My husband and I got married in August of 2014. We wanted a mix between a traditional wedding, and something as unique and different as we are. So when we reached the point of planning the unity portion of our ceremony, we spent days researching different ideas. Pinterest offered a lot of great inspiration, but we couldn’t find anything we liked. We knew we wanted something that we could keep for ever and display in our home. After days brain storming and walking through Hobby Lobby, I finally came up with a rough idea.
We bought three canvas letters to make our monogram. Our wedding colors were pink and navy blue, so Zac painted his “Z” navy and I painted my “A” pink. Then we took the large “C” and painted the left side blue and the right side pink. It took us a while to get them to blend in a way that we liked, but we eventually got them perfect. Then we bought two rectangular canvases. We wanted our parents and grandparents to be involved in the unity ceremony, so we decided to make a shape for all of them. Zac’s family shapes went on one canvas, and my shapes went on the other. We drew them in lightly with pencil. Then we picked a palette of four colors: pink, navy blue, purple and light blue. We figured out the best lay out of colors and assigned each family member a shape and a color. By figuring that out yourself before hand, you take away the guess work of what colors will be next to each other.
We told our family members not to worry about painting in the lines or being neat. How ever it ended up would show every person’s character in their shape. As each grandparent and parent made their entrance , they painted their shape and then sat down. Their were two shapes painted prior to the day of our wedding. Zac’s grandma passed earlier in the year so we had his grandpa paint her shape. And my grandpa was unable to leave the nursing home to be there with us, so we visited him prior to the big day and he painted his shape beautifully. Each painted canvas represented the people who made us who we are today.
When it came time for the unity part of our ceremony, Zac and I very carefully brought the two canvases together. This represented our two families becoming one. Then we took the canvas letter “C” we painted and placed it over top. (There was no way to hang the small letters, so we didn’t bother with them that day.) This was to symbolize us building our lives on the foundation our families had made for us. There were a few things we didn’t account for, like the navy blue and the purple looking almost the same next to each other. There was also the small issue with the “C”. We had put a nail in the board that the canvases were hung on where we wanted to hang the “C”, but we didn’t account for the space the canvases would take up. So when we tried to hang it, there wasn’t enough nail sticking out, so we had to sit it on top. It still looked beautiful.
Aft
er we got settled into our new apartment, I hot glued the two canvases together and then hot glued the canvas letters on top. They sort of blended in to the canvases in some spots so I painted a white boarder around each letter. Now our unity painting hangs in our living room, above our TV. It is a wonderful reminder of our commitment to each other and the best day of our lives and we get to look at it every day.
I am so glad we didn’t give up on coming up with a unique and new idea because this was one of the most talked about parts of our wedding. It is one of our most cherish possessions and it makes our living room look great!
Hopefully our Unity Canvas has inspired you to come up with a great unity idea, or to give our idea a try! Either way, good luck!
**Update: We finally put decided to put the money towards two canvases to compliment our Unity Canvas. We purchased canvas prints of us with each of our families to hang next to the Unity Canvas. We now have two photos of all the people who helped paint our beautiful master piece. I find it even more meaningful now, and it looks amazing.
Once Upon My Fairy Tale 