One of the high points at a recent Friday wedding at the Messi events hall in south Tel Aviv occurred around noon: the traditional breaking of the glass. Except in this case, it was two glasses - one for each groom.

With a gay pride flag draped above the dais and 170 relatives and friends in attendance, Idan Cohen, 29, and Tzah Nakash, 27, formalized their relationship earlier this month. The two partners wanted not only to pledge their devotion and celebrate with their guests, but also to send the message that even in Israel, a same-sex wedding is a perfectly legitimate event.

Cohen and Nakash are part of a larger trend that has seen the number of gay weddings double in Israel over the past five years or so, according to an estimate by Irit Rosenblum, the founder and director of the family rights group New Family. While gay leaders said they don't have hard data on the number of such marriages, they agreed that in recent years there has been a sharp rise in the number of same-sex couples tying the knot.

Israel does not legally recognize gay marriages conducted in the country, though under a landmark 2006 High Court of Justice ruling the state must recognize gay marriages legally conducted abroad.

Hundreds of gay couples have married abroad in the last few years, and now many are holding some kind of event to celebrate their marriage - whether a religious ceremony presided over by a non-Orthodox rabbi, a secular wedding ceremony or simply a party. Still, their path remains strewn with obstacles.

Cohen, a clothing store manager, and Nakash, a marketing manager for a fashion house, both grew up near Haifa and now live in Tel Aviv. They met two and a half years ago through a gay dating site and moved in together within a month. They celebrated their first anniversary as a couple with a vacation in Rhodes, where Cohen surprised his partner by proposing marriage. "I said yes right away. I knew he was the one from the first moment we met," said Nakash a few minutes before the ceremony. Cohen nodded in agreement.

After a few months, they started looking for a venue to hold the wedding. The problems started immediately. "At first I contacted wedding planners through the Internet. People didn't get back to me," said Nakash. In the messages he left, he specified that his inquiry concerned a wedding between two men; he assumes this is the reason he never heard back.

"When we got no responses, we thought we'd put something together by ourselves, maybe at a large house, invite guests for the weekend, but we had a hard time finding a suitable place," he said. At some point, he decided to give the wedding planner route another try and, to his surprise, one of them, Easywed, got in touch right away.

With the company's help, they found a wedding hall, but their difficulties were far from over. They say that their families and friends accept them and their sexual orientation, but they had to go over the guest lists with infinite care. "No one here feels uneasy. Every single person we invited is someone who wants to be here," Nakash said at the wedding.

"We labored over the guest list for six months before sending out the invitations," Cohen added. "We kept going over it again and again, arriving finally at the most intimate circle, the people who love us most, who really care about us."

Cohen felt he had to thank the guests. "We don't think it's a trivial thing that these people showed up. It was really special and moving that people showed up at truly different event." Just before the ceremony, he couldn't hold back his tears. His sister, who is an Orthodox Jew, came over to hug him. Her husband, following his rabbi's advice, stayed home. "My brother-in-law wasn't here. It would have been very hard for him to watch because it contradicts the way he's chosen to lead his life," said Cohen, sounding disappointed.

Cohen said it took them a while to decide to hold a wedding. "Personally, the thought of going through with a big production really stressed me out," he said. "It actually scared me at first. All these questions - how and where and so on... At first the whole thing made me literally nauseous. We hardly have any gay friends. I'd never attended a same-sex wedding. I was afraid of people's reactions, what the event would look like, how it would seem to others." In hindsight, though, he has no regrets: "People were so open. It was amazing to see all the love heaped on us."

The couple's grand entrance into the hall was an impressive sight. To the notes of Madonna's "Celebration," they and 20 or so of their friends took to the dance floor. Guests waved their phones in the air to capture the sight on video. Then the couple got up on the dais, and exchanged vows and rings. Two of their friends led the ceremony. "The theme of the whole ceremony was accepting the other. There's no reason in the world why two men or two women who love one another shouldn't receive the blessing of all the people they love," said Cohen.

It's tougher in Jerusalem

Same-sex weddings got a boost from the courts last month, when the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court fined the owners of the Yad Hashmona guesthouse NIS 60,000 for refusing to host the wedding of Tal Yakobovich and Yael Biran because they are both women. The owners, Messianic Jews, said the wedding contradicts their beliefs, but the judge ruled the wedding hall is not a religious space and is obligated to provide service to all members of the public.

"Anyone establishing a public business in Israel should be made aware that s/he has to serve everyone, without discrimination on the bases enumerated in the law, including sexual orientation," Feinstein wrote in her ruling. "The moment the defendants opened their doors to the public, they cannot try to close them to people who do not meet the standards by which they interpret the Hebrew Bible or the Christian Scriptures, while hurting their feelings and humiliating them."

