my name is mwd

Last weekend Laura and I went up to Glasgow for my parents Chuppah Wedding, that’s the Jewish wedding ceremony for those of you who, like me, hadn’t been to one before. In a nice service presided over by Rabbi Nancy at the Glasgow Reform Synagogue they were remarried:

My parents have both converted to judaism over the last few years, so they decided to have a second wedding in their new faith, which was fun, as I missed the first one – it’s also not often that you get to give your parents away to the each other either (indeed, the thing I usually had to explain to people when I mentioned my parents wedding was they were getting married to each other again, not someone else :).

The wedding got a good turn out – nice to see my parents have so many loving friends that turned up to see them married, both from inside and outside their new community. Tristan and I took to the sartorial requirements of the event, both donning a hat (men have to have their heads covered in the synagogue) and wearing a kilt:

On of the more interesting facts I learned is that the name of the service comes from the Chuppah canopy that the ceremony takes place under:

The day before the wedding the bridge and groom are required to build this themselves – presumably this is a test to see if after trying to coordinate canopy assembly they still are speaking, and thus suitable to get married :)

The rest of the photos are available here, including some of the excellent kosher wedding cake my sister made (with some help from her kids) – well done Karen! The only shame was that my parents’ parents couldn’t make it, but thanks to the power of Print To Internet Printers that Aperture provides, they’ll be getting mementos of the day shortly!