Abby and Ben, Melrose Market Studios, Seattle

Yawitz Wedding, Melrose Market Studios, Seattle, oil painting, 24 x 30

When I painted the holiday Jubilee at the WAC, I captured in the crowd a woman in a black and white chevron skirt. It was a bold print, and stood out clearly in the room, and in the painting. Someone recognized her in my scribbling, found her in another room at the party, and told her she was in my painting. She immediately came to see.

So, just a few months later, I painted her wedding.

Abby and Ben’s reception was at Melrose Market Studios, a renovated former grocery in a red brick and Douglas fir timbered 1927 building. This is classic Seattle.

It was a cozy family style affair, complete with darling blonde flower girls, dressed in white.

Flower girls and their mother, Yawitz Wedding (detail)

Painting A Las Vegas Valentine’s Day Wedding

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Many people come to Vegas to get married. Some people come to Vegas to live. This bride is a lifelong resident, and her groom altered his career to join her here.

Both wedding and reception were at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, on the strip.

As I left my hotel on my way to the Mandarin, someone in the elevator asked me if I was a magician. I was wearing a tux and bow tie, with my mustache waxed, and carrying an assortment of bags and boxes. I think I replied something like “well, my dog thinks I am.”  But when I arrived at the ballroom, I realized this day I was to be a magician.

The Robbins-Atkinson Wedding, Las Vegas

It is common in the wedding biz to have a ceremony in the same room as the reception, with the room “flipped” after the ceremony, during cocktails. The challenge at this one was a sliding wall dividing the ceremony end of the room from the dance floor end— with me on the end where I would eventually have a close view of the couple as they danced. But I could not see the end with the chuppuh, because of the wall. This was a first. But I have a maxim for overcoming impossibilities: there is always a way.

Event planner Andrea Eppolito had designed a breathtaking room, and I took some pictures for reference. But the part I need to paint first isn’t done well from photos: I always start with the lines and perspective of the room, as I see it from my easel. I bend the perspective a little, like a wide angle lens, especially in a long room such as this— and for an extra wide painting (this one is 24 by 40 inches). I establish this with the lines of the ceiling. Fortunately, the modern chandeliers were mirror images of each other at each end. I could transpose those in my head. But the real answer to seeing the lines came from drawings: specifically, the architectural plan of the room. I asked the designer for a printout of the room layout, and I taped it to my easel. I also did some perspective sketches from the other side of the dividing wall, and voilà, I was able to construct the room. Just like magic.

But the real magic of the evening was the beautiful couple, who dominate the painting.

A Back Yard Wedding Reception

Steve and Holly's Back Yard Reception, by Sam Day, oil on canvas, 24 x 30

The third time’s the charm, they always say. Or is it good news comes in threes?  This groom was the last of three siblings to marry, and I painted each of their weddings. (Earlier this year I completed another set of three siblings’ weddings.) I love it when families carry on traditions! The first sibling in this family was one of the first weddings I ever painted, about ten years ago (before I started this blog, so sorry for no link); the second was at a great Snohomish county family farm retreat a couple of summers ago

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In this case, the couple had been previously married in a private ceremony, and in July they threw this intimate reception in their own back yard. The barbecue was great, the faces were familiar, and the children played on the lawn. And I captured it on canvas for posterity.

Stiebers-Edwards Wedding, Alderbrook Resort, Union, Washington, August 17, 2013

This was the fourth time I’ve painted at this great retreat, and I look forward to many more.

The two favorite ways for guests to arrive at Alderbrook Resort are by float plane, or by yacht. We vendors take the third, least expensive option.

We boarded a ferry in Seattle, then drove. The Kitsap Peninsula is shaped like the head of a cuttlefish, cradled on the east by the arms and fingers of Puget Sound, and on the west by the long, bent arm of Hood Canal. Some fifteen miles from Bremerton, we reached the muddy tip of the broad Canal (technically a fjord), and tooled fifteen miles more past the vacation homes that line its oyster caked beaches. It’s a woody, meandering road, smelling of fir, cedar, and saltwater. The hundred year old Alderbrook is suddenly there on the right.

