parents of engaged children,
especially mothers of the bride. As
the person who is typically in charge
of organizing the wedding, she has to
worry about how much the event
costs, as well as pull all the details
together. She also might be
concerned about making sure that
everyone who's involved is happy.
That can be difficult, especially when
everyone usually has his or her own
opinions about how the event should
be organized.
"Everyone has an idealized version
of what a wedding should be like, and
it's inevitable that these ideals will
conflict," Anita Diamant, author of The
New Jewish Wedding, said in an interview.
Noting that there are no weddings
without fighting or tension, Ms.
Diamant continues, "I think people
can expect to argue with their
children, to have at least one big
blow-up, during the planning of a
wedding. Because a wedding is a rite
of passage, even if your child is 40
years old."
When she was planning her daugh-
ter's wedding, Sandy E. worried that
the parents of her future son-in-law,
an Orthodox couple, would not feel
included in the event. To ensure that
they would, she and her husband
used a kosher caterer for the
wedding, even though they
themselves don't keep kosher.
"We didn't want to single them (the
groom's family) out by giving them
special dishes," Sandy says. When she
and her husband had married, there
had been some conflicts between her
parents and her husband's parents
over wedding arrangements, conflicts
with which the newlywed Sandy and
her husband had had to deal. With
this in mind, Sandy says of her daugh-
ter's nuptials, "I didn't want to lay any
kind of onus on her marriage."

Despite her precautions, though,
trouble erupted after she and her
husband told their daughter's future
in-laws that they didn't intend to stand
under the chuppah during the
wedding ceremony, but felt more
comfortable sitting down. Thinking
that therefore he could also not stand
under the chuppah, the bridegroom's
father blew up at Sandy during a
telephone conversation shortly
before the event. Sandy was able to
reassure him that he and his wife

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