By Jessie Cadle
Photography by Craig Photography
When Jeff Galak interviewed for a job with Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, he hoped to land a position as the assistant professor of marketing. What he didn’t expect was to find his future wife in interviewer Rosalind Chow. “I was so nervous, I wasn’t even paying attention,” Jeff admits, but Rosalind says, “I thought he was really cute.”
He got the job — and eventually, the girl, too. Though they were friends at first, the two began dating three months after Jeff arrived at CMU, spending many afternoons hiking and sharing a mutual love for the outdoors. Four months into the relationship, Rosalind began dropping hints that she hoped to receive her grandmother’s ring as her engagement ring, which resided in her parents’ San Diego home. “I always knew when the right person came along, I would tell him about the ring,” Rosalind says with a laugh.
After securing the ring, Jeff planned to propose on a hike. Naturally, the weather in Western Pennsylvania didn’t quite cooperate as the two journeyed through Raccoon Creek State Park. In the midst of rain and mud, they found a log to rest, and Jeff turned to her and popped the question. “A lot of people do proposals in fancy restaurants, when everything’s perfect. I thought it would be more romantic to do it at our worst. We were sweaty, and it was raining, but despite all that, we wanted to get married. That’s a stronger sentiment to me,” Jeff says.
Homemade Dress
To further integrate family into the ceremony, Jeff’s aunt, Galit Galak, owner of Galit Couture, created Rosalind’s wedding dress as a wedding gift. Keeping with the traditional Chinese theme, the dress was red, a traditional lucky color in Chinese culture, and was dappled with lacy red flowers. Rosalind admits she has worn the dress to many other receptions, and “isn’t quite done with it yet. I wanted to wear it more than once.”
All in the Family
Rosalind and Jeff aimed to show their friends and family how important they are in their lives through their wedding ceremony. “In a traditional wedding, the focus is on the couple, but in the tea ceremony, it’s more about the elders of the family passing down advice and blessings,” says Rosalind. For an unforgettable souvenir from the wedding, the couple asked each of their friends to submit a picture. Rosalind and Jeff used the 1,000 pictures to create a mosaic photo of themselves. “It’s the idea that we are made up of our friends and our families. Now it hangs in our home,” Jeff says. The two were also able to spend the rest of their wedding weekend bonding with their families at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. When looking back at their ceremony, the couple can’t pick a favorite memory. “I don’t think we stopped smiling at any moment,” Rosalind admits with a laugh.
Many Fish in the Sea
The couple’s reception took place at the PPG Aquarium at the Pittsburgh Zoo. “I am a lover of the sea,” Rosalind explains. Nature was a continual theme that day, and a zookeeper brought both an owl and a possum to the reception. (“You could actually pet the possum,” Jeff says.) Surrounded by tanks of multi-colored fish, friends of the couple thrust the two in the air for their first dance together: the traditional Jewish Hora.
The Power of Two
With a mere four months to pull together this one-of-a-kind ceremony, their biggest piece of advice is to plan with your distinct vision in mind. “Just because there’s a convention and a norm out there, doesn’t mean that’s the right way to go,” Jeff says. The October wedding, chosen to feature Pittsburgh’s gorgeous fall foliage, combined two unique traditions: a Jewish wedding and a Chinese Tea Ceremony because “we wanted to symbolize a coming together of two communities, not just two people,” Jeff says. The couple blended the best of both traditions to create the perfect ceremony, which was held in their backyard with a small group of nearly 30 people. From the Chinese Tea Ceremony, they incorporated the passing down of advice and blessings from friends and family as they shared Chinese red tea, and from Jewish tradition, they included a chuppah and breaking of the glass. The chuppah symbolizes the start of the newlyweds home together in the community, and they decorated their quilted chuppah with Chinese characters for double happiness, the Jewish wedding phrase “I am beloved, and my beloved is mine,” and their names. (P.S. The quilting is now their bedspread!)
