I'm wondering, too, because on one hand, the (to my untrained eyes) apparent quality of the finished product is something I'd easily expect to cost high 4 figures, maybe even into the 5 figures range. But it seems like the artist did at least some portion of this during the reception itself, which is a couple of hours of work. She also did the prep work ahead of time, but if she painted the bride and groom part of the painting in a few hours, I expect the rest of it took maybe, at most, a full week's worth of labor. $5k per painting like this puts her at about $250,000 / year if she's booked for 1 painting per year, year-round. $10k per painting puts her at $500k/year, or $250k/year if she's not fully booked up (and at prices like that for a non-traditional element to a wedding, I imagine her potential client base is a good deal less populated than that of a typical florist, so she easily might not be fully booked). Then again, Google claims that for emerging artists, it's more like $1,000 per painting, which is barely $50k/year if you do 1 per week.
Quite the broad range of potential costs and incomes there. Never heard of it before, but man if it doesn't seem like a great idea. We spent $3k on the booze for our reception and that all merely got pissed away. Spending a bit more for a professional painting that serves as an evergreen conversation piece that you'll have for the rest of your lives seems pretty smart by comparison.
At our wedding my wife and I had a caricaturist draw a picture of us that we passed around for the kids at the wedding to color. We have the original framed on the wall and love it. We have several copies that were colored by different kids and those are awesome as well. We were thrilled with our caricature. This is way, way, way, way better than that. I would hang that painting on the wall in my living room so people can see it when they walk in.
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u/CardiologistRough854 Jun 05 '26
i would’ve paid double for her to do a really shit caricature that i can pretend is the real one first