Wedding Blog

WELL. What a pain in the neck! My recent DIY projects have been major headaches, and the ketubah is no different. As you may recall, I finished the artwork ages ago, but I couldn’t find anyone to do the Hebrew. It was really hard to find someone to do it, and I was starting to freak out that it might not get done (thus the headache). I finally found a rabbi at a temple in a nearby town, and he was nice enough to write out the Hebrew for me and format it in 4 different fonts, so I could choose my favorite. How nice!

As soon as the Rabbi finished the Hebrew, I ran home and formatted the English part, which turned out to be significantly longer than the Hebrew. I decided to put the lines for us to sign just under the Hebrew, so it looked a little more even. I put the words onto the ketubah using my gocco machine (more on that in a minute). Here is the finished project, all framed and matted:

I am really happy with out it turned out, except for one tiny thing:

See that gap? Yeah, that gap is not supposed to be there. I had to use my gocco machine as a stamp, which made lining things up very difficult (visibility was poor). Here’s what I did: I tried my hardest to line the screen up by using pieces of paper, rulers, and tape. After the screen was face-down on the paper (hopefully lined up), I removed the sticky pad from the machine and rocked it back and forth over the screen. Then I said a small prayer to myself that it would look good and peeled back the screen.

For the most part, it looked pretty good. The English was too long to fit on one screen, so my main challenge was lining those two up. As you can see, they are aligned perfectly on the left & right, but I didn’t get the spacing right (like, at all). At the end of the day, I don’t think anyone will notice. However, I wouldn’t recommend this method. It was scary.

The Hebrew looks good, and I think that gap at the top of the Hebrew makes the one in the English section less noticable:

Close up:

I bought the frame at Michael’s (40% off coupon, baby), and had the mat custom-made at Fast Frame (which was awesome, highly recommended). All in all, this project cost me about $90, including the frame and mat. Considering most ketubahs are $200+ without a frame, I’m feeling like I did pretty good, especially since Mr. Cream Puff and I made ours really personal. It was a pain in the neck though. Thank goodness I’m done!