Nonetheless, some event halls are still less than thrilled by same-sex weddings. "Many couples from the gay community contact us because they really need our help," said Amit Halperin, Easywed's vice president. He said there has been a steep increase in the number of gay weddings the company has helped plan.

"There are places that won't do gay weddings for personal reasons or because of the local rabbinate," said Halperin. "You're hearing less of that sort of thing, but it's still an issue in too many places."

Rosenblum said the level of acceptance varies by city.

"Given that we're talking about private halls, owners could theoretically refuse to host such ceremonies without admitting the real reason," she said. "There is no doubt that in more conservative cities, such as Jerusalem, it is going to be much harder to find tolerant venues than in Tel Aviv. One may assume that kosher event halls will refuse, but the gay community isn't looking there anyway because no one is interested in creating a provocation."

Some people attribute greater importance to the wedding ceremony than to registering as couples in the Interior Ministry.

"The ceremony is an experiential, emotional and social statement of marriage, whereas registering with the Interior Ministry is a formality," said Rosenblum. "In practice, registration is less significant than the ceremony itself. There is a strong tendency to have a ceremony. It fills the profound need to say, 'It doesn't matter what others think; what matters is what we think.'"

Most gay couples marrying in Israel choose a secular ceremony, the contents of which can change from one event to the next, said Sigal Asher, a secular rabbi with Tekasim, an Israeli group offering secular rites for all. "Same-sex weddings feature some of the symbols of traditional weddings, such as the breaking of the glass, a wedding contract and the exchange of rings," said Asher. "A key difference lies in the process leading up to the wedding; there are sensitivities with gay people you don't have with straight ones."

For example, the involvement of family members in the ceremony isn't a given. "I've led ceremonies in which the parents stood under the wedding canopy as well as ceremonies in which the parents didn't show up for the wedding at all," she said. "You have to consider the possibility that the couple's support system may not include the family, but rather close friends. In such cases, I find a way to incorporate the close friends into the ceremony."

Secular ceremonies aren't the only option. Nira and Yael Orian were married by a Conservative rabbi in 2001, when same-sex weddings were much rarer.

"Yael is from an Orthodox family in Jerusalem, and I'm from a very secular family in Holon," said Nira Orian. "We were together for four years. We got to the point where we wanted kids. Her parents and mine knew we were gay but the extended family didn't. But you can't raise kids in the closet. The wedding was an opportunity to come out in a much more profound way."

When they started thinking about getting married, they contacted Rabbi David Lazar, whom they had heard speaking about same-sex marriages. This was his first same-sex wedding ceremony.

"The religious language is an inseparable part of Yael's life," said Orian. "The ceremonial aspect was important to me too. It was clear we wanted a ceremony, but then there were so many questions: Who's going to break the glass? Is there going to be a glass at all? Who do we want standing under the wedding canopy with us? It was not unlike reinventing the wheel."

The ceremony, at an art gallery in Jaffa, was quite similar to more traditional Jewish weddings. "The rabbi couldn't use the phrase 'according to the Law of Moses and Israel," because it's not, so we found alternative phrasings," Orian recalled. "At the end of the ceremony he started to sing, 'The voice of gladness and the voice of joy,' and we didn't know what he was going to do with the next line - 'The voice of the groom and the voice of the bride' - and he surprised us by singing, 'The voice of the beloved woman [ahuva] and the voice of her beloved [ahuvata].' All the guests joined in. The ceremony was a religious one, but certainly lacked a one-to-one correspondence with Orthodox ceremonies involving a man and a woman."

In hindsight, she says the wedding was the right - maybe even essential - step. "After the wedding came the period of trying to get pregnant, and suddenly something opened up," said Orian. "We'd become a married couple in every sense of the term. It really did the trick. The moment we decided to get married, the relationship took on the same significance that getting married has for straight people."

Today, Nira and Yael live in Tel Aviv, where they are raising two children - a girl, 10, and a boy, 6.

Though same-sex marriages are still far from common, they do seem to be becoming more accepted.

On the morning of Cohen and Nakash's wedding, they posed for groom-and-groom photos in the streets of Tel Aviv. During the photo shoot, a nearby elementary school dismissed its students for the day. Expecting teasing or worse, Cohen mentally prepared himself - but still wasn't ready for what actually happened.

"The kids came over, said mazal tov, and shook our hands," he said, still sounding surprised. "It was awesome." Later on, an older woman also came over to them. "She asked us, 'You're a groom and groom, right? I just wanted to congratulate you. Good for you!'"