Weddingbee Blog

As promised, it’s time to share our guestbook!

Originally, I looked into having a Quaker Marriage Certificate made. While the options were beautiful and very stress-free, I couldn’t justify the cost - the quotes I received were anywhere from $150-300.

So, I decided I would try to DIY our QMC. I’m creative enough, and I know my way around a paint brush - or so I thought. My first two attempts were just, well, blah. I wanted our QMC to be beautiful and colorful and something we would enjoy looking at for years to come.

A few months passed, and with the wedding day countdown ticking down, I knew I needed to revisit this project - and pronto. Since my hand-painted florals weren’t working out in a way that I liked, I started to think outside the box a bit - and here’s what I came up with:

What do you think? Hopefully those look like purple hydrangeas to you and not just huge round blobs. Here’s a close-up of the painting before I added the wording:

If you’re curious about the technique, it’s actually really easy! The key? Q-tips. Yep. Lots and lots of Q-tips. Just dip it in some paint and swirl onto your canvas. Use different colors to get some gradation and add interest.

Perfect? Of course not. But to me it’s pretty enough and actually ended up fitting into our wedding theme well (remember the purple hydrangeas on our invites?)!

Now for the important part of the document, the wording!

Burger and I worked on this together by pulling from our own thoughts and vows as well as from here and there around the web. Most people just use their actual vows, but since we chose not to write our own vows, we wanted this document to be a little more personal.

It says:

On this, the twenty-seventh day of March in the year two thousand ten,
in State College, Pennsylvania
Deanna & Daniel
took each other by the hand and made the following promise:

“I vow to be your friend, and to remember that our love blossomed from friendship. I will provide constant support to help you become the person you want to be, and I promise to always cherish our time together. I promise to appreciate you and the beauty you bring to my life. I vow to nourish our love and be true to you in good times and bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life.”

Celebrating this commitment to each other, we set our hands below

_____________     _____________

And as loving friends and family,
we set our hands in caring witness and support of this union

And that was that!