Forget wedding photos, try a wedding painting

Artist Jessica Libor likes to say, “I’m the gift people give as a wedding present.”

For $3,000 to $7,000, Libor, a 36-year-old painter from Wayne, will create a portrait of the bride and groom that memorializes the wedding day in a way photographs can’t.

The bonus is that she’s also “entertainment,” set up at the wedding reception with easel, canvas, and oils for guests to enjoy her process — mellower than a band, classier than a photo booth.

“Guests will roam around to check on the progress of the painting starting with the cocktail hour,” Libor said. “They’re tipsy, happy, and appreciative of what I’m doing.

“And then I’ll be handing the couple an heirloom they’ll pass on to their children.”

Popularized by TikTok and old-school word of mouth, live-event painting appears to be growing more popular at weddings.

“It’s still fairly unique,” said wedding planner Donielle Warren, owner of Elegant Events Planning + Design in Northeast Philadelphia. “It’s beautiful and entertaining. When it’s incorporated into a wedding, it’s spectacular and quite unexpected.”

Joan Zylkin, 78, of Center City, is a retired artist who has been painting weddings since 2003. She believes she’s done some of the very first live-event wedding paintings, and said the art form is now “becoming more of a thing.” And, she added, “For painters having a hard time making ends meet, this is a way to create a career.”

In her home studio the other day, Libor displayed a painting of a couple smiling lovingly at each other at their wedding two weeks ago in Media. Because art is permitted to be fanciful rather than factual, Libor included the couple’s cat in the rendering, at their request.

It’s not uncommon for live-event painters to include pets and relatives who’ve passed on, or to exclude guests deemed extraneous.

“I give the bride and groom whatever they want,” Libor said. “Usually, they ask for a painting of the vows being exchanged at the ceremony, or the first dance at the reception.”

To portray the exchange of vows, the artist will snap photographs or shoot a video while the ceremony unfolds, then go to the reception hall and reproduce it. Guests expecting to see a moment from the reception are often surprised at what’s being created, artists say.

Similarly, if the first dance is requested, the artist will arrive at the reception venue two to four hours early to paint the background. When the dance commences, the painter uses a camera to capture it, then pulls out their brushes to memorialize the digital image.

There can be a great deal of “artistic license” at work, said Brittany Branson, 32, of Ashton, Va., who grew up in Central Jersey and has been commissioned to paint numerous Philadelphia weddings outside City Hall or inside the Union League of Philadelphia.

“Sometimes,” said Branson, who charges $4,000 to $6,000, “the couple will love the ceremony space but dislike the aesthetics of the venue. So, I’ll paint the bride and groom in their first-dance pose from the reception, but with the background of the ceremony space.”

Branson added that there’s a Philadelphia-area couple out there now that doesn’t know she’s been booked to capture the details of their upcoming nuptials. “I’ll be the surprise,” Branson said.

Katherine Thomas, a client of Branson’s, said the wedding painting Branson did at the couple’s Cairnwood Estate venue in Bryn Athyn, “blew me away.” Thomas, 33, herself an artist, lives with her husband, Jonathan Hegedus, 32, a member of the military, at Fort Eisenhower in Augusta, Ga.

Originally from Chester Springs (Hegedus is from Royersford), Thomas added that the painting of the couple kissing “is a statement piece that hangs in our living room.” She added, “My wedding guests said Brittany was fun and personable as they talked to her while she painted.”

Usually, the artist won’t complete the work in the typical four to five hours of a reception.

“I just don’t feel the painting is ready at that point,” said Jeffrey Hull, an art teacher at Chestnut Ridge Middle School in Washington Township, Gloucester County. “I take it to my studio, make it perfect, then give it to the couple a short time later.”

One of Hull’s clients, Emily Bereheiko, 25, a kindergarten teacher who lives in Bridgewater, Somerset County, said the painting was a gift from her groom, Kevin, 26, for their wedding on Sept. 29.

“He found the idea on TikTok,” Bereheiko said. “Everybody has wedding photos, but not a painting. Jeff left out the guests that would have been in the pictures, and zoomed in just on us, kissing. He captured our likeness, and our feelings.”