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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/40373/full/40373/from-nfty-friends-to-a-nifty-wedding-despite-the-rain/ <br /><br /> <b>From NFTY friends to a nifty wedding, despite the rain</b> <br /> Thursday, October 29, 2009 | by stacey palevsky <br /><br /><p>Oren Persing and Sarah Levy met in their synagogue’s youth group, NFTY, while in high school in Boston.</p> <p>They were friends for a few years, and began dating in 2001, when Sarah was a freshman at Harvard University and Oren was a sophomore at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.</p> <p>Oren spent in his childhood in Israel, but Sarah had lived in Boston her entire life and wanted a change after college. She suggested California. After a spring break trip in 2005, they moved to Berkeley later that year.</p> <p>Sarah is a freelance food writer and winemaker. Oren is the program director at U.C. Berkeley Hillel.</p> <p>Oren proposed on the banks of the American River after a white-water rafting trip. He presented Sarah with hand-drawn sketches of an engagement ring he had designed, “and then the gorgeous ring itself,” Sarah recalled.</p> <p>The couple married June 21 in Beverly, Mass., near Boston, where most of their relatives live.</p> <div class="capDivLeft" style="width: 360px;"><img alt="CELunions oren and sarah" class="left" height="268" src="/images/uploads/z_photos_2009/h10_30_09/CELunions oren and sarah.jpg" title="Sarah and Oren Persing photo/lisa rigby photography" width="360" /> <div class="caption">Sarah and Oren Persing photo/lisa rigby photography</div> </div> “Since we met at temple, we’re something of a success story at the synagogue — all of the rabbis wanted to perform our ceremony,” Sarah joked. <p>The ceremony was held at Moraine Farm, an estate designed in 1880 by famous American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.</p> <p>“It poured, and it didn’t matter at all,” Sarah said.</p> <p><strong>Something old</strong>: Since Oren and Sarah knew each other for so long, the wedding was full of old friends, memories and objects. They stood under two chuppahs — one that Sarah’s grandmother had made for her sister’s wedding and another from Oren’s mother’s oldest friend. Sarah also wore a diamond necklace passed down from her great-great grandmother.</p> <p>“It all came together in this beautiful historical setting that was perfectly fitting,” Sarah said.</p> <p><strong>Something new:</strong> Sarah is a winemaker and served the first vintage of her wine, Je Suis Wine, at the wedding.</p> <p>“It was a great way to integrate a bit of our California life into the celebration,” she said. “And, of course, it tasted wonderful.”</p> <p><strong>Something borrowed:</strong> The couple planned to have the ceremony outside, with chuppah poles stuck into the lawn.</p> <p>But when it started pouring a few days before the wedding, they knew they needed an indoors plan. So they borrowed a set of chuppah holders from Oren’s cousin, who was planning his own wedding the following month.</p> <p>“It was an unexpectedly sweet thing to be able to share with them,” Sarah said.</p> <p><strong>Something Jew(ish):</strong> Sarah and Oren wrote original text for their ketubah, which Oren designed. They had a good friend translate it into Hebrew.</p> <p>“After we signed it and read the last line aloud together,” Sarah recalled, “our families and close friends surrounded us with singing and happiness.”</p>

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