I love working with couples who are preparing to spend your lives together. I want to be able to get to know your families and to be able to help you walk in the direction that best fits your lives and the goals You have for your future. I love being a part of this process and it gives me great joy to do this work.

As a rabbi, I celebrate the commitment between you and your beloved by incorporating the values that make your relationship special. Your wedding should be a vivid representation of you as individuals and as a couple, and I will work with you closely to create the ceremony of your dreams.

As a wedding officiant, I will lead you as a couple through your wedding vows and the ceremony as a whole. I will sign the marriage license to make your wedding legally binding, allowing for the issuance of a civil marriage certificate. I also facilitate a short ceremony for the signing of the Ketubah, a Jewish wedding document with a beautiful picture, which you can select from dozens of options.

For me, the time we spend together before the wedding is important. I want to get to know you both as individuals and as a couple and to help you to pick those words and deeds that will make your wedding truly unique. I desire that every word I say during your wedding ceremony deeply resonates with you emotionally.

If you like, I am happy to devote a number of sessions to facilitating discussions and counseling you as a couple. This can be on any and all personal issues you feel I might be helpful with. Couples that come from different religious backgrounds may want to talk about how they are going to handle various religious traditions in their new home. Many new couples may want to talk about money and how they can retain financial autonomy while merging their lives. Others may have any one of a number of topics of interest including where and how to live, intimacy, children, in-laws, well, you get the idea.

As a rabbi who is devoting his career to the promotion of Judaism, I of course would like for you to include Jewish religious rituals and prayers. But the important thing for me is that we include ritual elements that are meaningful to you. That is why I try to offer a wide variety of options including some that are uncommon and even exotic.

We will plan a series of talks, either on Zoom or in person. At the first talk I will ask about yourselves and your relationship and I will try to get to know you. This will give us a chance to talk informally about your hopes and fears and about how I might be helpful to you in making your wedding day not only a beautiful moment but an auspicious beginning to a long and loving marriage.

At subsequent talks, we will slowly work our way through the marriage ceremony section by section. I will give you a Google Doc with options for each part of the ceremony and you can use the time between our talks to consider which ones you find speak to you most perfectly. We can also look for all sorts of alternative readings to express emotions that you want to have put into words.

I will also present a number of ritual activities that can be done at different points in the ceremony such as the bride and groom circling each other, a multi-wick havdalah candle being lit and then extinguished in a goblet of wine, different colors of sand being poured together into a clear bowl and others. Some couples like the idea of enacting one or more of these ritual activities and others definitely do not want to do them, but the process of considering them is part of the building of your individualized, personalized wedding ceremony.

Let me conclude with a shortened version of the 7 Wedding Blessings recited at many Jewish weddings:

1. May you be generous and giving with each other.
2. May your sense of humor and playful spirit always continue to enliven your relationship.
3. May you be aware of and thankful for the good things that happen; taking time to express thanks.
4. May you act with compassion to those less fortunate and with responsibility to the communities of which you are a part.
5. May you respect and complement each other’s individual personality and perspective, and enable each other to fulfill your dreams.
6. May you always share yourselves openly with your friends and family.
7. May you continue to explore and discover together.