Today we’d like to introduce you to Talia Saghian Morrow.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Talia. So, let’s start at the beginning, and we can move on from there.
I went to school for design and architecture in New York and headed down a traditional career in architecture for a bit. Somewhere along the way I worked as a graphic designer and did some marketing and web design. During that time, I needed a creative outlet that would intrigue me inspire my creative soul.
In 2016, a friend of mine was getting married and needed a Ketubah (a traditional Jewish wedding document). We’d spoken about what she wanted in a Ketubah for some time, and I asked her if she’d let me take a crack at it. It was that Ketubah, and then another and another, that inspired me to start the Ketubist.
Now I run this business with my husband, and we get better and better at helping our couples put together things that are meaningful to them. The act of creating Ketubahs is now a part of who we are and engaging our internal creative souls.
In February of 2018, we formally launched the Ketubist because we saw that many couples needed someone who could make them something really personal and unique. Our mission is to help couples create the most meaningful, personal, and beautiful Ketubahs for their special day.
Has it been a smooth road?
Starting a business is always hard, especially a creative one. Believing that you’re talented enough to do this thing and be a part of someone’s life in such a significant way is really hard. And there’s always that little guy in the back of your head that tells you that you’re not good enough. My moments of self-doubt have been terrible and really hard to make it through, but I’m still here. And I’m incredibly grateful to my friends and family for helping me get here.
Then there are the usual struggles, marketing, trying to figure out what to charge for your work, or how to deal with the guy at the post office who doesn’t know when or if your 5-layer papercut will arrive and in one-piece, and whether or not insurance will cover it coming apart. Oh, and when you have to go to five different paper stores to find just the right shade of green.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into The Ketubist story. Tell us more about the business.
For over 2000 years, Ketubahs have been used as a part of the Jewish wedding ceremony. Traditionally, they were filled with legal language (of course patriarchal), that dictated the requirements of the man to provide for his wife, and what he was being given in a dowry, etc.
In the last hundred years or so, there have been new Ketubah texts created, new techniques used to create the document, but its presence is unchanged. We believe that there is still some room for the concept of a Ketubah to become more than it currently is.
Our Ketubahs are the marriage of the physical and spiritual essences of a couple. While a Ketubah is a classically legal document, we believe it can be something really powerful. We help couples create a legal document that transcends its requirement by-law, and becomes a requirement by-love.
We’re really proud of the work we’ve done because it’s completely tailored to our couples. While we do offer some standard Ketubahs, the bulk of what we do is intensely personal design work. We spend time with our couples to get to know them, their interests and styles.
And by the time we’ve gotten to know each other, we have a pretty good handle on how to create something that they’ll really enjoy. It why we like to say that we ‘weave the physical and spiritual together in a way that binds partners and their histories together, forever.’
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
There are a bunch of changes coming in the next few years. I think people care more nowadays about the text that is being used. As people love differently today than they did in yesteryear, we want to be there for every couple, no matter how traditional or not their Ketubah text will be.
We’re also finally seeing modern-styles come to the forefront, instead of the classic Judaic style used in the past 40 or 50 years. While that style is beautiful, I don’t know if today’s hipsters and minimalists really see themselves putting it up in their homes.
I think there’s going to be a lot of what my husband calls ‘democratization of the marketplace.’ Right now, most people get their Ketubahs from Judaica stores or online marketplaces, sometimes from artists themselves. But its all about a couple looking for ‘what’s available,’ and then settling on the thing that makes them the happiest. I think there’s really space for something that is more about direct consumer happiness and user-directed co-creation.
Contact Info:
- Website: TheKetubist.com
- Phone: 713-851-8292
- Email: TheKetubist@gmail.com
- Instagram: @Ketubist
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theketubist
Image Credit:
DPSphotog: by Danna Shapiro
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