A Skirball Cultural Center Wedding: Rachel and Jeff's Jewish Celebration in Los Angeles
A real Jewish wedding at the Skirball Cultural Center: letters before the first look, a ketubah signing, a flower-crowned chuppah in the glass pavilion, and a hora that lifted the whole family.
Some couples leave Los Angeles to get married. Rachel and Jeff did the opposite: living in New York, they came home to the Skirball Cultural Center in the Sepulveda Pass, one of the city's most graceful venues for a Jewish wedding, and gave their families a Memorial Day weekend none of them will forget.
The Skirball rewards couples who love architecture: travertine walls, a glass pavilion wrapped in gardens, and courtyards that turn to velvet at night. The hero frame of this story, a kiss beneath the illuminated chuppah after dark, is the reason we always ask Skirball couples for ten minutes after sunset.
Letters Before the First Look
The details opened with jeweled heels and a Tiffany blue box, but the detail we remember is a handwritten note Jeff sent to Rachel with her gift, signed off with a line we photographed exactly as written: he could not wait to marry his best friend.
They exchanged letters in the museum's stone amphitheater before the first look, laughing and wiping their eyes in the same breath. Those unposed minutes routinely produce the most honest frames of a wedding day, and this day proved it again.
The Ketubah and the Chuppah
The ceremony traditions began indoors with the ketubah signing, family pressed close and the rabbi guiding the moment, one of those frames that belongs in black and white. Then everyone moved to the glass pavilion, where a flower-crowned chuppah waited: white drapery, blush roses, and flowering branches on either side, with the garden hillside glowing green through the windows.
Rachel and Jeff married surrounded on all four sides, the way a chuppah intends, and the embrace that followed the glass breaking brought the room to its feet. Jewish ceremonies reward photographers who know the order of the traditions and where to stand for each, quietly, without direction.
A Hora That Reached the Ceiling
The reception filled the Skirball's rotunda ballroom, lit in pink by Coastal Event Lighting and Productions, with a first dance that had the whole white floor to itself. Then the chairs came out.
The hora at this wedding was the full-contact kind: Jeff hoisted with a napkin in hand, Rachel lifted beside him, and the mothers taking their turns above the crowd. It is the most joyful chaos in wedding photography, and we shoot it from inside the circle, where the energy actually lives. Jill's Cake Creations closed the night out sweetly.
Planning a Skirball or Jewish Wedding in Los Angeles?
From the Skirball to the Ebell and the Langham, we photograph Jewish weddings across Los Angeles and know the traditions as well as the venues, see Katie and Blake's Ebell of Los Angeles wedding and Ilana and Christopher's Langham Huntington celebration, or browse the venue guide index.
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