Taking the Pressure Off: Meaningful Tefillah on Your Wedding Day

Kallot often ask me questions like: 

“What should I daven for on my wedding day?”

“How can I make my chuppah a truly spiritual experience?”

These are beautiful questions that reflect how conscious today’s kallot are about filling their weddings with meaning and kedushah.

Photo by Rikonavt on Unsplash

Like every good kallah teacher I have my answers.  One suggestion I often share with kallot is to focus each of the seven circles that she walks around her Chattan on with a different prayer or hope for her marriage. For example: shalom bayit, patience, shared joy, good health, spiritual growth, friendship, and love. I also discuss balancing her time and tefillot on the wedding day between focusing on herself and utilizing this “et ratzon” for tefillah for the good of others.

But alongside these lofty suggestions, I also remind kallot that no matter how much they plan their kavanot for the chuppah, sometimes these prayers just don’t happen.  Some kallot spend their entire chuppah in deep, meaningful prayer.  Others plan to daven but find that under the chuppah they feel overwhelmed — by emotion, excitement, or just the whirlwind of the moment. They might forget their list of what to daven for, or not have the headspace to daven at all. Some kallot find that they can’t focus on anything else because they’re busy wondering if everyone can see the pimple on their chin. 

For those who find time to prepare before the wedding,  I tell them that the very act of thinking through tefillot in advance - of preparing one’s heart and intentions - is, in itself, a tefillah that echoes under the chuppah - even if the words aren’t articulated at the time.

And for those kallot who find that they don’t have time to prepare in advance, and also have a hard time focusing on tefillot under the chuppah, I remind them that that’s okay too.  Every chuppah is a time of kedushah when Hashem’s brachot envelops the new couple - no matter what the kallah and chattan are thinking of or praying for. 

At the end of the chuppah, every kallah is married. While on the one hand we want to help our kallot prepare spiritually for their weddings, what matters more is that they walk away from the chuppah to embark on the amazing adventure of their Jewish marriage feeling good about themselves — ready to build their home with joy regardless of what tefillot they did or didn’t say on their wedding day.

So, to all our kallot:

Prepare your heart, think about the many blessings you have in your lives.  Focus on what you want to daven for on your wedding day - but then let go of perfection. Your wedding day is not a spiritual performance — it’s the start of a divinely blessed lifelong partnership. And that, in itself, is profoundly holy.

Michelle Smilowitz is an experienced educator and kallah teacher.  She lives with her family in Beit Shemesh.