Wedding Date on Nov 22, 2019

We met at an audition 8 years ago (I'm a TV host/actress/former Bond girl). Stephen (along with his father) auditioned me to appear in online commercials for their new foldable luggage company. I got the job but a year later the luggage company went under and Stephen's father closed the business. In an attempt to save the luggage company, Stephen contacted me one last time to try and help out with some final promotions. Luckily it worked out! Stephen and I started dating, he appeared on Shark Tank, got a deal and the company was saved. If his luggage company had never gone under we would have never started dating — and yes I married a guy with a lot of baggage! But our relationship wasn't so simple. Stephen and his family are Orthodox Jews from New York and my family are British-Philippine Catholics. Bringing two very different families and cultures together to meet for the first time at a wedding (and after 7 years of being together) wasn't going to be so straight forward. It was a very tough decision, but decided the best place for such a gathering would be in Jerusalem, and I hoped for the best. In my planning and research, I was completely blown away with the ancient Jewish wedding traditions and customs — some dating back 3500 years! I started planning a big fat Jewish wedding with every ancient as well as modern Jewish custom I could find. The singing would be in Hebrew as well as Arabic, with biblical instruments creating traditional sounds. The venue was the Rooftop of Mamilla hotel overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem - and we hoped for the best! It turned out to be the most emotional, beautiful and joyous occasion — "the best wedding ever" as many guests said. In the end, it was our cultural differences that made it a great success — because experiencing and celebrating something different is unique, exciting, tantalizing and unites us in unimaginable ways.