Under the Chuppah

This past winter, my dear friend Danielle asked me to design and paint the chuppah for her wedding. In Jewish wedding ceremonies, the couple gets married under the chuppah, a canopy that symbolizes the home they will build together. I was honored to be asked, and the weight of the task before me was tempered by the seemingly endless amount of time until her wedding.


Despite the inherent stress of weddings, this somehow ended up being a low stress project. At the time, I was unable to stop painting tree ring patterns, and as I brainstormed for Danielle's chuppah, the tree rings became the obvious centerpiece of the design. Danielle and her her husband Jon are both very connected with nature--in fact, Jon proposed to Danielle with the ring hidden inside of a walnut shell he had crafted into a tiny ring box. Many other symbolic elements played into the design, none of which I can accurately describe here without sounding overly cheesy.

The chuppah looked beautiful at the ceremony, and most importantly, the bride and groom love it. *Better images to come as soon as the professional photos are available!