T H E
C H A N G I N G
F A C E
O F
MICHAEL HUBER
AND TYLER SYLK
CARINA ROMANO
HILARY DANAILOVA | JE FEATURE
W H E N M I C H A E L H U B E R , a 31-year-old attorney,
popped the question to Tyler Sylk at the Jersey Shore last July, the
moment was intimate. But they were hardly alone. Waiting to cel-
ebrate the moment were a professional photographer and, back
at Sylk’s family’s beach house in Longport, both sets of parents.

As Sylk, 28, recalls, it was a surprise engagement party — but
not really.

“I had dropped these hints along the way, like, ‘Maybe you
should make sure to take nice pictures of the moment,’” recalled
the bride-to-be, a clinical trial coordinator at Penn Medicine’s
Abramson Cancer Center. “And I was hoping if he were to pro-
pose, he’d do it there down the shore.”
Welcome to the new engagements.

They’re shorter in duration — averaging under a year, ac-
cording to Gina Sole of Philadelphia-based The Wedding Plan-
ner — but increasingly emphasize elaborate proposals that
feature surprise engagement parties, staged by the groom-to-be
and captured by a professional photographer.

8 MARCH 22, 2018
The calculus of where to splurge and where to scrimp has
clearly shifted for today’s Jewish couples. Sylk said a lot of her
friends reset family diamonds into engagement rings, a poten-
tial four-figure savings that many would rather put toward a
photo shoot.

With grandma’s solitaire, “nobody can really accuse you of
cutting costs, because of the sentiment,” Sylk observed.

Meanwhile, engagement photo shoots have gone from op-
tional to part of the standard full-service wedding package.

Even booked a la carte, “they’re definitely more popular in the
last eight to 10 years,” said Carina Romano, a co-owner of Love
Me Do Photography in Philadelphia.

See ENGAGEMENTS, page 10
SIMCHAS JEWISHEXPONENT.COM