I wonder when the wedding bencher madness began, I know that it’s been a minhag yisroel for at least 70 years or so because I remember seeing a wedding bencher from 1929 when I was a wee little one. When I was young we had the bencher drawer, under a heaping pile of benchers from every single Fried Family wedding throughout the years was a pile of dusty yarmulkes and other wedding souvenirs and it’s only recently that I started seeing the waste that wedding benchers are.
I assume that most people have wedding benchers as their party giveaway is because they are the cheapest thing and because everyone else is doing it, what will the Friedmans say if we don’t have benchers, they will think less of us. I just wish someone gave away useful items at weddings, if you’re going to spend all that money, why not make it something useful. Like a personalized shabbos lamp, little packages of pre-cut toilet paper or one of those nifty little mincha/maariv things for your wallet. Surely a tefilas haderech card would be more useful than a bulky bencher which sits in some drawer until the family moves and decides to throw all their benchers in shaimos.
I am pretty sure that the biggest paper wastes in orthodox Judaism are Bresslov Books, Wedding Benchers and kosher pizza stores who gives you stacks of napkins every time you get something to go. I have had the idea to make wedding benchers from post consumer waste and recycled wedding benchers, but why not make something useful to begin with. Those havdallah booklets with the built in besomin thing are super cool, little siddurs for your car (I still have 2 siddurs from the Chaim Juni wedding in Rochester about 10 years ago – that dudes getting mad zechusim from everyone using those travel siddurim)
The best wedding bencher I’ve ever had was from my friend Sruly’s wedding, it was large print and for once my father could use a bencher and get rid of the stained, bulky, blue shiloh siddur with the large print from the table.
Find wedding benchers on 4torah.com
I still have the wedding bencher from my parents wedding and it’s very special to me. Somewhere we also have the bencher from my Pidyon ha ben.
Can you use benchers from people who have since divorced?
why not?
I think there’s a g’mach that accepts donations of such benchers, and they put a sticker over the names of the divorced couple and lend the benchers out for group events.
My old shul used benchers from a wedding that never took place. But they had already been printed, so there were labels placed over the names and dates. But we could peel off the stickers and see the original info. Pretty awkward.
I occasionally used to wear a kippah I got from a wedding where the couple divorced almost immediately…until I lost it, which may have been for the best.
The book “All for the Boss” attributes the idea of wedding benchers to Yaakov Yosef Herman in the early 1900s.
Remember the scratchy velvet benchers that were popular before the early 80’s?
You need to have wedding benchers, because in your house you need to have the benchers from your wedding.
And it would be weird to have them if you only made 15 for your house. So you make 300.
For my kids’ bat mitzvahs I bought the smallest, tiniest trifold benchers available, because they’re the cheapest. But have some kind of plastic lamination, so they’re not even biodegradable.
I still have the wedding bencher from my parents wedding and it’s very special to me. Somewhere we also have the bencher from my Pidyon ha ben.
What I hate is shuls with all-Hebrew bentschers. Its kind of a classic anti-outreach move!
Oh man!!!!! Yeah that would be the worst if you were just starting to become religious.
My shul uses benchers from bar/bat mitzvahs and weddings of important people in the shul. Most of them are 10-20 years old.
I wrote a post about bentschers from a couple who have since divorced: http://walkingthegreyline.blogspot.com/2010/04/forlorn-birkon.html It’s nice to know such organizations actually exist that put them to good use.
We gave out little mincha/maariv siddurs at our wedding. We still have a bunch of them left over.
Every year, we invite a bunch of people for Thanksgiving. All those old wedding bentchers some in handy when we have upwards of a dozen guests.
I think everyone does benchers because before the age of the smart phone it was the easiest way to ensure that everyone had one for benching/sheva brachos. I’m in love with the idea of doing a mix of large-print, wallet size tri-fold, travel, and maybe kids ’cause I know a lot of people would dig having those around (especially the large-print). All my friend’s parents still have boxes of benchers from their kids wedding and try to pawn ’em off on people all the time.
For our Elul wedding, we gave out laminated cards with the yehi ratzons for Rosh Hashana.
The winner: Pre-cut shabbos toilet paper
these bentchers always have bentching on some random page, like 47. You have to wonder “am I the only person on Friday nights who DOESN’T want to sit here and sing all the 46 pages of zmiros?”
lol
I had always assumed the benchers were primarily created because all the guests at the wedding needed something to actually bench from at the wedding meal.
I LOVE wedding benchers. I like the variety I’ve collected so far, that reflect the personalities of my friends whose weddings I’ve attended. I like being reminded of my friends and their weddings.
Traditional Florentina, bare bones bencher from the BT/convert wedding I attended last winter…
Modern, adaptive, non-gendered pronoun-using bencher put out by L’Chu Narananah, with “…baal/baalat/baalei/baalot ha bayit ha zeh” alternative options on every page from the Pluralist wedding I attended in the summer…
Going to a wedding in 2 weeks of a self-identified Conservadox kallah and an Israeli chattan from the FSU. Excited to see what kind of benchers they have at their wedding!
It’s always nice to see what kinds of benchers people have collected when I go for a meal at peoples’ houses. And there’s usually a good story to go with them if you ask.
you could always go with something personal and original like Let’s Bench’s photo bencher (www.letsbench.com)
Benchers are the nice gift to gave in special ocassions.