Weddingbee

Earlier, I wrote about my decision to convert to Judaism. Today, I thought I’d share a bit about what the process entails, for those of you who are interested in conversion*, who are intellectually curious, or who are just eager to relive those hilarious episodes of “Sex in the City” in which Charlotte goes through the conversion process. This is another loooong post. Sorry!

*A quick caveat: Modern Judaism is divided into a few movements (Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Reform, etc.), which differ from one another in their level of observance, their liturgy, their approach to textual interpretation, etc. My conversion is through the Conservative movement, so I can’t really speak to what the conversion process is like in the other movements.

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I’ve mentioned before that I’m in the process of converting to Judaism, and I’ve promised to write a longer post about my decision to convert and what the conversion process entails. So here goes a loooong two-part post…

The popular assumption is that anyone who converts to Judaism for marriage does so only after being pressured into it (usually by a naggy future mother-in-law, whom I’ll call “Estelle,” after George Costanza’s mother). “My darling baby boy. You can’t marry a shiksa!” kvetches Estelle. “Did you eat? Are you eating? Vy are you so thin? Is that shiksa not feeding you?” But Mr. HC’s family has never expressed any concern about his marrying “outside of the tribe” or put any pressure on me to go Jew. To the contrary, they’re to this day incredulous that I’d want to do such a thing!

What led me to convert was this: Judaism has played a very important role in Mr. HC’s life. His closest friends are those he made in Hebrew school, who bunked with him in the “dork tent” in Jewish summer camp, and who traveled with him to Israel. He wanted our future children to have these experiences as much as I wanted our children to celebrate their Chinese heritage. He hopes that our children will feel “at home” in both cultures. I, on the other hand, hope that our children will inhabit a corporate identity, such that they are not sometimes Jewish and sometimes Chinese, but rather always a union of both. But however our children choose to deal with the identity question, we know that we want them to be truly bicultural, to be Chinese and Jewish.
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Without going into too many researchy-technical definitions, Pre-Cana is a seminar thing that you and your fiance have to go through in order to get married in a Catholic church. If you really want to learn more about it, go here. But if you want my jumbled account, keep reading. And reading.

I was very nervous before we went. You see, I wasn’t born with the “I’m a chick, let’s talk about feeeelings” gene, so the very thought of having to do just that in front of church people and strangers scared the mess out of me. I had heard horror stories about it being 2 weeks long or weekend sessions, and that you are forced to talk OUT LOUD about your money, plans for kids and intimacy. Psshhhhhttt… no thanks. Can’t do it. And definitely NOT in front of church folks. But, it was nothing like that. In fact, it wasn’t scary at all. We basically sat in a room for 8 hours with other engaged couples and only talked amongst ourselves. There were, however, some parts we kinda hated, besides the food.
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The very first item on our agenda after getting engaged was picking out a date for the wedding. The process was such an ordeal though that I just couldn’t bring myself to blog about it until now. But I thought I’d write about it today just to test out my theory that there ain’t no trauma that a box of Trader Joe’s chocolate raspberry sticks can’t fix.

As you might know, Mr. HC’s family is Jewish and mine is Buddhist. Although the two of us are quite secular, we both wanted to be respectful of our families’ beliefs, as well as to honor the cultures from which we came. Still giddy from being engaged and totally naive as to the ways in which wedding planning can be one ginormous pain in our collectively large buttocks, we started looking into dates that would be auspicious for both cultures. “There’s 365 days in a year,” we stupidly observed. “How difficult could this be?” Idiots!

[Jew-Bu: cute on t-shirts, but much tougher in reality.]

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If you remember from a previous post, Mr. Dumpling is Catholic, and I am in the process of converting. One of the first things I asked our marriage coordinator at the church was about the difference between a Catholic wedding ceremony and, say, a Baptist or Methodist wedding ceremony. Being from the South, those were the sorts of weddings I attended. You know the ones—20 minutes max, I do, me too, kiss the bride. I now present…

Anyway, we decided that we wanted full Mass at our wedding. I was so shocked to find out that full Mass was an HOUR LONG. (*must not lock knees and pass out*)

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This is the 127th day of our wedding.

No, I haven’t been snorting the embossing powder. Nor is this about how long our actual wedding will be, though with all that is going on on our wedding day—Chinese groom’s games, a tea ceremony, a bedecken (veiling) ceremony, the signing of the ketubah (the wedding contract), a Jewish wedding ceremony, cocktails, dinner, dancing (yes, I’ll be blogging about all of these)—it might seem like we’d need hundreds of days to get through all the activities.

It’s the 127th day of wedding in the sense that Anita Diamant writes about in the introduction to The New Jewish Wedding:

In Judaism there is a willingness to ignore the boundaries between everyday life and holiness. Thus your wedding begins when you first announce your decision to marry and includes every aspect of planning and preparing for the big day. Even arguments about who gets invited and what gets served for dinner are part of the festivities. Nor is your wedding over until the last thank-you note is written, the last photograph is pasted in the scrapbook, and the last bill is paid.

I think there’s something so beautiful about the sentiment that a wedding is not a single “perfect day.” Instead, it’s a long process that begins with the moment you declare your commitment to marry (May in our case), encompasses actions and decisions both significant and banal, and involves discussion, compromise, and community.
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For most, getting their marriage license is “the step” that makes them realize that they are truly getting married; that the big party is really going to happen. For me, and likely for others of my faith, there is a different event that brings about those feelings. After picking up our marriage license, the government will recognize our marriage, but I couldn’t set foot inside of the temple to actually get married until I completed a personal worthiness interview with my local church leader, and then an area church leader, at which time they grant and sign a temple recommend. Temple recommends are essential to entering the temple. I in no way could have been married inside of the temple without one. I never intended to be married anywhere else, so this was an essential step for me.

This is actually the Dallas, Texas temple. Isn’t it beautiful?
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I have known that I wanted to be married in the temple since I was a very young girl and it’s kind of hard to believe that after so many years of waiting to go inside, my time is almost here!

I must admit that this is a post I have been apprehensive about writing, as the private religious ceremony which occurs in Latter-day Saint temples is a confusing topic for many and I am not quite sure how to explain it. I hope that my fellow LDS readers will help me in the comments section as I attempt to explain what we do, and why we do it.
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For a Bible.

As part of the Hispanic traditions that we are incorporating into our wedding ceremony, we will be presented with a Bible and Rosary. The catch is that I don’t want your ordinary, plain leather Bible that you find at your local Christian store. I want something intricate that shouts, “Hey this is our Family Bible!” Something that we will display in our home and, when people ask what it is, we can explain how we received in on our wedding day. Something that our children can always look at and read through, knowing that one day it will be their Bible and their children’s Bible, etc.

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This weekend marks the one year anniversary of something very special to myself, and to Mr. Hydrangea. A year ago from Saturday I converted to Catholicism.

Changing religions can be a controversial topic, and I’m not here to preach. I just wanted to share my experiences with all of you, as marriage often brings up the issue of religion.

I grew up in a small, southern and religious town, yet I never was a regular church attendee. I was never baptised, never a member of a church, but I was always curious. My parents raised us with morals and values, but we never went to church and we never really spoke of it much throughout my life. I believe my parents had some issues with religion in the past, so they raised us to be open-minded and never really set any guidelines when it came to religion.
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