Exchanging Vows Under a Canopy, No Matter the Faith

WHEN Natalie Rodic Marsan, 35, a Texas native who now lives in Brooklyn, was planning her June 12, 2010, wedding on an island off Croatia, she imagined it taking place on the beach under a canopy like a huppah, the wedding covering that is a fixture at Jewish weddings.

Though raised as a Baptist, she admired the ones she saw at Jewish weddings she’d attended after moving to Brooklyn. Her husband, Josip Marsan, 28, is Roman Catholic and from Pag, Croatia, where the wedding took place.

The bride-to-be thought it would be beautiful to stand under such a canopy to “set off the ceremonial space,” she said. Her fiancé told her he’d never seen or heard of such a thing, but liked the idea because it would provide shade from the intense sun on the rocky beach.

A brother of Mr. Marsan’s offered to build one based on the bride’s description, but at the last minute could not find wood poles on the barren, rocky island, so he used four curtain rods and a piece of silky white rayon from a local shop.

“I was freaking out when I heard they were using curtain rods,” Mrs. Rodic Marsan said, “but it worked out well.” The white canopy — huppah is Hebrew for covering — was magnificent against the azure sea, she said.

A number of New York-area event planners report that canopies are quickly becoming a decorative feature at weddings of all types. Couples like to “stand under something pretty that gives the wedding a focal point,” said Harriette Rose Katz, a New York wedding planner.

They can range from a simple structure made of four poles holding a cloth canopy, which looks most like the traditional huppah, to elaborate archways made of tree branches and flowers. Some of the more ornate canopies are made by floral designers and resemble gazebos festooned with enough foliage to fill a garden. Others are simple arbors, or arches made of thin birch trees with mere wisps of leaves or blossoms climbing up the poles or forming a lacy awning.

For the do-it-yourselfers, there are huppah and wedding-arbor kits available online at sites like Sunset Bamboo,  Chuppah Studio,  Nature’s All and Amazon.com.

In Judaism, a traditional huppah typically consists of a prayer shawl or other cloth attached to four poles, which is held aloft over the couple by family members, and is intended to signify the newlyweds’ new home. They are purposely open-sided to welcome the guests.

Modern huppahs, however, are sometimes covered in other materials, like flowers.

Though a huppah is a recognized symbol at a Jewish wedding, Darcie Crystal, a Reform rabbi in Manhattan, said it is not exclusively Jewish, nor is it alone what makes a wedding Jewish.

In fact, an elaborate four-pillar canopy called a mandap is traditionally used at Hindu weddings to represent the universe; the four legs, the couple’s parents. When Sheila Chithran, 28 and Roman Catholic, was married on Oct. 29 to Sandeep Ramesh, 28 and Hindu, they had two ceremonies, one in a Catholic church, the other under a mandap in an event space, both in Manhattan. Neither was uncomfortable with the dual traditions, the bride said. “We wanted to celebrate and honor all of our heritages and our families.”

Yet wedding chat boards, like those found on weddingbee.com, carry debates — sometimes heated ones — about how couples who borrow elements from other religions risk offending some of their guests.

When it comes to joining couples in marriage, Joanna Samuels, a Conservative rabbi in Manhattan, doesn’t like to mix it up. She pointedly declines to officiate at interfaith weddings. Rabbi Samuels, however, is not offended by the idea of couples adopting others’ traditions.

It is understandable, she said, since people are going to weddings and learning about other religions and cultures. “If non-Jews use the canopy to symbolize a commitment to building a new home together, one that is welcoming to guests, then it is fine,” Rabbi Samuels said. She added, however, “I’m less interested in whether it’s right or wrong for non-Jews to use a huppah, and more interested in what it says about our culture.” And given the reality of the times, she said, maybe this is an opportunity to open a dialogue between people of different beliefs.

Rabbi Jill Hausman, of the Actors Temple in Manhattan, put a finer point on it. “I’m convinced that our traditions predate religion,” she said. “There are so many common traditions like wedding canopies that come from our human roots, and as such resonate at a wedding in a very dramatic way.”

She added: “Yes, I think it is beautiful to have one’s own traditions, but now people speak of not being religious but spiritual. It’s a phenomenon happening today.”

Stephen Ellingson, an associate professor of sociology at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., noted: “The notion of loyalty to a particular denomination has lessened over the past 40 years. Now you can pick and choose to form customized religious experiences.”

Still, those wishing to avoid possibly offending some guests might take the advice of Mrs. Katz, the wedding planner, to heart: call it “an arbor” or something other than a huppah, she said.

Kaitlin Barone, 28, and James Candido, 34, both Roman Catholic, were married on Aug. 26 in Shelburne, Vt. They said that in choosing to wed under a hand-built, arborlike structure, they were drawing on others’ traditions but also seeking to make one of their own.

“We didn’t know the meaning of it,” Mrs. Candido said of the huppahs that the couple had seen at Jewish weddings they’d attended. “But we thought it was beautiful, and we wanted one.” The chief goal, the bride said, was to create “a visual component to our wedding that was a roof over our heads — it seemed a nice symbol to us of starting our new life in Vermont.”

What was to have been an archway draped with fabric was transformed by the bride’s father into a simple structure built of birch trees and branches from his Vermont property. “It was so perfect in its simplicity that I left it open to the sky,” said Mrs. Candido, a registered nurse in Burlington. “Mom was touched that Dad had built it, and that gave it a symbol of family ties.” So much so, that “others in our family plan to use our structure at weddings in the future.”

Jung Lee, a wedding planner at Fête in Manhattan, said her Christian clients love using a wedding canopy. “We do it all the time for them,” she said. “It’s what I love about New York — borrowing traditions from other people. My Christian clients love the symbolism — they mention it, the ‘new home.’ ”

William Helmreich, a sociology professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center who specializes in ethnicity, said that religious meaning is one thing, but that if this emerging trend is more about aesthetics, then who is to say what is correct? “When it comes to taste, everyone is an expert,” he said. “And there’s no debate; we’re all products of our culture.”

Dr. Helmreich continued, “You can follow other people’s customs, but they don’t have the same meaning.”

Anyone can eat chicken soup with matzo balls and find that it tastes very good. But give a Jew the same soup, and he has a Jewish experience. It’s part of his cultural history, he said.

“You can’t take a symbol and sanctify it just because it’s a custom. This is a free society. ”

At the end of the day, he said, a huppah is not a religious object; it is symbolic, unlike a ketubah, the Jewish wedding contract, which is an official religious document.

Andrew Spillane, 29 and Roman Catholic, and Laura Greenberg, 32 and Jewish, were married on Sept. 24 in an outdoor ceremony in Waitsfield, Vt., that was led by a justice of the peace. The couple, both lawyers in Manhattan, tried to pick and choose elements from their different backgrounds. The rustic twig-and-floral structure that they were married in front of was her “nod to a huppah,” Ms. Greenberg explained. “My older Jewish relatives thought it was a huppah, and that satisfied them,” she said. “Andrew’s Catholic family just thought it was pretty.”

Their experience underscores another reason that huppahs and similar structures are gaining in popularity. Symbolism and aesthetics aside, sometimes they are just the right way to create a bridge between cultures.