The lowdown on hosting a family sheva brachos

Mazel tov, it’s a wedding! And in many families, this means it’s time for the uncles and aunts to step up and host a sheva brachos for the new couple. Here, we share tips for hosting these simchahs with grace, beauty, and minimal hassle.

Keep It Consistent

One smart thing to do as a family that has a lot of nieces and nephews at the getting married stage is to assign everyone a job that they’ll be responsible for at every sheva brachos the family makes. This means that the simchahs won’t require as much planning. One person’s job will be to collect all the receipts and divide the costs.

Sara

Invest, Invest

My siblings and I have made sheva brachos a few times. One great investment we made was that we bought a set of dishes from Amazon — plain white porcelain flat plates with small “walls” and those modern soup bowls, which we use for each simchah. Each of us keeps some at home, so we get to use them for Yamim Tovim or other occasions. Buying paper goods each time is a huge hassle and expense, and this way, we can always skip right to step two, the food.

Now about the food: Sometimes we cook, sometimes we cater, sometimes we do a bit of both, but we always hire waiters to plate and serve, so we get to sit and enjoy the simchah.

Another detail is the program. You can sit and schmooze and it’ll be nice, but whenever we prepared something extra, the event felt so much more special and memorable. A really good derashah or badchanus for the men, and over on the women’s side, we sometimes pass around recipe cards, asking all guests to write one recipe they’re famous for, which they obviously know by heart, to share with the new homemaker.

Esty

Home Sweet Home

My thoughts? Those sheva brachos at home, the men in the dining room, women in the playroom, have a special charm. It’s more intimate, the conversation is light and easy, and the food is ALWAYS better than the eggplant cutlets and mushroom sauce you get in small simchah halls. The couples always report that our sheva brachos was their favorite.

Henny

Spreadsheets and Spread the Work

I think our family’s system for making sheva brachos is worked out to perfection. We are a large family and one sister created the system and an accompanying spreadsheet. We rotate who’s in charge each time. Even one sister who was insistent that she can’t run any event agreed to take a turn once she saw how easy and doable it was because of our system.

The person in charge sends out a text with all the dishes, such as appetizer, dessert, salad, and everyone texts her back with whichever item they’ve chosen. People make whatever they want in their category, and the one in charge makes sure nothing gets repeated.

The person in charge then sends out a second text with a list of jobs such as things to pick up, set up, clean up, wash up, items to return, etc.

There’s also a list of utensils to bring, such as knives, garbage bags, becher, bentshers, flowers, maybe a party favor. The organizer also has to arrange some grandkids to waiter and set up. The nice thing is that we siblings don’t try to outdo each other. We’re happy to get it done, and do it well, and the simchah is always beautiful.

Rifky

Keep the Peace

We’ve made a few family sheva brachos. In our family, the one whose house the sheva brachos is held in gets a bigger share in calling the shots. You may not like her choice of tablecloths or menu, but she gets to be a bigger “decision maker” since she’ll end up with more work. You can give your opinions, but I only recommend speaking up if you feel the chassan/kallah or mechutanim will be offended or disappointed. Keeping the peace is more important than your vision. If it’s in a restaurant, then you’re all equal, I guess.

Also, let everyone do what they’re good at. Basically, don’t be too controlling...

Chani

Turn Taking

The different couples in my friend’s family take turns to host the sheva brachos in their house. The food is divided among the siblings, but the hosts do everything else, from setting up tables and chairs to arranging a musician or a derashah. The couples who live out of town always pay for the paper goods instead of contributing cooked food.

Shifi

Ten and Up

If you can use an affordable local hall, you save yourselves the pressure and mess that one person has to take on if hosting at home, keeping things manageable and fair. Our family has agreed that only kids aged ten and up are invited to the sheva brachos (besides siblings of the chassan and kallah). I know that finding babysitters can be hard, but this makes the simchah enjoyable for everyone and avoids a posse of noisy cousins running underfoot. (They have their fun at the weddings, don’t worry!)

Chaya

Limits

In our family, sheva brachos is only made by the local aunts and uncles. We don’t have the out-of-towners contribute; it would be too complicated and they’re usually not there to take part anyway. Let them get a gift of their own. To keep things fair with our varied family sizes, we also only host a sheva brachos for the first five kids in each family. After that, the aunts and uncles retire, and usually the older siblings step into the role.

Shira

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 967)