Patrons of The Arts

I’m not sure when the “tradition” of brides and grooms exchanging gifts came into vogue. In fact, I’m not even sure it is at all. Somewhere along the wedding planning way though, the HSH caught wind of this idea (probably brought to us by the same people who brought us baby bachelor parties…don’t get me started). And he was on board. Not so much on the giving as receiving. Thankfully for him, I made his part easy by giving him a lay-up of an idea, defined as something I would have bought myself eventually.
We have a good friend who is a fantastic local artist. We’ve been to several of her openings and shows, and every time we go, I drool over a variety of things I wish I owned for my own boring walls. So to commemorate our wedding the HSH commissioned a work of art. WE COMMISSIONED ART! Holy cow. We’re like a royal family or something. Cool. Anywhoo. Wendy came over to talk about our life together, see the space we wanted to hang it in and just generally discuss what we were looking for. Basically our instructions were roughly “You’re the artist. We trust you.” She parted with little more than a photo of us looking our happiest at McD’s wedding. Apparently that photo was all the inspiration she needed, because we couldn’t be happier with the final results. And so I bring to you the Halfstreet life so far, in 3 parts. The first one is called “The Good Life” and is supposed to represent our beginning, where we were “written into the book of life”, and we pretty much thought we had it all figured out (I’m paraphrasing here). The second one is “The Flood of Love” described by Wendy as “Change comes with a deluge” which is supposed to represent the engagement and marriage. And the last one is "Re[New] Life" which is supposed to represent our future and married life, and Wendy describes as “a new life can be so different and so good”. Hopefully I didn’t butcher the interpretations too badly. Wendy has promised us a letter fully explaining all her inspirations, so we can hold on to it forever. Which would be good, because I love the paintings, and...I have a feeling I'll need help remembering what they represent in the future!