Wedding Breeze

Every jewish wedding requires a ketubah. You’ve found one online. That’s the easy part. Next step–personalization, and that’s where it can get difficult! Of course, there’s the basic information that, if you don’t know it already, you’re in trouble–such as the bride and groom’s names, the ceremony date, and where it is taking place. But it can get mighty complicated as you go further to hebrew names, etc.

So here are the 5 best tricks to make sure your ketubah is properly personalized.

1) Ask your rabbi or cantor to personalize the ketubah! OK, not “actually” personalize the ketubah itself (have you SEEN his or her handwriting?) but complete the information for the ketubah artist or calligrapher. Seriously, the fastest way to have your ketubah personalized the right way is to let your rabbi or cantor complete the form provided by your ketubah artist or vendor.

2) Transliterate. If any party is not jewish, you should not create a hebrew name for that person. Rather, ask your ketubah vendor to transliterate your name–phonetically spell it out in hebrew letters. And if you’re jewish and you have a yiddush name, ask your rabbi or cantor if you can use that or if he or she will require you to use an equivalent Hebrew name instead (e.g. Sarah instead of Sorah).

3) End it with your parents. In Hebrew, your name is usually something like: “Rachel, daughter of Joshua and Sarah.” Of course, your father, Joshua, is technically “Joshua, son of Samuel and Rivka,” and your mother “Sarah, daughter of Abraham and Talia.” But just stick to your parents. Saying “Rachel, daughter of Joshua, son of Samuel and Rivka, and Sarah, daughter of Abraham and Talia” is just too wordy. So leave your grandparents out. If you wish to leave parents out altogether, that’s an option for you as well. And leave our all last names.

4) Hebrew date determination. Unlike our days, Hebrew days begin and end at sundown. So you will need to know whether your ceremony takes place before or after sunset to get the proper hebrew date.

5) Conservative or Orthodox wedding? You will have to provide more details, including the bride’s “status” (whether this is the bride’s first marriage–or more technically, whether she is a virgin–or if she’s been married before and divorced or widowed, and if she’s converted), if either the bride or groom’s fathers are levite or cohain (if you don’t know, typically it means “no”), and whether your officiant wants the ‘regal’ – the descending part of the letter in the ‘koof’ – in the word ‘v’kaninah’ to be filled in or left out. Let’s make it easy – talk to your officiant about these items for personalizing your conservative ketubah text.

It’s always a good idea to consult your officiant, but with these suggestions, your ketubah should be personalized the right way.