I can hardly believe that our two oldest daughters are now married!

Last night we celebrated the first sheva brachos for Michal and Amitai. Today we had the Purim seuda in our home, and tomorrow night will begin the Shabbos sheva brachos that we are hosting! Does that hint at how extremely busy I am??

Honestly, I should be cooking for sheva brachos right now since very little has been prepared and there’s quite a lot to do, but I’ve decided to take a break of sorts and share some of the unofficial wedding pictures with you instead. Decadent of me, isn’t it? 🙂

It was another beautiful wedding!

Our lovely bride!

(For those who read my post a while back about remaking my gown for one of the weddings, this was the gown. Not that you can really see it well in the pictures, but it turned out nicely.)

We had really wanted to have the ceremony outdoors, and fortunately the heavy rain and very cold temperatures of the day before abated.

Right at this point is where I got a surprise – the rosh yeshiva who was going to be officiating had gotten sick and been replaced by a Taimani (Yemenite) rav.   I would have been able to appreciate the ceremony more fully if I had known to expect some differences but even so enjoyed it.  A number of people came over to me afterward and told me how beautiful it was, that it was the first time they had attended a Yemenite wedding ceremony. It was my first time, too!

At our last wedding, the musicians told us it was unusually high energy group. And it was – there was a lot of love being expressed by a lot of people.

This wedding was just a night before Purim, and with 100 plus guys from Amitai’s yeshiva, many of whom were dressed in costume, it was super pumped. Though I’ve been told weddings of guys from this yeshiva are energetic, the musician (who is also from the yeshiva) told me this was on a different scale completely. It was very, very high energy. It didn’t pause for a second.

Our male family members had to really work to get into the center of the circle to dance with Amitai and later when Michal came to the mens’ side, to dance for them both. It was actually kind of intimidating for my younger boys, who really wanted to dance for their sister and with their new brother-in-law but didn’t feel able to force their way in. I appreciated one man who noticed ds10 and pulled him in, giving him the chance to rollerblade for the couple.

Michal throwing candies to Amitai over the divider

After this picture, Michal’s friends put her down and continued dancing with her.

Amitai’s friends, who were also holding him on a tabletop, threw him up in the air repeatedly, so high that several times he hit the ceiling (which led to another interesting and memorable situation later on when his key and phone flew out of his pocket and were temporarily lost).

I’ll share official pictures when we have them, which will of course include pictures of the couple together! I realize it’s disappointing not to see those. Sorry, for now I can only share the pictures I was sent. 🙁

So that they’re represented as a couple in this post :), I’ll share a picture of them 24 hours later at their first sheva brachos.

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It’s hard to believe that we have three married couples now!

It will take some time to process all the changes happening in our family – this third wedding took place exactly a year and a week from the time Rafael entered the family (the three weddings took place within 8.5 months), so there have been four new family members in the last year! It’s been very special and emotional to see our family expand to include these beautiful people.

Avivah