What we learned in Neve wasn’t new and radical, it was more like finding the missing pieces to the framework of a puzzle. It helped us put everything in place.

Bruchi

It was natural, almost automatic, that Sara and I became friends. It didn’t matter that Sara is from Johannesburg and I’m Australian. In the Southern Hemisphere, we have summer vacation while Americans are in school. That meant that our group of Neve newbies was smaller than most, so we met almost as soon as we landed, and very soon felt like sisters.

We were both vanilla-cream good girls. Our parents had taught us to always try to do the right thing. Their values were Torah-based — tzedakah, Friday night meals, and the importance of marrying Jewish — they just didn’t know they were in the Torah. So what we learned in Neve wasn’t new and radical, it was more like finding the missing pieces to the framework of a puzzle. It helped us put everything in place.

We both planned our own weddings, making plenty of mistakes on the way. Like when Sara ordered pink and red carnations — what was she thinking? — and overpaid for them, too. But afterward, we helped our Neve friends through the process, giving them pointers and the phone numbers of wedding-dress gemachs, caterers, and bands.

It was fun, but it was taking up more and more of our time. So when a photographer said that he got so many wedding jobs from us that we ought to make referrals a business, his suggestion fell on fertile ground. We both had business backgrounds and felt ready to start a wedding-planning business together.

Only together, though. Who could do it alone? We have different strengths. I’m good with numbers, but I can’t create floral masterpieces like Sara can. I don’t have her color sense and the attention to detail that makes the decor not just good, but wow! We bounce our problems off each other and rely on each other for support.

Sara

We had found our niche in the wedding planning business, but soon Bruchi’s place in the puzzle began to shift. Her husband met Reb Zvi Meir Zilberberg shlita, a chassidish rav who has a wide cadre of loyal followers. Bruchi and her husband began to study chassidus; it wasn’t long before they were taking on chassidic minhagim and learning Yiddish.