This week it happened. Our eldest married her beloved and successful husband Uri, and a new family was formed in Israel. Although this is not their first wedding, the truth is that due to various circumstances this is already their third wedding, but this time they produced for themselves and us an exciting and happy wedding party on a Friday afternoon on the beach, and came to mark a redeemer and jubilant.
We were moved when they walked down the aisle accompanied by parents, sisters and siblings to the sounds of guitars and the singing of beloved friends and in front of a large crowd, and wiped away a tear - behind sunglasses, which they would not see - when a close family friend performed an alternative ceremony for them, when they sang the seven blessings in an Italian style passed down from generation to generation, when they read the ketubah and when they carried moving and funny blessings to each other.
But a successful wedding is a complex event, where the couple's love and joy meet with tensions, stress, annoying familyology, big money and petty bills.
As a parent, you're in the craziest situation. You have no right to say much about how things will look, and you are expected to fund the celebration and shut up. From the height of your age and experience, your wife, you and the groom's parents know that it would have been better to save the money for a rainy day, an apartment, studies and other challenges that will come later, because you are not the Gates family from Microsoft (Bill didn't even send a check), and his family is not related to Bezos from Amazon - but everyone is happy with the couple's happiness, and just wants them to celebrate with family and friends and have fun.
You hint to them that there's nothing wrong with something modest that won't make them extravagant, and that you might skip a private after, a cocktail bar, 14 appetizers and an Idan Raichel show hosting Barry Sakharov, but in most cases your role at the event is to be an ATM, and your opinions interest them at the end of the hell.
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As mentioned, without some tension it is impossible, and a wedding produces an endless amount of unnecessary clashes stemming from differences in perceptions, character, background, tastes and opinions regarding kebabs.
The couple themselves, who are not yet accustomed to the "give and take" of the couple's life, look for their place within the relationship and try to "mark territory". Everyone has, apart from personal desires and tastes, the obligation to represent his family, which conveys messages to the other side through him (sometimes hints and sometimes bluntly).
According to tradition, at some point the bride will quarrel with her mother and later will also be angry (at this stage only in the imagination) at the groom's mother. In the midst of all this, the couple is supposed to make joint decisions about the banquet hall, design, food and DJ, and together with the parents create a list of invitees.
The guest list is an opening for serious trouble. There are those who must invite, close family and close friends of both parties, all of course subject to deciding on the size of the event and budget. There are people you're happy to invite and happy to be happy with you on your holiday, but there are also those you want to see about like hemorrhoids, but the unpleasantness obliges you to invite them only because 15 years ago they invited you to their wedding, which you also suffered, and now it's unpleasant for Aunt Shula.
You also have to decide who to invite from work, and if you are not selective you will find yourself with 2,000 invitees, dancing with Pinchas from bookkeeping. And by the way of bookkeeping, it is not always talked about out loud, but it is impossible to deny the human and petty utilitarian thought that creeps into your head, in which you try to calculate which check you will receive from whom and whether its order will pay off for you (not me, of course).
At the event itself, parents are expected to solve the complex puzzle of seating guests, when you are supposed to take into account who is suitable for whom, who is at odds with whom and how to not seat the family friend next to the person who stole her husband at the time.
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After the basic principles have been established, the place is found and there is agreement on the staff and on the design and entertainment concept, comes the tasting chapter. You are invited to sit at a table where you are served a "Master Chef" style close-up, and you, in the role of Eyal Shani, have to express an opinion and dot the dishes.
The recommendation is to eat everything, and a lot, because during the event itself you will be busy or drunk, you will not remember what food was agreed upon, nor will you have time to taste it. The expectation of you, as the father of the bride, is that unlike life itself, where you dress like Hourani, at the event you will dress up as a respectable person, buy new clothes, lose 20 pounds and arrive at the wedding in Brad Pitt's block.
The most important detail in the clothes of the father of the bride is the pockets, which should be convenient for storing banknotes. During the event they are apples from cash that you took out of several offline ATMs so that you can hand out tips to waiters, cooks, guards, bartenders and all service providers in the world, without the large sums causing your pants to fall off while you dance disco on the plaza.
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On the morning of the incident, at 5:<> A.M., several alarm clocks rang in our house so that the girls in the house could get dressed, put on makeup, comb their hair, and arrive on time.
I, who don't wear makeup and a visit to a barber is a sweet and distant memory for me, sat idle and tried to pass the time and calm the tempers, which were quite stormy and stressful.
I checked the weather to make sure it wasn't too hot and prayed that the food would be delicious, that the couple wouldn't fight, that the guests wouldn't wait in line for food too long, that the clothes would get on top of me and that I wouldn't get them dirty all the way to the chuppah.
I prayed that there would be no traffic jams, that there would be no terror attack, God forbid, or drama on the news, that none of the girls would have a rogue chuckle, that there would be enough shade, that vegetarians would have something to eat, that there would be no overcrowding at the bar, and that the DJ would put on beautiful, happy and not too loud songs.
Then, before the guests arrived and as in the Fox catalogues, we were photographed from every possible angle. With parents, without parents, with sisters, without brothers, just the groom's family, just the bride's family, all together, in color, black and white, remote, up close, magnetic version, video version and drone version.
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The wedding was lovely and wonderful, but at the end, after dragging yourself to the car exhausted, in tight clothes and tight shoes, you still have to go through 300 messages, 500 videos sent by friends and 5,000 photos from the photographer to choose.
You have to pay all the suppliers, do an Excel and see who gave which check, be shocked by the aunt who brought a gift of a plastic plant pot and be surprised by a friend who exaggerated with the check up - and then remember that in two weeks his daughter is also getting married, which obliges you too. Congratulations to Einav and Uri!
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