A Jewish wedding is built around two legal acts: kiddushin, in which the marriage is contracted, and nisuin, in which the couple is joined as a household. Everything else — and there is a great deal else — is either required detail around those two acts or custom layered on top.
Knowing which is which matters, because most wedding arguments between families are about custom while being conducted as though they were about law.
The core elements
The ketubah. A marriage document setting out the husband’s obligations to his wife — support, and provision in the event of divorce or death. It is a legal instrument, not a sentimental one, though modern couples often choose artistic versions. It is signed by witnesses and read under the chuppah.
The chuppah. The canopy under which the ceremony takes place, representing the home the couple is establishing. Open on its sides, a detail commonly connected to hospitality.
Kiddushin. The groom gives the bride an item of value — conventionally a plain ring — and makes a declaration in the presence of two valid witnesses. This is the act that effects the marriage. The ring is traditionally unbroken and without stones, so its value is plain.
Sheva brachot. The seven blessings, recited over wine, moving from creation outward to the joy of the couple.
Breaking the glass. The best-known moment, and one with several explanations offered — most commonly remembrance of the destruction of the Temple, a note of grief held deliberately inside the joy.
Yichud. A short period immediately afterwards in which the couple is alone together. In many communities this is the first time they have been alone all day, and couples routinely describe it as the part they remember.
What varies by community
A great deal, and this is where families collide.
Before the ceremony. Many Ashkenazi communities hold a bedeken, where the groom veils the bride. Many Sephardic and Mizrahi communities do not, and have their own pre-wedding traditions instead — a henna celebration is common in Persian, Moroccan and Yemenite families, sometimes as a substantial event in its own right.
Circling. In many Ashkenazi ceremonies the bride circles the groom, commonly seven times; some couples circle each other. Not universal.
Music, dress, food, and the structure of the celebration differ enormously between communities, as does the degree of separation between men and women.
Fasting. In many communities the couple fasts on the wedding day until the ceremony. In others they do not.
None of this is a matter of one community doing it correctly. They are different inherited practices, and a couple from two backgrounds is combining two of them.
Law, custom, and where the arguments actually are
The things that make the marriage valid under halachah — witnesses who qualify, the act of kiddushin, the ketubah — are not negotiable between families, and are not for a couple to decide between themselves.
Nearly everything a family will actually argue about — the henna, the circling, the music, who walks whom down, what is served — is custom. Recognising that converts a fight about correctness into a decision about inheritance, which is a much easier conversation.
Who may officiate, which witnesses qualify, and what a given community will recognise are questions with answers, and the answers differ between authorities. If it matters to either of you or to either family that the marriage is recognised somewhere specific, establish that before booking anything. Couples discover this late with grim regularity.
If one of you is not observant
Very common, and rarely a problem for the ceremony itself. Plenty of couples with little day-to-day practice want a fully traditional wedding, and many report being surprised by how much it mattered to them.
What does need deciding is whose standard governs, and whether the less observant partner is agreeing to it or accommodating it. That distinction is worth being honest about — it is the same question that shows up later about the kitchen and the children.
Interfaith weddings
Where one partner is not Jewish, officiation is the live question. Reform and Reconstructionist rabbis vary individually in whether they will officiate; Orthodox and Conservative authorities do not. A ceremony can borrow Jewish elements without being a halachically Jewish marriage, and it is worth being clear with yourselves about which you are having.
More on the surrounding decisions in Interfaith dating when you are Jewish.
Before the wedding, the harder conversations
The ceremony is one day. What the home is afterwards is the thing worth agreeing on, and it is the subject of the Jewish Home Vision tool and of the pre-engagement questions.