BY HILARY DANAILOVA
ore and more Philadelphia brides
are importing their beshert — from
Israel. But they’re not trolling Israeli dating web-
sites or joining Holy Land singles tours. The
yentas are Instagram and Pinterest — and the
intendeds are one-of-a-kind wedding gowns,
handmade in Tel Aviv.

Out of the atéliers of Israel’s fashion capital
comes a parade of bridal looks that draw gasps:
plunging necklines, bare midriffs, second-skin
silhouettes and sheer-illusion fabric that sug-
gests entirely bare backs … and more. Fash-
ion-forward women are falling hard for these
gowns by Inbal Dror, Berta, Zahavit Tshuba,
Mira Zwillinger and Flora; long-married Be-
yoncé even wore an Inbal Dror wedding dress
to the 2016 Grammys. Bride after bride de-
scribes finding her dress in language more
commonly used for romance novels.

“I just knew the second I put it on,” gushed
Simona Levithan, a 27-year-old nurse who
wore Berta to her April nuptials at the Atrium
at Curtis Center. “I knew, ‘This is the one.’ ”
Another newlywed, Marisa Awad, 29, said she
knew her dress was “the one” when she spied
it on the rack at The Wedding Shoppe in
Wayne, buying the sample then and there.

And Bilon Geiger, a 33-year-old Berta bride
who was married in November at the Fair-
mount Park Horticulture Center, found her
beshert while surfing around Pinterest and
never looked back: “I was in love. I was like,
‘Yes, this is the one.’ ”
That degree of ardor is what inspired Kathy
Hart Bado, a longtime wedding planner with
“zero intention of selling dresses, ever,” to
spontaneously open a shop … selling Israeli
dresses. After being introduced to the Berta
line by her daughter, Hart Bado went to a trade
show in New York and came back smitten.

“They were so gorgeous, so different from
anything I’d ever seen,” recalled Hart Bado. “I
looked at my sister and said, ‘This is what we
A Berta gown