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Creating your wedding registry can be so much fun, but it can also be incredibly stressful. You don’t want to forget anything, and there’s so much you are expected to add! You don’t want to leave your wedding guests with too few choices, but you also don’t want to feel like you’re asking for far too much, fearful of looking greedy or entitled.
It can feel really complicated, to say the least. What are you supposed to register for? Are there things you absolutely shouldn’t register for? One rule of thumb that you can allow to guide you while creating your wedding registry is that you should add gifts that really matter to your list, gifts that will stand the test of time. That means different things to different people, of course, but one thing that pretty much every couple ever won’t regret receiving is a custom portrait. You can click here to learn more about custom portraiture in our modern age.
Modern Wedding Registry Etiquette
In this day and age, a lot of couples combine their households before they get married. It means that they’ve already got the things that they need to start their life together because they already have! We’re also realizing as a society that more stuff isn’t always a good thing. Minimalism is totally having a moment. It means that a lot of couples have no desire to receive more kitchen gadgetry than they already have.
Traditional wedding gifts tend to fall in that ‘household items’ category, and many of the more traditional gifts aren’t items that modern couples have any desire to own. As our ideas of relationships and our ideas of what’s ‘necessary’ to run a household have changed, what’s acceptable to add to a wedding registry has, too.
For example, once it was an absolute insult to your guests to ask for money for your wedding. Really, it was an insult and a giant etiquette error to ask for anything that wasn’t a physical item. ‘Things’, generally things you could purchase at a large national retailer like JC Penney or Sears, were the only real acceptable asks on a wedding registry.
Today? Registries to fund honeymoon travel and cash accounts set up to help fund a down payment on a new house are totally the norm!
How to Ask for a Custom Portrait for Your Wedding
Traditionally, wedding guests who were shopping for gifts would enter a physical store and purchase a gift from a list created by the couple in the store. Couples would make sure they had a registry at stores that out-of-town guests would be able to easily access, and maybe at a local store or two, as well.
Today, you can create an online gift registry that not only allows guests to choose their gifts for you online from various sites, it might also allow them to give you gift cards, cash gifts, or contribute to a honeymoon fund or another special something that you’re saving for. The Knot’s wedding registry is one example of a combined registry.
With this new way to register for gifts, you can ask for anything you want. You aren’t so limited to the items you see on a store shelf, which is great if you’re hoping to receive personalized gifts or very specific presents like a portrait to adorn the walls of your home.
If you’re sold on getting a custom portrait done, one way you can add this to your registry is by asking for a gift certificate to a site like Paint Your Life. It allows one of your guests to give you an incredibly special gift that will turn out exactly like you’d hoped it would.
Got a Gift Certificate? Here’s How You Order Your Custom Portrait
The first thing you’ll want to decide is what you want to have painted and which medium suits you and your home the best. Some couples might opt to have an engagement picture done in watercolor since they’re a little more casual. Other couples might want to have an oil painting wedding portrait created to their specifications as oil tends to look a little more formal and might match the feel of wedding pictures better.
You can also choose from pastels, pencil, charcoal, and acrylic mediums. Whatever photo you decide to have painted, you’ll want to make sure that it’s a good quality photo. More detail in the photo gives your artist more to work with as they’re creating your masterpiece.
Next, you’ll want to find an artist whose work you love. You can search through the galleries on Paint Your Life to find an artist who has created pieces that appeal to you. As you go through the examples, simply hover a portrait you love and a button will appear that says, “I want this artist to paint my photo!”
When you’ve chosen your artist, you can communicate with them to express how you want the portrait to look. You can add in details from your big day, remove or simplify the background so that the portrait’s subjects stand out more, adjust the lighting so that a candid photograph appears more like a professional sitting, or anything else you’d like.
Once your artist has finished your portrait, you’ll receive an online proof. This allows you to make sure your custom painting is everything you wished it would be and more. If something isn’t hitting quite right, the artist can make changes to make sure you’re happy with the final product.
Why Portraiture?
Portraits are a great addition to any home décor. The fantastic part about custom portraits is that you can choose the subject, medium, and kind of direct the overall feel of your new piece of art so that it matches your taste perfectly.
It allows you to create the perfect piece for any room in your home, designing it for the specific space. In the end, you wind up with a heartwarming portrait to commemorate the best moment of your life and the people you love the most.
03042020194842_291395 4×5 original v1 from PaintYourLife.com on Vimeo.
