A Wedding Blessing

I completed this Wedding Blessing for a friend who wanted just the right gift for her brother’s wedding. Her brother and his fiancée love the outdoors and hike often. Thus Jill chose blackberries and pine needles to represent the simple beauty of the woods, a poppy in honor of their home state of California and a Buckeye Butterfly in honor of her brother’s favorite team of Ohio State.

The Buckeye Butterfly is based upon a photo taken by the lady who commissioned this page. The poppy and blackberry are based upon images from the Mira calligraphiae monumenta. The pine needles are modeled after needles from a tree on my street with a nicely low hanging branch.

Calligraphy is done in a Carolingian Miniscule with brown Windsor Newton ink to continue with the natural feel of the piece. 

Known also as the Apache Blessing, here is the text of the poem:

“Now you will feel no rain, for each of you will be the shelter for each other.

Now you will feel no cold, for each of you will be the warmth for the other.

Now you are two persons, but there is only one life before.

Go now to your dwelling place to enter into the days of your life together.

And may your days be good and long upon the earth.”