For my wedding present to Neil, I gave him a ketubah, which is a Jewish Wedding Document. When ketubahs arrived on the scene in Judaism 2500 years ago or so, it's purpose was a contract that explained basic material, conjugal, and moral responsibilites of the husband to his wife; to protect the woman's right during the marriage - and afterwords, if she is divorced or widowed - basically to ensure her future. A sort of pre-nuptual agreement. Mighty forward thinking of them if you ask me! While a ketubah probably wouldn't hold up in a court of law these days, it is still a tradition of the Jewish wedding to have a ketubah.

Some of the more Orthodox ketubahs today are not too different from ones written hundreds of years ago, and are still written in Aramaic (the spoken language of the Jews 2500 years ago), but there are also ketubahs available that have less religious texts and are written in modern language (ours is in Hebrew with the English translation below) to represent today's idealogies and the individual spirituality of the couple for whom the ketubah is made.

I found our ketubah and text when searching for ideas for our vows on a ketubah website, of all places. I loved one of the pre-written texts on the website, and since is it also tradition to have the ketubah read during the ceremony, I thought it would be neat to actually have a ketubah - despite the fact that Neil is not by any means religious (he's Jew- "ish"), and I am not Jewish at all (even though I did live in New York for 10 years ;).

The ketubah can also be work of art, to be displayed in the newlyweds home (as ours will be!). It is also suggested that when there is an arguement between the couple, that they read their ketubah together, to remind them of the vows they took on their wedding day, to remember what that day was, of what their love and marriage should be.

I had the artist change a few minor things in the text to better represent who we are, and for the reading of our vows during the ceremony, I just made everything into a question - to which Neil and I responded with "we will". Here is the ketubah (notice lots of swirlies!), and a closeup of the English text:

Back to the Rehearsal Dinner!