Augh. It’s an unusual year for me, though. I don’t have the usual spate of concerts to sing in (just one – today, and I haven’t looked at my music since last year!), not lots of social stuff with church, just Christmas Eve for which I have learned to dress comfortably with a festive touch (it’s a long night — two services with a pot luck supper for the choir in-between. SUCH a lovely tradition!). I am hoping that some of last year’s favorites, like a cardigan with big red and pink and black poppies, will still fit. I have a super-comfy velvet skirt that feels like jammies and I can just wear those together.
As always special attention to hair and make-up are really what Christmas Eve requires. I’ll be wearing a robe and stole and presiding in a candle-lit meetinghouse festooned with simple wreaths and poinsettias. It is the prettiest church in the world, but I’m a little biased. I want to be a little glowy and sparkly but not much. A SKOTSCH, shall we say.
On December 30 I head down to Palm Beach, Florida for my little cousin’s bat mitzvah, which presents a whole NEW challenge. I’m not participating as clergy (duh! 🙂 ) but there are two full days of events planned with shabbat services and then brunches and dinners and things like that. It will be warm, it’s a conservative temple so I need to prepare something to cover my head, and I don’t want to pack much.
VERY challenging. I am thinking a LBD (Little Black Dress) with some sort of jacket, black heels and a cute little black beret with rhinestone details that I bought from Free People a few years ago. Jewish readers, is black okay for a bat mitzvah? This is PALM BEACH, remember.
I think for the more casual Friday night shabbat, a black suit with a simple shell, the hair-do I featured yesterday and these:
Palm Beach is truly land of the beautiful people, so I’m a bit intimidated. There really is no fooling around with cute boho looks there. It has to be CLASSIC. And I’m not really CLASSIC — first of all, I don’t have the figure for it, so CLASSIC on me looks FRUMPY, so it’s really a matter of finding something simple in my own style, putting my shoulders back, making sure I do a great make-up job that I love, and shining a megawatt smile for Liat. Who is, I should add here, a gorgeous gem of a young lady. As I said to her mother, “I need to get all faptized for the noshing and kvelling!”
Yiddish is a fantastic language.
LOVE The boots!
Oh the bar/bat mitzvah fashion shpilkes. I’m never as fashion- and wealth- conscious as when I’m with my husband’s well-heeled female Jewish relatives. He can just shlep up there in a coat and tie, but I never feel quite good enough. Side bar: at our wedding, I was all proud of my (Minnesotan, working/middle class, Prot) family looking pretty glam, I thought, but my rabbi best woman said they were just a SKOTSCH less stylish and sophisticated than Robert’s (East Coast, upper-middle, Jewish) family. I saw it in the pictures – they know how to work it. So I can never do one of these without feeling like Roseanne Barr.
The boots will overcome all.
You’re apparently forgetting the 15% bonus points for not only being the cousin with the radiant megawatt smile, but the cousin who was willing to schlepp all the way from Massachusetts after doing Christmas Eve, Christmas and then Christmas Sunday No. 1. marathon. [You’re very sweet. Thank you. – PB]
Yes, PB, black for a bar/bat mitzvah is just fine!
Oh, those boots. Those BOOTS. The picture from eBay didn’t do them justice AT ALL. These pictures make my shoe envy spike like crazy… These are GORGEOUS, PB, so amazing!!