There was no cocktail hour, no chicken dinner, no teary-eyed mothers and fathers, and no beaming grandparents. But this was a grand Jewish wedding celebration, which took nine months to plan, in one of the largest synagogues in the United States.

Three couples, each denied Jewish wedding ceremonies in Israel for various reasons, were married on Dec. 3 in a ceremony at Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan.

Gady Levy, the executive director of the Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center, and Rabbi Joshua Davidson, the senior rabbi at the temple, began planning the event last March. “We met with people from the Israel Religious Action Center in Israel to find a way to make a change in the marriage laws there, and we decided that having a real wedding in New York was the way,” Mr. Levy said.