German Wedding Activity – Paint your own portrait

As part of my planning process, I am doing what probably every bride or groom to be does – thinking about aspects of weddings past attended that I especially liked! For me, this also means integrating various American and German wedding traditions. Most of my readers know about American traditions, so I am going to highlight a few neat ideas that the Germans have, that I haven't yet seen racing through the blog-o-sphere. The first one is the idea of a Communal Painting.

I saw this at a friend's wedding, and I thought it was the perfect way to get guests involved and to have something lovely to take home at the end of the night. The idea is to take a blank canvas, sketch a drawing of you as a couple in a light pencil, set out brushes and paints, and let the guests complete the picture! I'll tell you, the result is really stunning! It's probably a good idea to have someone who can draw well to sketch the picture of you, and it is also advisable for that person to sort of "supervise" the painting and add touch-ups every now and then. But then again, as long as you aren't too concerned with getting a "professional" result, let people cut loose! Here's a quick step-by-step how-to.


1) Purchase a blank canvas of a reasonable size (this one was about 36 x 48in)

2)Using a photo as a guide, sketch the two of you onto the canvas. It is best here to only include the faces, and make sure to outline hair, eyes, glasses, etc.

3) Set up the canvas in a corner of your reception hall with a sign reading "Wedding Portrait – help us create a painting of the wedding couple!"

4) Set up brushes, paints, water and paper towels


5) Let your guests paint! If you wish, ask a more artistically-minded friend to man the table and help people or "touch up" mistakes – although this is not necessary

6) Hang the finished product up in your new married home, and cherish the memories of that night and your guests forever!

Let me know if you try this, I'd love to see pictures of other creations!