A month and a half later, the lockdown ended and we were eager to get on with our plans. We didn’t want to be that couple that waited until the last moment to do everything, drove each other and themselves crazy, and then ended up having a mental breakdown and being committed to the ward of an institution designated for victims of wedding planning procrastination. So we called up Ramat Rachel to confirm the date we had decided on with them. No answer. We sent messages. No answer. Finally we got a response that they had not returned to work yet, but that they’d like totally get back to us when they did. A week went by. We sent another message inquiring about their operational status. Still not opened. Finally, after a month or so of bugging them, we gave up and decided to look elsewhere. Now you would think that after having been shut down for a month and a half, they would be eager to start booking again as soon as possible to make up for the financial losses incurred during lockdown. But they had a very typically kibbutzy attitude about it all, and didn’t seem to care if they made or lost money. Or perhaps they were just enjoying the kibbutz pool while sipping margaritas and didn’t feel like coming back to work yet.
A friend of ours, who was also getting married in the summer, recommended a nice events restaurant called Montefiore, that was right across from the Old City. They had room for up to 100 people, which was about the number of guests we had been thinking of, and the chuppah would take place on the promenade above the restaurant with a view of the Old City during sundown. This location was even easier to get to in Jerusalem, and the food was dairy and less expensive than Ramat Rachel although it was not all inclusive. We would still have to get a chuppah, flowers for the tables, our own alcohol, and rent an additional room for the buffet so there would be enough space. I was perfectly happy just having a music playlist playing in the background during dinner. Frankly I hate wedding dancing (well, dancing period), and have never been and plan to never be spotted partaking of this particular activity which induces exuberance and requires synchronized movements. There wasn’t really anywhere to dance anyway, since it was a restaurant, not an events hall. Gil really wanted a live band though, so I told him as long as he found it and they weren’t God awful, absurdly expensive, and didn’t play bad Jewish simcha music (or any Jewish simcha music), I would grudgingly tolerate it and not complain TOO much.
Making a guest list is difficult when you don’t know whether international travel will be permitted. We had no idea if my sister and her family or if any of Gil’s friends or family would be allowed in to attend the wedding. And if they were, it would probably require a two week isolation period. Plus there were the guests in Israel who didn’t know if they would be able to make it because they were either high risk, care for or live with high risk people, were medical personnel and therefore couldn’t risk it, etc. So at least half our list told us they wouldn’t know if they’d be able to make it until several weeks before the wedding. This makes planning a wedding difficult obviously. We had committed ourselves with the restaurant to 100 people. So we couldn’t invite too many people and we didn’t want to have fewer than 100 since we were paying for 100 anyway.
Meanwhile, progress with Tzohar was going pretty slowly. Getting letters from Rabbis attesting to our Jewishness was not going as smoothly as it should. In my case, having the wrong email address for the Rabbi, and then having to go back and forth with him several times to get the exact version that would be acceptable to Tzohar and in Gil’s case it was just not knowing what Rabbi to ask. And anyway, how could a Rabbi really know if you’re Jewish unless he knew your grandparents, and your great grandparents, and your great great grandparents, etc.? And what kind of whacko would PRETEND to be Jewish just so he could jump through the flaming hoops of hellfire that the Rabbinate would put him through? He or she could just as easily skip out to Cyprus for the weekend and get married there, and the marriage would be legally accepted here in Israel. I’m not going to lie and say that at no point were we tempted to do this, but again we had the little problem of restricted international travel.
The closer we got to the wedding, the more we realized that the virus was still alive and kicking and we were going to have to have special considerations and change things around a bit. Gil changed his mind about the band since he didn’t want to encourage dancing, which was still against government regulations (weird, sounds like a movie I once saw...). And we were trying to figure out what to do about the serving of food so everyone wouldn’t be touching it and coughing all over it. Plus there were the guests who were at high-risk so we were trying to figure out how many people we could fit outside on the small balcony and if we could bring them their own food outside or maybe we should just have servers and forgo the whole buffet idea, which would be more expensive, but more hygienic, or maybe everyone should just have their own personal serving utensils, and so on and so forth.
And then the government announced that they were restricting the number of guests at events and weddings to 60 people inside and 100 outside. Ok, no biggie. So we ran through different options- having only 60 guests, having the meal outside of the restaurant, splitting the guests into two shifts, etc.
And then the government announced that event halls would be closed and the number of people congregating together outside would be reduced to 20. So we canceled our wedding and sat and had a beer. Or three.
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