Like her colleagues,
Kaplan-Mayer has observed a shift toward individualized and
tradition-infused DIY elements.

Among the most common: chuppahs crafted from a family
tallis or tablecloth, a signature cocktail incorporating local fla-
vors, iPod playlists in lieu of DJs, and guest books that “are rarely
just a book anymore,” Kaplan-Mayer said, but might be any-
thing from a snowglobe souvenir to a framed family portrait.

One particularly ubiquitous trend is a photo display of de-
parted loved ones, which couples craft into a decorative tree,
arrange on a table or even incorporate into the chuppah.

“It’s very meaningful,” said Kaplan-Mayer, noting that to-
day’s older couples may not have grandparents, or even parents,
alive to attend. “In a traditional Jewish wedding ceremony, of
course, you don’t say the kaddish. There really isn’t a moment
where you acknowledge those people who have passed on.”
Not all DIY elements are handcrafted. Music is one of
the most common vehicles for personalization in Ortho-
dox nuptials, said Rabbi Yonah Gross of Congregation Beth
Hamedrosh in Wynnewood.

“In the past it would be the cantor singing under the chup-
pah,” Gross noted. “Now, often, it’s siblings or friends who’ll sing.”
At Adath Israel, a Conservative temple in Merion Station,
Rabbi Eric Yanoff has noticed that his tradition-minded cou-
ples increasingly use music to express their own tastes as well.

“It used to be that there were four Jewish songs that musi-
cians chose from, but now I see people choosing a nice love
song — maybe a Jewish love song, a modern Israeli love song,
even a totally secular song,” he said.

When Cantor Lauren Levy, the cantor at Beth David Re-
form Congregation in Gladwyne, married Eric Goodman, a
32-year-old physician, in New Jersey last May, she chose a
niggun as her processional.

“We knew it would be a fairly Jewishly literate crowd, and they’d
pick up and sing along,” explained Levy, 34. “The idea of being
sung along to as we walked to the chuppah was very meaningful.”
Levy also crafted a photo montage of family weddings,
displaying them alongside a half-dozen multicolor wine bot-
tles. In lieu of a guestbook, guests were encouraged to write
blessings or advice and stuff them inside the bottles, which
the couple plans to break open on significant anniversaries.

“The idea was to show that, with all those years of anniversaries
that my relatives had, may we continue to read the blessings for the
next 50-plus years,” Levy said.

Many couples limit DIY elements to such sentimental
touches, since doing things oneself requires significant
time commitment.

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