I’ve been creating anniversary ketubot since I first started as a ketubah artist. My most recent one, though, was particularly special, because it was for my own parents’ 50th anniversary!

Imagine: 50 years together! And they’re still in love.

My parents are my heroes.

The ketubah was actually a gift from my mom’s sister, my Aunt Nancy, and her entire family – kids, grandkids and great-grandkids – and Nancy’s special request was to include all of their names on the ketubah.

The only catch: the ketubah was a surprise, so my job was to sleuth around and find out which design my parents liked best! Hmmm… How to do this? At dinner with my parents and a cousin one night, I pretended to be conducting an informal poll of family and friends to find out which ketubah I should feature on my home page.

Sneaky!

My mom said of course I should put my best seller on the home page, but I said I was curious what her favorite was. Without hesitation she said “Oh, Spiral of Life, definitely. But your dad won’t like that one.”

“Dad?” I asked, “which one is your favorite?”

Surprisingly (and thankfully), Spiral of Life was his favorite too!

A few weeks later, while giving a presentation to my synagogue about the art and history of the ketubah, I happened to hold up a copy of my Spiral of Life ketubah. My mom said again “Oh, that one’s my favorite.” But then she said that she wasn’t crazy about the colors!

Yikes!

Time to do some custom colorization magic in Photoshop!

I had the ketubah framed, and Nancy and I managed to keep it secret for months. Last Sunday her whole family presented the ketubah to my astonished parents. They loved it!

Next up: pics of the special handmade book I made as my gift from me and my brother and sister-in-law. Plus pics of the invitations I designed especially for the anniversary party.