You could say this wedding was a marriage of blondes and beards. I got to paint plenty of both. There were the two year old twin boys, dressed like the little Dutch boy on the paint can, with blue pacifiers, who walked down the path bearing a sign that read “Here Comes the Bride;” there were the blond, freckled flower girls, in sparkly silver-grayish taupe summer dresses that easily accommodated their spontaneous soccer playing, and their sparkly feathery pink flapper skull caps pinned at a tilt. There were feathers in the flower arrangements too— the bride’s family supplies hundreds of thousands of chicken eggs a day for the region’s breakfast tables. I guess with that many chickens, you get feathers everywhere.

The well-whiskered groom, who’s family is in the boat business, turned out to be an amiable conversationalist, as he stood for his portrait. His equally well whiskered best man/brother stated in his toast that the groom could “talk to anybody about anything— he could talk to you for half an hour about your belt buckle.”

It was an unhurried wedding, in an unhurried place. It feels like a vacation every time I paint here. You can bet I swam in the Canal before we left.

Jackowski-Wainscott Wedding, Private Farm, Snohomish County, Washington

About an hour’s drive north of Seattle, there is a small farm growing hay and working a few cattle in bucolic pastures on either side of the Snohomish River. The river flows sleepily here, not many miles from where it empties into Puget Sound. Pebble beaches and cottonwood trees line its winding banks. And on a bend in the river next to such a beach, the family maintains their private campground, shaded by cedars, pines, and those enormous cottonwoods.

They gather here every summer for a reunion, lining up their RVs and tents around an open air dance hall, made from the timbers of the old dairy silo. A carefully stoked bonfire burns in a steel half-ton mortar from a nearby rock quarry, once used to crush local stone. The kids twirl sparklers at the river’s edge, guided by tiki torches from camp to beach and back.  Sloppy Joes and s’mores are the traditional cuisine.

This year, one tent was decorated differently: the words “Just Married” were spelled out on a hand made sign.

The farm is connected to the bride’s family. I am connected to the groom by way of having painted his brother’s wedding in 2006. None of us can remember how the first couple found out about my services.

I have been to some very elaborate weddings. I’ve been to weddings where a lot of money and effort is spent on creating an appearance of simplicity. But I’ve never painted at such a straight-forward, come-as-you-are, downright joyous celebration. The groom’s mother made an arbor of curly maple and flowers from Michael’s. The bride’s brother went out and got a license so he could marry them. They said the plans grew from there; four groomsmen wore sand colored suits with coral ties and boutonnieres, four bride’s maids wore coral dresses and teal necklaces. The groom’s ten year old son wore a teal bow tie and suspenders with a white shirt and shorts that matched the men’s suits.

As many couples do, they wrote their own vows. The groom’s were so earnest and thoughtful as to inspire me to strive to be a better husband. One line of advice from the officiator will always stay with me. He urged them to support one another’s dreams, “and if those dreams don’t come true, keep supporting until another one comes along.”

And when they kissed, the party began. The dancing went well into the long, warm, starlit night. But by the time of this writing, the couple will have decamped for their honeymoon in Maui.

Garza-Ginther Wedding Reception, The Ruins, Seattle

This couple, both local television producers, tied the knot in a very private ceremony in Paris, in July. But they wanted to bring home a bit of Europe for their family and friends, so they held a stateside reception at The Ruins in Seattle. This hidden venue is tucked away in an old industrial space. Knowing the address, one finds a concrete building with a non-descript metal door, and a doorbell. But once inside, we are transported, as it seems, to a villa in France. There are vine draped courtyards, and room after room of elegant furnishings and art. The most formal of the dining rooms is framed in gilded trim, and features floor to ceiling murals which took artist Jennifer Carrasco three years to create.

 This is the third time I’ve painted in this room, and I hope to do it again. The place is magic.

Having dressed my canvas in some semblance of Ms. Carrasco’s nature scenes, half a dozen chandeliers, and some Venetian lamp posts, I was ready by the time the guests arrived to paint the most important features: the people. As they trickled in from cocktails in the adjacent room (to the right of my canvas), I caught a six year old girl peeking through the curtains. She was the first. Then came the couple’s teen age daughters, preteen son, and the array of parents, grandparents, siblings, and friends. Off in the distance, behind the cake, the Prague-born pianist Luke Doubravsky tickles all the keys. And shimmering in the center are the sophisticated couple.