Laura N.


Age: 30
Affiliation: Interfaith
Occupation: Freelance writer, editor, and Web consultant
Wedding Date: December 2009 in Houston, TX
About Me: After dating for nearly five years, my boyfriend and I finally put to rest all of the questions from our friends and family about when we were getting married. The date's set for this December, but the planning hasn't been without its challenges (or fun): we're having a Jewish wedding even though he wasn't raised Jewish; we gave ourselves just over six months to plan the wedding; and we both have divorced parents, which means we have lots of guest lists to keep up with. To top it off, we're getting married 1,500 miles away from where we currently live!

Interfaith Rabbi? Check.

Posted by Laura N.

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“Well, we’ll have to see if we can find someone who will officiate,” my mom said when I told her Rick and I planned to have a Jewish wedding. I knew this, of course: Most rabbis, including those at the temple to which my mother and stepfather belong, won’t perform interfaith weddings. But hearing my mother say this worried me a little. What if we couldn’t find someone to perform a Jewish wedding? What if we had to be married by a judge?

Luckily, I didn’t have to entertain these possibilities for very long. As soon as my parents began talking to people, it became apparent that we had options: a cousin who performed wedding ceremonies and could add some Jewish flavor, a Jewish educator who’d wowed guests with the ceremony he performed at my mom’s boss’ daughter’s wedding, a rabbi we knew from Chicago who we might be able to coax to fly to Houston to perform the ceremony, the cantor at the other major reform congregation in Houston. All decent possibilities, but none that made us say, “That’s the one!” We decided to go with the cantor.

That is, until my mother spoke with our temple’s head rabbi, who mentioned that one of the temple’s former assistant rabbis still lived in town and officiated interfaith weddings. We remembered the rabbi well: She had a beautiful voice and gave wonderful sermons. She was very personable. Just the kind of person we wanted to officiate our wedding. A couple of phone calls and emails later, we had ourselves a rabbi.

Last month, we had lunch with our rabbi. She went through all of the Jewish wedding rituals with us to help determine which ones we wanted to incorporate into our wedding. “This ceremony should be something you’re both comfortable with, something that reflects the two of you,” she said.

While we’re incorporating almost all of the elements we discussed that day, we’ve since come up with a few twists of our own, after reading Anita Diamant’s wonderful book The New Jewish Wedding.

Photo credit: Mixed Blessing

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3 comments

1 Dmitry { 01.15.10 at 5:06 pm }

Hi,
I am in a similar situation. It’s going to be an interfaith wedding and I am looking for a rabbi in Houston who could do it. How did your wedding go? Could you perhaps provide me with contact info of the rabbi who did your weddding? I would like to get in touch with her to see if she could do our wedding as well.


2 Laura { 01.23.10 at 10:02 am }

Hi Dmitry,

Thanks for your note. I’ll send you an email right now. Cheers!


3 David { 10.05.10 at 8:32 pm }

Hi Laura,

Like Dmitry, I am also in a similar situation. I am jewish and my fiance is not. To complicate things, we are hoping to find someone who would co-officiate with a pastor. I was hoping you could offer some guidance and perhaps put me in touch with the rabbi who did your wedding, or anyone else you thought would be appropriate.

Thanks so much!


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