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Lifecycles
What a Jewish wedding is made of — the chuppah, the ketubah, the ring, the glass, and the week of celebration after it — and the practical list of what a couple needs to arrange.
A Jewish marriage is made in two stages, and knowing that makes the whole ceremony legible. The first is kiddushin, betrothal, in which the couple become bound to one another. The second is nisuin, the marriage itself, which establishes the household. In antiquity these were separated by as much as a year; today they are performed one after the other under the same canopy, which is why there are two cups of wine and why the ketubah is read in the gap between them. That reading is not an interlude. It is the seam.
The Shabbat before the wedding, the groom is called to the Torah — the ufruf — and the congregation showers him with sweets and then eats a kiddush in the couple’s honour. It is one of the warmest mornings in the Jewish year and costs almost nothing to hold.
Ashkenazi custom, which Chabad follows, is for the couple not to see one another for the week before the wedding, which makes the moment they do see each other on the day considerably more powerful than a first look arranged by a photographer. On the wedding day itself the bride and groom fast until after the ceremony and say the Yom Kippur confession in their prayers: the day is treated as a personal Day of Atonement, a clean slate to begin the marriage on.
The bride goes to the mikvah before the wedding. This is not a decorative custom; it is the beginning of taharat hamishpacha, the laws of family purity, which are a permanent part of married life rather than a one-off. Couples learn these together with a rabbi and rebbetzin in the run-up, and those conversations are private, unhurried and genuinely useful. Ask about them early; they are the part couples most often leave too late.
Guests arrive to two separate gatherings. The bride sits and receives people; the groom holds a tish, a table where he attempts to give a Torah teaching while his friends interrupt him, which is traditional and merciless. In the middle of it the ketubah is signed by the two witnesses.
Then the badeken: the groom is brought, loudly, to the bride and lowers her veil over her face, and the fathers bless her. It is thirty seconds long, it is usually the moment the room starts crying, and it is the reason to tell guests to arrive on time.
The chuppah is a cloth held on four poles, open on every side — a home under construction, with the walls not yet up and the door not yet closed. Chabad custom is to stand it under the open sky. The couple are escorted in by their parents holding candles, and the bride circles the groom seven times.
Then, in order. A blessing over the first cup of wine and the blessing of betrothal. The ring: a plain gold band, no stones and no engraving, belonging outright to the groom — because the ring must be his to give, and because its value must be plainly assessable, which a stone makes impossible. He places it on the bride’s right index finger in the sight of the two witnesses and says the ten words that make the marriage: Harei at mekudeshet li — you are consecrated to me with this ring, according to the law of Moses and Israel. That sentence, heard by those two witnesses, is the wedding. Everything else is around it.
The ketubah is then read aloud and handed to the bride. Halachically only the one ring is required, and only in that direction; couples who want the groom to have a ring too generally exchange it afterwards, outside the ceremony, and that is a straightforward thing to arrange.
Then the sheva brachos, seven blessings said over the second cup by seven people the couple honour — from the creation of the world, through the creation of the human being, to a request for the joy of Jerusalem restored and a last blessing that is simply a list of ten kinds of gladness. And then the glass, under the groom’s heel, and the room erupts.
The couple then go straight to the yichud room and are alone together for the first time, for about fifteen minutes, with the door shut and two witnesses outside it. This is a formal part of the marriage and not merely a breather — though after a day of fasting it is also, usefully, when they eat.
The seven blessings are said again at festive meals through the seven days following the wedding, whenever there is a minyan present and at least one guest who was not at the wedding. Friends and family host these — a different household each night, dinner for a dozen, nothing formal. It is a deliberately designed landing: a newly married couple spends its first week being fed by its community rather than alone with the thank-you notes.
A rabbi here officiates at a wedding between two people who are Jewish according to halacha. If one partner is not Jewish, a Chabad rabbi will not perform the marriage. That is a limit on what we can do, not a judgement about your relationship, your family or your welcome here — and we would much rather you read it here, early, than discover it in a phone call after you have paid a venue deposit.
If that is your situation, please call anyway. There are usually things worth talking about: what is and is not possible, what conversion actually involves if that is something either of you has ever wondered about, and how a family of any composition can build a Jewish home together. You are welcome at everything here regardless — services, classes, dinners, Shabbat — and that does not have an asterisk on it.
Similarly, if there is any uncertainty about whether one of you is halachically Jewish — a maternal line nobody can document, a conversion in another movement, an adoption, records lost in a country that no longer exists — raise it at the first conversation rather than the last. It is a common situation, it is nobody’s fault, and it takes time to resolve properly. Time you will have a year out and will not have a month out.
Call 408-910-2034, book a time to sit down, or write to the office. Mazal tov.
The part under the chuppah is usually twenty to thirty minutes. The receptions beforehand — the two separate gatherings for bride and groom, the signing of the ketubah, the badeken — take rather longer than the ceremony itself, and it is worth telling guests that so they arrive for the right part.
Chabad custom is to hold the chuppah under the open sky, recalling God’s promise to Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars. It is a custom rather than a requirement, and it is not universal: many communities marry indoors without a second thought. In practice it means planning for weather and for light, which in California is a smaller problem than in most places.
A legally binding document in Aramaic setting out the husband’s obligations to his wife — her support during the marriage and a settlement due to her if it ends by divorce or by his death. It is signed by two witnesses before the ceremony and read aloud under the chuppah, and the wife keeps it. It is a contract, not a poem, which surprises people who have only seen decorative ones on a wall.
Two men who are Jewish, halachically observant, and not related to the couple or to each other. Witnesses are not an honour to be handed out to a favourite uncle — they are the mechanism that makes the marriage valid, and being related disqualifies a person no matter how close they are. The rabbi will arrange them if you have nobody suitable, and that is completely ordinary.
Because the Temple in Jerusalem is still in ruins, and Jewish joy is never quite complete while that is true. It is the oldest deliberate note of restraint in Jewish celebration: at the highest moment of a person’s life, a reminder that something is still missing. Everyone then shouts mazal tov, which is also the tradition.
Yes, and this is the reason to fix the date with a rabbi before you book a venue. Weddings are not held on Shabbat or festivals, on fast days, during the Three Weeks in midsummer, or through most of the Omer between Passover and Shavuot — though the Omer has several permitted days, including Lag BaOmer, which is why so many weddings land on it. Bring the dates you are considering to the conversation rather than the date you have already paid for.
A California marriage licence is obtained from a county clerk, and the officiant signs and returns it after the ceremony. That is a county process, not a Jewish one, and the requirements and timings are theirs to state — check with Santa Clara County directly, and do it early enough that the licence is in hand before the day.
Up to 300 for a cocktail reception, 250 seated. Rates and add-ons.
Mezuzah, kitchen, Shabbat, books — where a new household starts.
Part of the preparation, and part of married life afterwards.
The Shabbat before, when the groom is called to the Torah.
Every wedding has something on it that is not in the standard shape — a family custom, a relative who needs accommodating, a date that will not move, a question about who can be called up. All of that is normal and all of it is answerable. Call 408-910-2034 or book time with a rabbi, and bring the awkward questions with you.