How to commission a wedding portrait from your photographs

A wedding portrait is the commission with the best story and the worst photographs: the moment you actually want on the wall was captured by a guest, on a phone, in low light, with a stranger's shoulder in the frame. None of that is fatal. What decides whether the finished canvas looks like the day you remember is which files you send, which composition you approve, and how much of the room you decide to paint.

Why a wedding portrait is a different commission

Four things change what you should do first.

• It is event photography, not portrait photography. A wedding photographer covers two hundred guests and one afternoon, not one frame built for painting — expect harsh reception flash, dark ceremony light and heads far apart in the frame.
• There is no reshoot. The dress, the flowers and the light through the church window existed for one afternoon. Whatever survives in the files is what a painter has to work from.
• The picture everyone loves is usually a wide shot. The frame with the whole venue and both families is not the frame with two large faces. A painter can crop, but only so far: below roughly 500 pixels across a face the likeness becomes a guess rather than a portrait.
• Two subjects cost more than twice one. Two faces have to be right at the same time — proportion, height difference, the way one stands slightly behind the other. That is why a two-subject canvas costs more than a one-subject canvas of the same size.

Start with the photographer's files, not your camera roll

Before you scroll through your phone, ask the person who was paid to be there. Most couples receive a gallery of 400 to 800 edited images — sharper than anything a guest captured, and often lit well enough to paint directly.

What to ask your photographer

• The high-resolution files, not the sharing gallery. Look for 3000 pixels on the long edge or more. Images in a social-media gallery are compressed to a fraction of that and lose exactly the detail a painter needs.
• Written permission to have a painting made. A print release usually permits printing, not painting: under copyright law a painting made from a photograph is a derivative work of it, as the US Supreme Court confirmed in Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith (2023). Almost every photographer says yes to a one-off private commission — put the yes in an email. If the rights are genuinely unclear, we decline the commission and refund in full.
• Five to ten candidate frames, not one. Ask for the two or three where both faces are sharp and evenly lit, plus wide shots of the ceremony space if you want the venue in the background.

If all you have is a phone photo

Guest photographs work if the eyes are sharp and the light is even. Send the original file — never a screenshot, never a frame that has been through a heavy filter, because a warm filter shifts the palette and the painter then has to guess which ivory the dress actually is. A phone file of 3000 pixels is plenty for a face; anything under 600 pixels across the face cannot become a true likeness, and a studio that takes the money anyway is selling a generic couple.

White and cream dresses are the one thing phone cameras routinely ruin: reception flash blows silk into a flat shape and the bodice detail disappears. If your best frames are like that, send a daylight portrait from the same day as well, however mediocre — we take the moment from the flash frame and the dress from the daylight frame.

When no single frame has both faces right

This is normal — common enough to be routine studio work rather than a favour. His face is good in one image, hers in the next, and the pose you love is in a third. Compositing them into one composition and matching the light so the halves agree adds $60–$70 to the commission.

You see the result before any paint is mixed. Every commission begins with a digital mock-up showing the exact crop, who sits where, the background, and how much of the frame each face occupies. Nothing is painted until you say go, and the mock-up is never a line item on the invoice. The full sequence is on our how it works page.

Choosing the style: the formal portrait, or the moment

Three versions of a wedding painting come up again and again, and they age differently.

1. The formal double portrait

Heads, shoulders and hands on a plain or softly washed background, both faces large in the frame. It is the safest commission and the one that still looks right in twenty years, because it is a portrait rather than a record of a party. At 16 × 20 in each face gets roughly a hand's width of canvas — enough for bone structure, a necklace and the way one of them tilts their head.

2. The scene — ceremony, first dance, the venue

More atmosphere, smaller faces. A scene needs 24 × 36 in or larger, because the venue, the guests and the couple all have to sit inside one frame. It records the day rather than the people, and it is the right answer when the place itself is the story. Be honest about the trade: at 20 × 24 in with a whole barn behind you, faces become pen portraits.

3. Two separate canvases

One for each set of parents, painted from the same reference, usually 12 × 16 in each. It is the elegant solution when both families want something, and it doubles the cost — each canvas is a full painting, not a copy.

Size and price: the numbers that matter

A wedding portrait is almost always two subjects, so the second column of our published table is the one to read. Prices are fixed before the first brushstroke and include worldwide shipping.

Our default recommendation is 16 × 20 in at $499: the first size where two faces read as portraits rather than as figures in a picture, it hangs comfortably above a console or bed, and it needs no frame — the canvas is painted to the edges so it can hang as it arrives. Move to 24 × 36 in only when you want the aisle or the coastline in the painting as well as the couple. If the canvas must fit a wall you already have, measure it and send a phone photograph of the space with your wedding files; the furniture-width rule is set out in our wall-art sizing guide.

The timeline, and the anniversary arithmetic

From approved mock-up to doorstep is five to seven weeks: three to five weeks of painting, layer over dry layer; one to three days for the mock-up and your approval; three to five business days in transit. Rush delivery compresses the painting to three weeks for $90, and there is a floor beneath that — oil must dry between layers, and a canvas hurried through the drying never quite settles.

The useful arithmetic runs backwards: a gift for a tenth anniversary in early December means ordering by mid-October, plus a week if the painting crosses an ocean and another if you want it framed locally first. If the wedding has already happened — last month or twenty-five years ago — there is no deadline at all, and that describes most of our wedding commissions. September to December is the studio's busiest window, so book as soon as the files are in hand.

What should never appear as an extra

Four things are always part of the price: the digital mock-up and your approval before painting begins; the first round of adjustments once the canvas is finished; progress photographs while it is on the easel; and shipping — rolled in a rigid moisture-proof tube, tracked and insured, worldwide. Duty or import VAT charged by your own country is the one thing no studio can cover. Genuine additions are few, and each is quoted in writing before anything is painted: compositing of the source photographs ($60–$70), a second subject, a rush commission ($90), and a fully painted venue background where it adds real studio time rather than a wash of colour.

Framing, without shipping wood and glass

The painting arrives rolled, and any local framer will stretch it onto stretcher bars within a few days for roughly the price of a takeaway meal. For a wedding portrait that is usually the better arrangement: a framer standing in your room chooses better than we can from another continent, and you avoid paying to move wood and glass across the world. A slim float frame in natural wood or black suits most wedding canvases; if you would prefer it to arrive ready to hang, the order form carries several finishes.

Splitting the cost, and keeping it a surprise

Wedding portraits are often bought by several people at once — two sets of parents, siblings, the wedding party. On payment, commissions up to $600 are settled in full when you approve the mock-up, and larger commissions can be split 50% on approval and 50% before dispatch, so nobody fronts the whole amount alone. On organisation, decide early who holds the invoice and who receives the shipping notification.

If it is meant to stay secret, the safest version is a card describing the commission — “a painting of 12 June 2021, from the photographs you choose” — rather than a finished canvas chosen for someone else's wall. Collecting references quietly is easy, and the mock-up stage is where the recipient can be brought in.

How to start

Send five to ten photographs — the photographer's files if you have them, the phone frames if you do not, including the ones you think are too dark — to [email protected]. You will get back a fixed price, a size recommendation for your wall and an honest verdict on the source files, usually within 24 hours, and nothing is charged until you approve both. If you would rather see numbers first, ask for a fixed price on the quote page, or tell us about the day through the commission form. Finished two-subject work is in the portrait gallery, and the photographers' questions we hear most often are answered in our guide to choosing reference photos.