Dustin & Jessica's Journey

This week we have to order our invitations and our Ketubah.

For those of you who don’t know what a Ketubah is, it’s like a contract between us for our marriage. In ancient days, the Ketubah was more like a prenuptial agreement protecting the wife if the man were to die or want a divorce.

Nowadays, it’s a beautiful document where our vows are displayed in text. Ours will probably display both the English and Hebrew (or Aramaic… we haven’t decided yet).

Our officiant suggested we look at a few sites online for our Ketubah.

First, there’s Ketubah Ketubah. She also suggested MP Artworks and Gallery Judaica. After we’ve signed it, the Ketubah will be framed and hung on our wall. We found this really cool one on MP Artworks’ blog.

We’ve decided on this one

Our Ketubah

with this text:

On the _______ day of the week, the ______ day of the month of ________,  in the year Five Thousand Seven Hundred and Seventy One, corresponding to the Fourth day of the month of June, in the year Two Thousand Eleven, here in Carmel, Indiana, the bride, Jessica Frances Kerman, daughter of Pamela and Elliot, and the groom, Dustin Joseph Sparks, son of Delores and Darrin, enter into this mutual covenant as equal partners, loving and supportive companions in life. With this ceremony we affirm our intention to provide for each other the protections and privileges of this sacred union. These rings symbolize our commitment to each other as beloveds and friends before God and these witnesses. May our love provide us with the freedom to be ourselves, and the courage to follow our mutual and individual paths. May our lives be intertwined forever and be blessed with loyalty and devotion. As we share life’s experiences, we vow to create an intimacy that will enable us to express our innermost thoughts and feelings. We vow to respect and treasure each other, and treat one another with kindness. We vow to remain sensitive to each other’s needs, desires and dreams. We vow to share the joys in life and comfort each other in times of sorrow. We vow to support each other in intellectual, physical and spiritual pursuits. We vow to care for each others’ emotional well being with compassion and tenderness. We vow to establish a home committed to the creation of an all-inclusive society. We look forward to building a family filled with love, peace, learning and laughter. We joyfully enter into this covenant and solemnly accept the obligations herein.

Dustin and I are on the hunt for the perfect invitation. I think we both have an idea of what we’d like our invitations to look like, but we haven’t been able to find them at any vendor yet. However, if we design and make our own invitations, then we will need to do the same for the response cards, place cards, programs, thank you notes, etc. Maybe that’s for the best. We did design the Save-the-Dates ourselves, but I’m worried this might be too much to handle.

While hammering out ideas, we found this awesome post on Smashing Magazine about wedding invitations for those who are interested.

Happy Valentine’s Day! It’s a big time for us… Thursday was our four-year anniversary! Since I work late on Thursdays, we decided to celebrate on Friday with a meal at The Melting Pot. Despite some bumps in the road, we had a great night eating fondue and enjoying each others’ company in a quiet setting- a nice change in pace from an otherwise busy life. Dustin also got me a beautiful bouquet of flowers! You can smell them as soon as you walk into the apartment.

Speaking of busy…

On Friday, Sam (my maid-of-honor) and Mom and I went to a salon to try it out for the wedding. The salon is called “Chairity” (spelling intentional), and the reason I chose it is because a portion of the business’s profits go to one of three charities- the Humane Society, Susan Komen Breast Cancer Research, or Riley Children’s Hospital. We get to decide which one we want to donate to also… I’m trying to decide between the Humane Society and breast cancer research. Any thoughts?

Anyway, I got my hair and make-up done at the salon. Here is a couple of shots of the hair…

I really loved the make-up artist, but did not like my hair or the hairstylist that much, so I think we might try another person from Chairity or go someplace else altogether for that. However, Mom, Sam and I are definitely getting Jessica (the make-up artist) to do our make-up on the big day.

We started this website primarily to catalog our adventures together as a couple, beginning – of course – with the wedding. One of the original ideas we had was to give our guests the opportunity to get to know us as a pair and to use the website as an organizational toolbox. One of those tools is being created right now that will allow people to forego their printed ( read: “expensive” ) invitations in favor of a digital email invitation. We will be rolling that out in the next couple of weeks and it should not only give our guests a choice but it will allow everyone, including those who chose to received printed invitations, to RSVP online quickly and easily.

Also, this past week we were invited by a local newspaper ( The Herald Bulletin ) to explain to the world why we created a blog for our wedding and how we plan to use it to make our lives easier as we plan the wedding. A scanned copy of that article can be read below.

The article about us and our blog in The Herald Bulletin