One of the joys of travel is to see weddings in other countries. I have been to peek at the bride and offer my congratulations and good wishes at many wedding receptions, mostly in hotels, sometimes in restaurants, or outside churches in Europe, or in streets.
I usually take a picture from a distance, then am emboldened to get closer and ask permission to take the bride alone, then the bride and groom together. At this point they sometimes ask me to join them for a picture.
I have been to two orthodox weddings like this, once as a friend of the groom from university. I had not realised how orthodox he was - he used to come to my home and refuse food on the grounds that he had just eaten an apple.
Another time I was a guest as a friend of the bride's mother (who was also my travel agent at that time).
I researched Orthodox communities when researching for a novel including Orthodox Jews and Irish people in the East End of London, England in the 1880s. It soon became clear that those long coats and hats were ideal in the freezing winter weather, especially where the Orthodox Jews had come from, in northern Europe, from Russia or Poland or Ukraine which was part of Poland/Russia/Austro-Hungarian empire, as I discovered in knee-deep snow visiting Poland in winter.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3495234/Ultra-Orthodox-Jewish-wedding-Israel-sees-THOUSANDS-guests-gather-celebrate-grandchildren-two-famous-rabbis-wed.html#reader-comments
Angela Lansbury, travel writer
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