Jewish Weddings

ketubah witnesses

Can you have 3 witnesses instead of 2 for your Ketubah signing? My fiance has 3 close friends that he could not have in the wedding party and wants to honor all of them. They are all jewish and not related him.

Re: ketubah witnesses

  • Two witnesses are what is required by Jewish law.  Your rabbi might allow a third witness, you should ask him/her.  Is there a place for the third person to sign on your ketubah?  Many ketubot have two slots for signing.

    Mazel tov on your engagement!
  • Talk to your Rabbi about what is required and if he has any ideas about how to honor more people.  For us, we're required two men (surprising at a conservative shul, but ok) but we can have others sign as well, as long as the first two signatories are men.  He even said that we can have a matte around it for everyone at our wedding to sign if we want.  
    I know you said they aren't related to him, make sure they aren't related to each other as well.
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  • If your rabbi says okay and your ketubah has enough space, I don't see why not. My Conservative rabbi actually asked if we wanted MORE people to sign it, since there were so many spaces on the ketubah, so it's signed by me, my husband, four of our friends, the rabbi and the cantor!
  • we chose to have four witnesses for our ketubah, and after some discussion with our rabbi he agreed to allow it.  definitely check with your rabbi first.

    in terms of adding more lines for additional witnesses; on our ketubah, the pre-printed lines for each witness were quite long, so we just had two witnesses per line.  if you're having a ketubah custom printed  for you, as most are:  (ie. the image is standard but they will be adding your names, the location and date to the printed text), they should be able to add additional lines into the signature area if there isn't already room. 

    we ordered ours from ketubah ketubah.  we asked for an additional line of text to be added, and they were happy to do that for us.  

     
  • 2dBride2dBride member
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    A ketubah is legally required to have at least two witnesses, but will not be invalidated by more.  I've heard of some couples who disagree with the Orthodox position not allowing women to be witnesses, but still want to make sure the ketubah would be accepted by the Orthodox, having two male and two female witnesses.  That way, the women get the honor of being witnesses, but if the Orthodox later disregard their signatures, the ketubah is sitll considered valid.
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