A Challenge With Matting....

[mtbbrian]

I posted this in my blog, but I thought I'd post it here too for some dicussion.
As some of you may recall I am doing these diptych portraits, and am going have as many of my subjects write on the photograph. I have one of these done right now and I am not sure what I think of the results. With this first one, the text was a whopping 56 words long and took up four lines, which eaqualed about four inches. As you can imagine it is quite a challenge to matte such photograph. See the picture below.
I normally use a bright white matte, but I am wondering if a another color wuld be better, something like black or grey.
Anything anyone has to offer would be great!
Thanks!!
Brian