Here at Ketubah HQ, we are always doing fun and exciting things for our couples — we’ll do anything to make sure you have the awesomest Ketubah ever.

We recently got a request that was so odd, we loved it: Paul Wesson, marrying Piper, told us he just loved the Lantern Festival ketubah but… he wants it in Hebrew, English, and… Chinese. We said, “We’d love to!” and after figuring out all the details (changing the size to fit in all the text; and solving questions like, “ummm, none of us speak Chinese, how do we create Chinese text that we’re sure will be perfect?”) and made him a fantastic Ketubah. On top of that, they were getting married in Taiwan, so we needed to make sure it got there–and the Chinese needs to be perfect!

On top of that, it turns out that, in our arts studio, we have a green wall. Just one of our walls, we painted it green for fun one day. But this wall can double as a green wall as in the movies, so we can easily change the background. We decided to have fun by taking some photos of ourselves, and putting ourselves in Taiwan! We created a sample of the Ketubah to see what it would look like, and had some fun taking photos of ourselves. Here’s Brad and Nina in Taiwan, with our Chinese, English, and Hebrew Ketubah for Paul and Piper:

Trilingual Chinese Ketubah In Taiwan

We began This Is Not a Ketubah as a way to raise money for Ieladeinu, Argentina’s Jewish orphanage. We decided that one way to support Ieladeinu will be to use the money we make to buy books for the orphans at Ieladeinu. So last week — just in time for Argentina’s Children’s Day — we bought and dropped off a few hundred books for Ieladeinu! Here are some photos we took.

Ketubah Founders Entering Ieladeinu

Brad and Morgan Reviewing the Books at Ieladeinu

Reviewing the Library

Morgan in the Library

The Playroom next to the Library

Brad in the Library

Note: we’re not affiliated with Ieladeinu! We just love them and began This Is Not a Ketubah to support them, which is why we use the money we make to support them!

See article here.

Often, a Ketubah is beautiful and just awesome…. but you wish a detail were different.

Maybe you want the Bride and Groom in the artwork to look more like you two.

Maybe you want the colors to be your favorite colors, or to match the wall you’re put it on.

Maybe you think there is one heart too many in the design, and you want it just marginally less cheesy. Or maybe you want to add a few more hearts to it.

Whatever change you want to make to your Ketubah… just ask us! Our dedication is to do everything possible to make sure that your Ketubah isn’t just fantastic but it is right for YOU TWO. This includes changing the Ketubah in any way we can.

Just ask us if we make the changes for you… and we will try to!

Our awesome artist, Yael, made a great observation the other day while we were in the studio:

“A bad product is the worst publicity a company can have.”

Yes! Great insight! That gets right to the heart of it! I take her same idea, and I would phrase it positively, even hyperbolically:

“A truly world-class awesome product is the best possible publicity a company can have.”

And this is exactly what we strive to do, in both the negative versions (avoid the bad) and positive versions (promote the good).

What what does having such a great product entail, particularly in the context of a ketubah? We would say that a great ketubah experience includes:

• World class Ketubah art
• The perfect text option for you
• Printed on a museum-quality material
• A smooth experience working together to personalize the ketubah
• Very quick response times — from a bunch of guys who will make you laugh and enjoy the process!
• Some surprises for you along the way
• Throughout the process, lots of tips that you wouldn’t’ve thought of otherwise (Have you thought about what pen to use to sign your ketubah?)

When talking with couples we work with, and other couples we know, one question we commonly get is, “Why are Ketubahs so expensive? We know yours are very well-priced and cheaper than almost all others, and far-and-away the cheapest given their quality — but I would have still expected ketubahs to be a fraction of the cost that they are! Why aren’t they this cheap? You’re just printing something out, right?”

Boy oh boy, do we have a lot to say on this subject! So lets go:

1.) We agree with that comment! In fact, one of the reasons we began This Is Not a Ketubah is because, we realized that too many other people overcharge for their Ketubot. Our vision is to ensure that everyone has a truly awesome Ketubah, regardless of their budget.

2.) We create our ketubot using the most high-quality materials — our canvases are magnificent! Printing on A4 printer paper is cheap, but printing museum-quality Ketubot can get very expensive! It is museum quality, after all!

But there is a lot more going on here than just the printing cost! Lets see…

3.) To our surprise, what takes the most time is… personalizing the Ketubah. Coordinating the exact information you want, in Hebrew, can be a big and time-consuming pain in the (I don’t want to write the word in this family-friendly G-rated post). Everyone has a different convention — should we write the year like this, or like that? Who would have known that a lot of people really prefer the Hebrew year written out, rather than as a number? We didn’t!

4.) Among the most time-consuming parts of the process is, getting your Rabbi’s, Cantor’s, or Officiant’s approval. This is essential to us — he (or she) is the one making your wedding happen so he needs to love the text! And just getting ahold of a rabbi takes a lot of time and back-and-forth. We were shocked to discover how busy all rabbis are — but it makes sense, if I were a rabbi, I’d be spending all my time with my congregants and studying the Torah and a million administrative duties!

5.) Truly awesome customer service is… well… time-consuming for us. We answer our phone — so you can call us any time. We chat with you online. We respond to every single email within a day. We hold your hand and guide you through the process. We’ll tell you things you might otherwise forget (Don’t forget about getting a pen for the ketubah! Oh, here are our recommendations!). We pride ourselves on our fun, good-energy, non-stop fun customer service to the point where we just hate the phrase “customer service.” And this takes a lot of time.

The more time-consuming something is, the more expensive it will be — since we need to buy lots and lots of coffee for our studio, to give us energy!

6.) We offer an awesome refund policy, no questions asked. Therefore, we need to keep some money in order to save for the occasional person who asks for one so we can afford it! In other words, in order to offer a great refund policy, we need to make sure we have enough money to afford the refunds! (Note: this hasn’t happened yet! Yay!!! Knock on wood!!!)

7.) We are truly dedicated to ensuring that all of our artists receive a living wage. Our artists are all Argentine Jews, many of whom have few opportunities. We pay all of our artists handsomely because, after all, we were founded as a collective of Argentine-Jewish artists. We believe artists deserve to be paid fairly for their work, at least enough for them to live off of.

8.) We also use 10% of all of our income to support Ieladeinu, Argentina’s Jewish orphanage.

We are truly committed to our vision of ensuring that everyone gets an awesome Ketubah at a price they can afford, and we will stop at nothing to make sure everyone gets the best price! That said, we still wish we could reduce our prices even more — and we’re working on it!!!! Stay tuned for some upcoming exciting announcements, making our prices even better!

Taking all of the following into account, the obvious follow-up question is, “Guys, you are offering so much and doing so much — how can you afford to have such a lower price on the market?”. To which, my response would be:

A.) Awww thanks for the kind words! We strive to have the best price and I’m happy you think so (Yes, I’m talking to you, hypothetical blog reader who happens to read this!).

B.) We are in Argentina, where the costs are lower than in the USA. A livable wage in Argentina is substantially lower than a livable wage in the USA, for example.

C.) We’re not a for-profit that’s trying to make every penny we can; we’re just a team of artists trying to make sure that you get the best ketubah at the best price! So we’re not trying to find a way to extract a penny from you here are there.

We’re dedicated our vision of, the perfect modern ketubah for every single couple, no matter what their budget is.

Any questions?

Morgan
Team Ketubah