TO THEIR OWN DRUMMER—Rebecca Budner and Ben Darling dispensed with rings as engagement gifts for one another, selecting instead meaningful objects each desired. She bought him a hand-made Ghanaian drum; he bought her the tallit she’d been wanting. While displaying it, Budner said, “I just loved that it was silk and made in Israel. It was pink but still had a very strong feel to it. It’s very much a women’s tallit, but I don’t feel frilly in it.”
Jewish tradition allows creative space in wedding
By Jenn Director Knudsen
Rebecca Budner and Ben Darling—his right arm thrown affectionately around her shoulders—laughed together while ticking off all the “-isms” they’re incorporating into their July wedding.
Environmentalism. Feminism. Judaism.
“We really are blending it all together,” Darling, 32, said with wide eyes, making more of a realization than a statement.
“We both have this thing in common where we’re willing to think outside of the box,” said Budner, 37, of the couple’s pending nuptials.
During a recent interview, they were seated very close together on a couch in their romantically lit southeast Portland duplex, surrounded by potted plants bursting with foliage and walls painted pistachio.
“It’s (going to be) a very traditional Jewish wedding, but it’s ours,” Budner said.
With perhaps a bigger nod toward the “it’s ours” than “traditional.”
Congregation Neveh Shalom’s Assistant Rabbi Bradley Greenstein, as a recent transplant from San Diego, spots with a fresh eye trends in local Jewish weddings. (He is not conducting Budner and Darling’s ceremony.)
“People are eclectic themselves, especially here in Portland,” the Conservative rabbi said in a phone interview, adding, “It’s hip to be eclectic nowadays.”
For example, brides are incorporating their girlfriends into the mikveh experience instead of maintaining privacy during the cleansing ritual. Couples are combining ketubah designs from all over the world into their marriage-contract document.
And brides are insisting their ceremony be more egalitarian than in the past, Greenstein said.
“There’s plenty of room for creativity while still maintaining the integrity of the law,” he said.
Budner and Darling—who, after their July 6, 2008, wedding, will become Mr. and Ms. Darling-Budner—are long on creativity.
And their love for one another was clear as the couple ran through their plans for their summer ceremony over which Budner’s eldest sister, Deborah Eisenbach-Budner, will preside.
Not every aspect of their wedding and subsequent party—“We aren’t calling it a reception,” Budner said—is set in stone.
The couple continue to have “lots of debate,” Darling said, and glean ideas from books like “The New Jewish Wedding,” by Anita Diamant ($15, now in a revised edition, published in 2001 by Scribner) and “Beyond Breaking the Glass: A Spiritual Guide to Your Jewish Wedding,” by Rabbi Nancy H. Wiener ($9.95, Central Conference of American Rabbis, 2001).
But some things they’re sure of:
There’ll be no extraneous flowers (their party will be at Sauvie Island’s Blue Heron Herbary, overflowing in summer with lavender), nor a guestbook to sign.
Nor hard-copy invitations.
If you’re one of the roughly 200 friends or family members invited to the couple’s Big Day, don’t rush to your mailbox come spring. Rather, log on.
The couple’s Internet-generated invites—from www.momentville.com—will save trees, time and money and reduce waste, said Darling, adjusting the zipper on his navy-blue Quicksilver hoodie.
Budner ordered her wedding band through brilliantearth.com, which guarantees her diamond and sapphire white-gold ring is “conflict-free, fair-trade, eco-friendly,” she said.
And about 25 women will participate in the mikveh with her.
“I don’t know (yet) how it’s gonna work out,” Budner said. “But I definitely want something because it’s a Jewish female ritual.”
During the ceremony, the couple will stand under a chuppah at Havurah Shalom that Darling said his “Jewish hippie uncle” built from cuttings from the now-defunct Eater Farm coastal commune near Coquille on which he and members of his family lived.
And, drawing from a Middle Eastern-Jewish tradition, Budner plans to have her hands and the tops of her feet henna’d. With feet turned into works of art, Budner said she’ll probably do a barefoot aisle walk.
Darling is contemplating participating in this celebratory female adornment ritual. Maybe he’ll have the backs of his hands henna’d, he said, “Because it looks cool and would look cool with hers.”
He continued, “It’s different. It’s whacky. Who around here puts on temporary tattoos for their wedding?”
Well, he might be the only male Jew to do so. And the future Darling-Budners would have it no other way.