Oops.

“Did you know that most temples are built with move-able walls so that on the one day of the year when everyone comes to repent they can actually make the room big enough to hold everyone?”
–Andrew Largeman (played by Zach Braff), Garden State

This fact is turning out to be pretty important in considering our ceremony.  The sanctuary in our temple is only about a year old, as the original sanctuary before that was destroyed by Hurricane Rita.  After enough money was finally raised, the new, beautiful, and modern sanctuary was built in its place.

Here’s the problem though–the seats are benches as opposed to chairs, and everyone I ask has a different idea of how many people the sanctuary can actually seat.  I was originally told 250, which was fine since we were planning to invite about that many people.  Then after speaking with the rabbi, the synagogue’s administrative assistant revised that number to 180 seats at the absolute most.  I knew we would get a few “no” replies to our wedding, but not that many! I mentioned this to my brother who is the president of the Men’s Club, and he estimated the number of seats to be closer to 120.  I even went so far as to send a Facebook message to  the architect of the sanctuary, who gave me 190 as his best guess.  Well, it’s official: no one knows!  Also official: no matter if the number is 120, 180 or 190, we will still have more guests than the sanctuary will seat.

Thankfully the synagogue does have a move-able wall, as described in the movie Garden State.   So I just want to thank those Jews throughout history who only attend synagogue once a year, thus necessitating the move-able wall!  It will help me out greatly in my wedding planning, even if we do end up with guests seated in giant orange plastic chairs at the back of the sanctuary.