Adpenture

During our wedding, we made a DIY wedding newspaper for our reception guests. And on one page of that newspaper is a well-drawn tree of my family and my husband’s connecting through us.

As a passionate family history researcher, I have always wanted to incorporate my love for genealogy into special moments of my life. And having had the chance to do that at my wedding is an absolute dream that I will always treasure.

Whenever I look at our wedding newspaper, I always try to flip into our family tree page and read the names of our ancestors and think of how their marriages brought the life we have now. And now with us, bringing another generation in the future to come.

It was always an amazing feeling to remember our families that had been long gone. Though we may not know most of their stories, at least by remembering their names, we start by knowing who they are.

Researching Our Family Trees

Our family history research didn’t begin a few months before the wedding. It actually started long before we even met. Years ago.

I, myself, began my research when I was 12 years old, and from there, started to look for records from FamilySearch that tell my parents’ and grandparents’ stories. It took me years before finally reaching to one piece of information after the next and now, more than a decade later…I have researched my great-great grandparents and their children up to my distant cousins.

Gerson, on the other hand, had a lot of help from his mom (@lolasloveandcare). She did comprehensive research on her biological and adoptive parents’ family trees and even got to visit her distant relatives in another province. She, too, had to allot so much of her time to find her ancestors and I’m so glad she gets to be my mother-in-law as we both love genealogy so much.

And now, we can help each other continue our research!

A Family Tree Design

Having the idea of a family tree for our newspaper, I went to look for some things that I could do to make it more beautiful and not just a family pedigree chart that we used to see all the time. Plus I wanted to use as much space as I can for other items on my page other than the tree. So, with a bit of help from friends, here’s what we got:

I did the design on Canva and manually added the portraits and names on the tree. At first, I was having a hard time finding the right tree that I really want but I got help from a dear friend of mine who was kind enough to draw a digital art for us for a small amount.

The idea was to show branches of ancestors in one whole tree, which I feel symbolizes one whole family being connected through me and my husband. Not necessarily to show actual connections like that of a pedigree chart, but a whole picture of a family that we have combined with our marriage.

Cherished Family Memories

I am so happy that we get to share our family tree with our relatives and dear friends during our wedding. But the best part is we get to continue researching our ancestors from here on.

Memories like this remind us what family really means and we hope to treasure every single one of them throughout our life. Be it on small achievements in our research, memorabilia we get to keep, and photos that we find along the way. I’m just glad we started with something we can add to our family treasure.