I’ve noticed some bloggers post a deep-thought-issue every Thursday, and look to get some advice/thoughts/words of wisdom from readers. I have never written a ‘thoughts for Thursday’ post before, so I guess I’ll start today with this highly intellectual and thought-provoking topic: Displaying wedding photos in your house- when should they come down?
FatJ and I have been married 7 and one half years. It will be 8 years in July. Ever since we’ve been married, we’ve had some of our professional wedding photos prominently displayed in our home. In our first house our wedding picture was prominently displayed on the living room wall and was the first thing you saw when you walked up the stairs. We had a lovely little montage of our wedding photo, along with a photo of both sets of our parents on our wedding day. When we moved into our current house, which was four years into the marriage, I decided our wedding pictures did not need to be displayed front and center in our living room or dining room, so I arranged the exact same montage from the old house in a fine and prominent position in our hallway. Where they still hang to this day. Now, it’s not that I don’t want to be reminded of our blessed union all those years ago, it’s just that, well…I no longer LOVE our wedding photos. Let me rephrase: I still love our OUTDOOR wedding photos, but these cheesy studio ones that were taken in the church basement with a backdrop- what was I thinking?? They are not terrible pictures by any means, but they’re not really my style. FatJ thinks he has a geeky smile in our large and framed wedding photo, and I really don’t need to see myself with hair tendrils dangling from my up-do every time I walk down the hallway. Will it be horrible of me to take these down? Or should I just leave them up for the sake of having my wedding photo up somewhere in our house? We do have a really cute outdoor one framed on our buffet in the dining room, and another cute one from inside the church framed in our bedroom. But can I really justify removing these over-priced cheesy ones from the hallway montage?
Readers, what is your take on this topic? How long is too long to keep up one’s wedding photos? Shall they come down once they start looking dated? And when is that exactly? I’ve been trying to think if other people’s homes that I visit have wedding photos displayed, and most do. But most of the homes I visit are resided in by people who have been married on the more recent side of things- let’s say 5 years or less. Which makes their wedding photos more current and new, since they’re still sort of newlyweds. When you walk into someone’s house that’s been married 10 years, do they still have pictures up? How about 20 years? How about wedding photos from the 70s…some hot styles were going down in those days. Do folks still display them decades and decades down the line?
Thoughts, please!
Wedding photo that I like…
Cheesy backdrop photo- I’m over it…
**Note**: I had to SCAN these in because we got married SO LONG AGO it was the pre- digital era! Yipes!
I think everyone gets tired of viewing the same things sooner or later. There is no lack of pictures of all you kids at our house, but we do tend to move them around from time to time to change things up. Yes, we even put some pictures away and bring out others to rotate the stock on occasion. If you don’t want to go through the trouble of re-hanging wall frames to get a different look, you may want to consider just changing the photo displayed in the frame from time to time.
Oooh, good Thought this Thursday!!
When we got married (almost 6 years ago), we didn’t really have a big wedding picture or montage displayed anywhere. I just don’t like to look at myself that much LOL! On the shelves around our entertainment center I had a 5×7 of us on our wedding day (we had a very candid “photojournalistic” photographer… very very few posed/staged shots at all) and one of my dad walking me down the aisle. After we left our first house, those two were transfered to our bedroom, along with a couple more from our wedding day. I like them in there because I can see them everyday.
We also have a huge collage frame -it’s like – which was our “guest book” at our wedding. It has pictures of both Ryan and I growing up and then pictures of us together and then a wedding photo in the center, and that is what all of our friends and family signed at the wedding. I had a great spot for that at the top of the stairs in both of our first two houses, and now I have no real great spot for it now, so it’s in our guest room. I think it’s fun to have up because people can read notes from the guests and also make fun of our baby and teenage pictures!! So that’s really the only wedding paraphanalia I have on display.
Not sure what the protocal is on this though… interesting! I’m trying to think of friends houses, and you’re right… the only ones I’ve noticed are relatively recent newlyweds.
But wedding picture or not, if it’s a picture I really liked of the two of us, I think in general I’d leave it up or out, without paying attention to the age of the picture!
oops! somehow part of my sentence is missing…
I meant to say the big collage frame we have is like 2.5feet by 3.5feet with about 40 pictures openings in it, with all the notes and signatures on the matting all in between. Love that frame!
I believe our house qualifies for the “wedding photos from the 70’s” category. I don’t believe we have many of those June 75 photos hanging on our walls any more.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with taking wedding photos off display. I think eventually everyone ends up hating them…my hair was crusty and forced into an updo, Troy’s has just fallen out. They hardly look like us any more!
My suggestion-have some family photos professionally taken of the 3 of you and replace the montage with something you will love to look at each day.
i think i might put a couple of our wedding pictures up. until now we’ve only had them in our bedroom. ours are still less than 5 years old though :)
i was just over at someone’s house and they had an adorable wedding picture in their dining room… it was pretty big, and they’ve been married awhile… maybe 10 years or more? it was a pretty timeless picture though, a close-up and black and white. i guess now that i think about it, it WAS a little unexpected because they’re a little older and have 3 kids. but i liked how it looked, maybe even partly for that reason?
if you don’t like looking at yours though, i’d just take them down! why have something up you don’t like? but, if you feel like you should have one somewhere… maybe you could even get a reprint in black and white and maybe even a different crop?
or, maybe you just have to take them down until they’re cool again because they’re so old ;) i remember those big huge wedding pictures your grandparents had in their place. those were awesome! i guess though, after 60 years of marriage, you’d better be showing those off.
interesting thought. matt and i got married in 2003. i have one shot of us the photographer took in an 8×10, and another shot my mom took of us looking out over lake superior with our backs to the camera in an 8×10. they are both in our living room right now (you can see them in one of my recent posts). anyways, i like the one of us looking out over the lake because it is kind of a timeless photo – you will never see the age in your face in that shot. so, i would probably keep that out for a while – somewhere in the house. i have a small 4×6 of our wedding party on lake superior in my entertainment center too. that’s it. i think eventually i’ll move them all into our bedroom.
if you don’t like yours, i would take them down or try displaying them in a different way? hmmm. kim had some good ideas.
can’t wait to hear what you decide. :)
that’s funny that you mention that. i just was looking at the wedding picture we have up on our wall and i totally don’t like it, but i was feeling guilty about thinking to take it down.
i like the idea of getting pictures done of the 3 of you and having that up on the wall…
happy snowy good friday, what the ?