liv | Addendum: wedding contract text

I generally disapprove of pictures of text on the internet, so let me take the opportunity to write out what our contract actually says, while I'm talking about it.

The main text, the agreement we signed in front of witnesses, which is based on the form of a Jewish ketubah, goes like this:

WE, JV and RB, on 20^th May 2012, agree to join our lives together.

We will give equal priority to each other's happiness. We will make decisions to promote our collective benefit.

We will support and encourage each other. We will regard each other with compassion and kindness. We will help each other to deal with weaknesses and bad decisions, and never expect perfection.

As we enjoy telling each other about our lives, we will value communication. We will listen carefully and assume good faith. We will avoid becoming distant through fear of talking about difficult things. We will understand and forgive if it takes some time to be able to handle a particular conversation.

We will cherish each other as physical and sexual people.

We will nurture important relationships and connections in each other's lives. We will accept our in-laws as family, and share responsibility for their practical needs. We will work to build a relationship as a couple that complements existing and developing friendships and welcomes those dear to us.

We will put each other first. We will value our shared history and ongoing connection over the excitement of novelty.

We will respect each other's financial independence, while our commitment will enable us to take on joint obligations. We will not make financial decisions that favour one of us at the expense of the other, whether during the relationship or after it comes to an end. We will provide material support if life circumstances require it.

We will support each other in our careers, our beliefs, our communities, and our hobbies, in the parts of life we share and the parts we don't.

Basically what we were trying to do was concentrate on practical commitments to how we want our relationship to be, things we will do, not poetic descriptions of how much we love eachother. So some of it may seem a bit unromantic in that it mentions things like finances and the possibility that the relationship may one day end. That's very much based on the ketubah, which although they are a romantic symbol now in Jewish weddings, originally were a legal contract that meant a divorced wife could enforce penalties against her ex-husband if he left her destitute. And we didn't spend quite as much time figuring out exactly what we wanted to say as we might have hoped, but they were definitely good conversations to have round about the time of getting married, making sure we had clearly matched expectations of eachother and the relationship. Also the dear friends who married us,

angelofthenorth and

hadassah, as well as

hatam_soferet herself, helped us to tweak the text so that it was clear and not too prosy.

The owl and the pussycat are from the Lear poem, which is silly, but also about marriage. And I collect owls and

jack is somewhat like a big fluffy cat. They are holding up a banner containing a verse from a poem I've always liked by the early 20^th century Hebrew poet Tchernikowsky, where the poet goes on dreaming in spite of the cynicism and mockery of the world. The verse we chose is about friendship:

Laugh if you like; I believe in friendship
I believe in the heart I'll find
The heart I hope for, in hope so tender
In joy, in sorrow we'll be one in mind

The microcalligraphy round the edges is too small to read in that image, but it's lovers' knots made out of one strand of the Song of Songs in English, and one strand made out of the Mishnah about the laws of marriage in Hebrew. There's a Fibonacci spiral in there, which I think was

mathcathy's idea originally, it's something that represents

jack's interest in maths and my interest in biology. And most of the rest is just cute animals that

hatam_soferet felt like drawing, though the sheep peeking out from behind the illuminated capital, who you see in my wedding icon, is a pun on my name, Rachel. It deliberately doesn't really look like a real sheep, but rather the stylized sheep that

pseudomonas used to draw as my name-sigil, and which

hatam_soferet originally made real as a tea cosy, which I still use, you'll have seen it if you've had tea in my house. And now it's in our wedding contract.