American couple has impromptu Venice Jewish wedding
Chance meeting at historical Italian synagogue leads to hurried huppah
We’ve heard of pop-up restaurants, pop-up concerts, and pop-up dress shops. But a pop-up Jewish wedding?
With the bridal industry promoting the notion of the perfect wedding, couples nowadays take months, if not years, to plan their ceremonies and receptions. But not Lana Atlasov and David Mednick. They spent virtually no time at all on preparing for their wedding, which took place spontaneously in Venice’s Piazza San Marco on June 26 as curious locals and tourists looked on.
The San Francisco Bay Area couple had originally planned a traditional Jewish wedding for August in Palo Alto, California. But as they vacationed in the romantic Italian city of Venice, they decided to seize the moment and tied the knot under a makeshift huppah (wedding canopy).
The impromptu ceremony would not have taken place had the couple not met Todd Shotz at the Levantine Synagogue in Venice’s historical Jewish Ghetto. Shotz, an American film and television producer (“Ghost Team One,” “Live Free or Die Hard,” and “Wrestling with Angels”), is also a Jewish educator and he was in Venice to officiate at a bar mitzvah for a Los Angeles family.
Atlasov and Mednick asked Shotz if he also officiated at Jewish weddings, and when he said yes, they asked him to marry them that very day.
Atlasov, 50, told The Times of Israel that she had dreamed of a Venice wedding, and had even tried to contact rabbinical authorities in the city about the possibility of getting married there. When she did not receive an answer, she dropped the idea. However, when she and her fiancé had their chance meeting with Shotz, she took it as a sign that her dream could actually come true.
“[It was] a second marriage for both and they have felt truly blessed to have met each other three years ago and were eager to start this new chapter,” Shotz told WPVI-TV, a Philadelphia ABC affiliate, about deciding to marry the couple.
Shotz enlisted his parents and sister (who were with him in Venice) to help gather and prepare all the necessary elements for a Jewish wedding, including a tallit for the huppah, a ketubah (Jewish wedding contract), kosher wine, and a glass to smash at the end of the ceremony.
He instructed Atlasov and Mednick, 62, to go purchase wedding rings (which they did on the island of Murano) and meet him in Venice’s main square at 9:00 p.m.
“I am a pretty spontaneous person, but I wouldn’t have done it if David hadn’t pushed it. He’s a real go-with-the-flow kind of guy,” said Atlasov, who immigrated to the US from the FSU in 1989.
Atlasov, a divorcee, and Mednick, a widower, met three years ago. She works in the OFJCC Leslie Family Preschool & Early Childhood Education Center in Palo Alto, and he is a podiatrist. Between them, they have five adult children.
The new bride reported that their kids were very happy when they found out that their parents had eloped.
‘I live my life by seizing the moment’
“I live my life by seizing the moment, and that is how I have taught my kids to live, as well,” Atlasov said.
The couple still plans to celebrate their marriage in Palo Alto in August, with Shotz as one of their guests. It will be a civil ceremony and a party for friends and family featuring a klezmer and tango band. (Their first dance as a married couple was a tango in Piazza San Marco).
“You know, I got the the invitations for the Jewish wedding ceremony we had originally planned from the printer right before we left for Venice. With my being so busy getting ready for the trip, I decided I would wait to send them when we got back. That decision was clearly bashert,” Atlasov said.