The last few months have been a bit crazy, with work, honeymooning, and settling into a new city and married life. I return with one more story for the series about our wedding day and then will resume regular blogging about wedding planning tips.

We had a rather multicultural wedding. We incorporated a sansankudo, a traditional Japanese sake wedding ritual, into our typically American (and secular) ceremony; wedding toasts were given in three (four if you count the line of Russian our best man threw in) languages.

Our best man would be responsible for multiculturalizing our wedding even more. Both he and our officiant, a friend of ours from grad school, are Jewish. They put their heads together and decided what our wedding was missing was…a hora! They plotted the timing and enlisted our other friends to help.

We were out on the dance floor having a good time when two chairs get plunked down in the center. Sit! We are then rushed by all the young males in attendance who lift us up high and around and around we go!

I’m grateful that two trusted and level-headed guy friends of mine rushed to my side, ensuring that my ride was a relatively stable one. My husband was less lucky at the mercy of his friends.

I’ve never been to a Jewish wedding before so I don’t know if all that bouncing and tilting was typical, or if it was the by-product of a bunch of non-Jewish people getting recruited for a Jewish tradition. There were a few close calls for my husband and a fair amount of screaming from me, but we did ultimately get set down safely.