Years ago, my husband and I talked about how we would like to handle wedding planning. Our ideal was to set aside an amount of money for each child’s wedding, and then let each couple determine how they wanted to spend it. If they wanted to spent it all on a one night event, that was fine. If they wanted to make a smaller or simpler event, they could keep the difference between what they spent on the wedding and what was remaining.

That was our ideal but we never had the opportunity to make that offer until now.

When you’re making a bar mitzva, you can do what you want because it’s only your family you have to consider. When you’re making a wedding, you need to take into account the preferences of another family.

Before each engagement, we meet with the parents of the other side and agree as to what our financial contribution will be for the wedding: what will be the overall budget and how will the expenses we distributed. We did that this time as well, and our baseline number was based on the sums we spent on our last two weddings.

However, the morning after the engagement, I was thinking that this would be the time when something smaller would be a better fit for the couple as well as both families. She is from England so neither she nor her family have a huge social circle that expects to attend.

Living in a small community in the north, we also don’t have a large number of people who will be attending.

The standard wedding halls have a minimum of 300 people for the meal, and 300 for the dessert buffet. We just don’t have a need for those numbers at all.

My husband called me from work the morning after the l’chaim and told me he had been thinking that this wedding could be smaller than our usual weddings, and reminded me of what we had said our ideal was: to give the couple the money to spend as they wished. It happens so often that we both think of the same idea at the same time without discussing it with one another, but he was still surprised when I told him I had been thinking exactly the same thing!

So what are we planning for this wedding?

Three years ago the son before this one got married on a Friday and it was a very good experience for us all for a number of reasons. When my daughter got married a year and a half later in the heart of the winter, a Friday wedding wasn’t an option since Shabbos begins so early. My son who is now engaged remembered how positive an experience it was, and talked to his fiance about it, who agreed to have a Friday wedding.

Next is the wedding venue. While the scale of the wedding will be adjusted (we’re thinking we’ll have about 100 guests for the meal), our new couple isn’t looking to do something radically different to save every possible penny, like having a potluck in someone’s basement. They want a beautiful hall with a nice catered meal. But once you aren’t having a very large crowd, there are many smaller halls that become an option.

Since smaller halls don’t have room for people to be seated at tables for the meal and to simultaneously have a large area available for dancing, we’ll be changing the standard wedding schedule. First will be the chupa, then the entire meal will be served, and then dancing will take place at the end. The tables will be cleared away at the end of the meal to make room for dancing, and dessert tables will be assembled around the perimeter of the hall.

After we made this arrangement, we realized that this set up will also cut the cost of the band, since their charge is based on the number of hours they need to be there. Usually the band arrives for the chupa and stays throughout the night until the final dance; this is around five or six hours. Since my son asked two or three of his younger brothers to sing at his chupa, and someone else will arrange for recorded background dinner music to be played for the meal on the speakers the musicians will set up in advance, we only need a live band for the dancing at the end.

We haven’t yet contacted a photographer but the photographer at our last Friday wedding gave us a discounted price because it was on Friday. Friday isn’t prime time for weddings so it’s likely there will be other costs that will be less than if the wedding was held in the evening.

The hall is located in the neighborhood where the new couple will be living, the same one where his yeshiva is located. This is incredibly convenient for his friends. This makes it possible for as many of the students who want to attend to come for the chupa, leave for the meal (other than his close friends), and return for dancing.

When I told a friend our plans, she said that when her daughter got married during covid, they were only allowed to have fifty guests total. She shared that it was the nicest and most meaningful of all of their weddings, and she wishes that all of her weddings could be like that. Every single person who was there was someone they were close to and felt emotionally invested in adding to the joyous atmosphere at the wedding. She also enjoyed being able to connect with all of her guests in a way that she couldn’t at a huge wedding with hundreds of guests.

I’ve heard a number of people say they regret that when the covid restrictions lifted, weddings went back to the same way they had been before. The smaller weddings were a beautiful blip on the social scene but seen as a choice people were forced to make legally and didn’t endure as a socially normative option when people had their choice of venues afterwards.

It will take some time to get an idea of what all the final costs will be, but I anticipate the savings will be substantial. I love that the couple will have a beautiful wedding surrounded by all of the people who care about them most, and at the same time have the benefit of the money saved to create some financial margin as they start their lives together.

Avivah