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How to Get Started with the DIY Ketubah Kit

Filed under: Easy, Getting started


You’ve got the DIY Ketubah Kit and you’re ready to go! Below you’ll find some simple steps to get started.

Gather information

You’ll probably want to personalize the top of the text sheet with your names and the date and place of your ceremony, so do an inventory for the following:

  • Both your full names–including middle and last names
  • Your parents’ names–you only need first and middle names here
  • City and state–the location where your ceremony will take place
  • The date of your wedding

If you’re doing the personalization in English only, you’re done! If you’d also like to do some personalization in Hebrew, you’ll need a few additional things:

  • Both your Hebrew names–only you have them, of course. These are sometimes different than your English names, and might be Yiddish names, not Hebrew names. A good place to look for these is on a Jewish naming certificate. A rabbi can also help you research it.
  • Your parents’ Hebrew names–if they have them. These might be Yiddish, too. If they have a ketubah, it will include their Hebrew names. If they don’t have one, ask them if other family members might know. A rabbi can help you with this, too.
  • The Hebrew date. You can figure it out based on the date you already know by using this tool. Note that if your ceremony is after sunset, you do want to check that little box, because Hebrew dates start at sundown and your date will advance a day. If you’re getting married on a Saturday, even if it’s not after sunset, you might consider using the after-sunset date, anyway. A lot of rabbis do this because ceremonies are traditionally not performed on Shabbat.
  • Transliteration of the location–You can ask your rabbi for this, or you can roll the dice and try Google translate. I’ve found it to be astonishingly accurate, but can’t guarantee its accuracy, so be sure to run it by someone who can help.

Print the text you like

Once you have the DIY Ketubah Kit downloaded and open, all you have to do is:

  • Scroll down and pick one of the two texts in the kit.
  • Go to File > Print in the application you’re using to read the PDF.
  • Pick the page number for the text you’ve chosen and hit Print.

At first, you should use regular printer paper to try out your project before you start wasting expensive paper that you’ll use in the end project. So just get it out on a plain sheet of paper to do a trial run.

Write some simple introductory text

If you’ve started thinking about what you’re going to say on your wedding invitation, you’re well on your way to wording the opening to your ketubah. Here’s an example of one way to craft the text:

On the 27th of June, 2010
Corresponding to
The 15th of Tamuz, 5770
In San Francisco, California
Hannah Beth Stern, daughter of Barry and Shoshana
and
Daniel Aaron Berger, son of Michael and Norma
Come together in marriage.

Maybe this is all you’ll need for the top part. But if you’d also like to include Hebrew (i.e. either you or someone you know can write it for you), there are a lot of variations for how to do it. Some people use the traditional Aramaic way of writing the date, some use the modern way. Some people use traditional verbiage about the location of the ceremony, some skip that and say something more contemporary.

I will cover more about your options here in future posts, but for now I will show you an example of one way to write a complementary text to the English verbiage above:

Hebrew Ketubah Personalization Example

The way this is written above is a combination of traditional Aramaic (for the date), the transliteration of the city and state, the Hebrew formulation of the names (which is your name daughter/son of your father’s name and your mother’s name), and some text in Modern Hebrew that reflects the English ending, “Come together in marriage.”

Quite the combination, right? There’s a lot to say about the whys behind this, and some alternative options, but it’s beyond the scope of this post. So stay tuned for more discussion about this!

Practice your penmanship

It’s actually not as hard as you think to write something nicely. If you have the worst handwriting in the world and don’t even want to try it, I bet you have a friend that has some pretty decent hand skills and you can rope them into this.

Martha Stewart has some good basic advice about calligraphy if you want to get fancy with it. But you should also feel free to do non-traditional things, like using stencils. I’ll get into some fun ways you can letter your piece in future posts.

Make as many mistakes as you need

A lot of people assume that designers have some sort of divine talent and do everything perfectly the first time. And, hey, I have actually met a few of those, but I’m not one of them. Be patient with this. Practice on paper from your recycle bin. Be comfortable with messing things up in the beginning. If you just stick with it, you might be surprised by what you can do with your own hands.

Choose nice paper and print the final one(s)

Okay, you’ve done all the prep work. Now that you have a plan of action, look for some nice paper stock to print on. Get more than one sheet, because you might need some backup. You’ll want to look for acid-free paper, so that your wedding certificate doesn’t start crumbling like an old newspaper in a few years.

There is a lot of confusing information about paper weight–you’ll see it defined in pounds, gsm, and all kind of weird terminology. Don’t worry about it. Go in person to any art, craft, or paper store and actually touch what you’re buying. It should feel thick enough to go through your printer and thin enough to fit through your printer. If it’s too thin or thick, it can jam. But don’t stress out – just experiment! See what you like, ask the folks at the store if it’s acid-free, and then bring it home and try printing on it.

Now you’re ready for the fun part!

There are so many ways to use this basic letter-sized sheet of paper to make a larger piece. I’ll be sharing ideas for what you can do–some are easy, and some are more advanced. All of them will allow you to make a piece that’s exactly what you want, and that you’ll be excited to have in your life for many years to come.

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