Weddings are about creating a new family, but they are also about joining two families together. Displaying family wedding portraits at the reception is a way to spark conversation and make two families feel connected.
1. Talk to the historians in your families and get them on board, you will need their help to get this project done well. It is important to show both sides of the family. More often than not families want to help with the wedding and showing off grandma’s wedding portrait will be fun and bring back good memories.
2. There are several ways to select wedding photos. You can go with anyone in the family who was married and has a picture, or you can go with just direct descendants (i.e your parents and grandparents).
3. Enlist help to hunt down these photos. It will be easiest to leave them all in their frames. If you want a more unified look, or some family photos for your home, take the photos to a copy center and have them duplicated so they can all be displayed in matching frames.
4. Identify who is in each portrait and the date of their wedding. Make labels to sit with each portrait.
5. Display the photos at the wedding reception. These photos not only help connect your older family guests, but provide something for people to focus on. Even your friends, who don’t know your family well, can be entertained by the hat grandma wore to the wedding and the stiff unsmiling faces of your great grandparents’ formal poses.
6. At the end of the reception, assign someone to take them home and make sure they get back to the right people. Make sure those that were kind enough to bring the photos know how they are getting them back.
Source: ehow.com
