5 Must-Know Tips For Personalizing Your Ketubah (Jewish Wedding Contract)

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 confusing! Of course, there’s the basic information that, if you don’t know it already, you’ve got bigger problems–such as the bride and groom’s names, the wedding date, and where it is taking place. But it can get a bit mystifying as you go further to hebrew names, etc.

Here are the top 5 suggestions for personalizing your ketubah to make it easy and right.

1) Let your officiant do it! Well, maybe not actually do the ketubah personalization itself (have you SEEN your officiant’s handwriting?) but your rabbi or cantor should provide the information. Seriously, your ketubah is most likely to be correctly personalized if your rabbi or cantor supplies the information your ketubah artist needs.

2) Don’t create Hebrew names. If any party is not jewish, you should not create a hebrew name for that person. Instead, ask your ketubah vendor to transliterate your name–phonetically spell it out in hebrew characters. And if you’re jewish with a yiddush name, ask your officiant if you can use that or if he or she will require you to use an equivalent Hebrew name instead (e.g. Rivka instead of Rifka).

3) Stop with your parents. In Hebrew, your name typically reads: “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 prefer, you may also choose to omit your parents’ names. And typically just first (and middle, if you like) names are used - no last names.

4) Before or after sunset. The Hebrew day runs from sundown to sundown. So when you complete your ketubah information, you will need to know whether your ceremony will actually take place before or after sunset to get the proper hebrew date.

5) Details, details for a Conservative or Orthodox ceremony? You’ll need to provide a little more information, 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 the father of the bride and/or groom is a levite or cohain (it probably means “no” if you don’t not know), 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 ketubah texts.

Obviously, these are just starters, but the above advice will get you started on the right foot to having a properly personalized ketubah.