What to Expect: The Timeline of a Wedding Painting
Wedding day is a whirlwind of excitement, jitters, and busyness as the day unfolds. As a bride, you have worked hard for months to make sure everything could come together seamlessly and now it’s time for you to relax. Friends and loved ones have been assigned their miscellaneous jobs here and there, and the vendors are arriving with one thing on their mind: to make their bride happy. As a live wedding painter, my timeline for the wedding day looks a bit different than other vendors, so if you’re unsure of how your day could look when hiring me, I’ll give you the inside scoop!
Arrival and setup:
Before your guests arrive and your ceremony begins, I will show up to your venue about two hours beforehand to set up what I like to call “my studio away from home”. During this time, I will lug my easel, materials, and supplies to a section in the venue that you have picked out for me to perform my magic. After setting everything up, I will walk around your venue capturing pictures and videos of the day and the desired scene you have asked me to paint for the setting of your painting. Once I have all the reference footage I need, I will head back to my little “studio” and begin painting. I paint for about an hour and a half and that’s when your ceremony begins.
The ceremony begins:
Your job as the bride and groom are to stand up there, take in this once in a lifetime moment, and well, get married! My job during this time is to continue to quietly paint in the back and capture any additional footage I might need for your painting depending on what you have requested. If you are looking to have me capture your first kiss, I’ll make sure to be side by side with your photographer to snap the perfect picture of you sealing the deal to translate later onto canvas.
Transition from wedding to the reception:
If your reception is taking place at a different location than that of your ceremony, I will begin to pack up and move with you and the guests. If it’s in the same location, I will stay put and keep painting away! The reception is when things really start to get fun. The guests begin to interact with me and sneak peaks of what I’ve been up to for the last few hours and I begin to sketch out and paint you! I love when guests come over and make remarks about how the bride and the groom in my painting look just like the actual bride and groom. After all, that is the goal! :)
Reception and end of the evening:
By mid-reception, you and your groom will have been painted into the scene and be nearly completely finished. The rest of the reception is dedicated to touchups on the background and adding all the special little details that make your day so unique. Once the entire painting is complete, I will grab your photographer and you and your groom for the big reveal! You’ll be able to add your own little paint marks to the painting as well as take a few photos with the painting to look back on. After that, the painting is varnished, left in the hands of a trusted individual, and I pack up to head home!
