Pinterest can be an excellent way to organize your wedding’s inspiration. We use it ourselves all the time when we plan and design for events.
Pinterest boards are also very helpful in the early stages of your wedding planning. We ask you what you like and dislike about some of your favorite designs. As you share your thoughts and ideas, we will begin to get an overall vision for your wedding.
Now that Pinterest has been around for a little while, we’ve seen the good and bad of using Pinterest to plan your wedding. So we thought we would share a few tips pointing out the best methods for using Pinterest to plan your wedding!
There are some important steps to using Pinterest effectively to plan your wedding:
Pin what you love to your boards
You’re probably already doing this step. If not, it’s easy to get started. (But don’t blame me if it’s not so easy to stop!) You might find that as you Pin more images, you develop stronger preferences. Don’t hesitate to delete images (or archive them) that you Pinned early on, if you find that you no longer love them.
Look at all of your pins on each board to see WHAT about them appeals to you.
It can be very helpful to write a caption clarifying what inspires you in each image. As you do so, you will probably see common threads emerging. Maybe you’ll discover that you love a certain gown silhouette. Maybe you’ll find that you’re drawn to the way buttercream looks, rather than fondant. What is key here is to identify what you’re attracted to at the BEGINNING of your wedding planning, that’s going to guide you as you move forward.
Keep what you’re drawn to in mind as you select your wedding vendors.
There are a lot of wedding vendors out there. A LOT! Use what you’ve discovered about your preferences to narrow down your search. If you love loose, organic florals, don’t bother with floral designers who specialize in very structured arrangements. If you’re drawn to outdoor weddings, you can probably skip looking at ballroom venues.
Be guided by the SPIRIT of your favorite pins, not the hard and fast SPECIFICS.
This is the biggie! This is the main thing we really want you to take away from this post.
Wedding Planner’s Coaching Moment
Your wedding vendors WANT to make you happy. It’s why most of them are in the business! But chances are that they’re not going to be able to precisely recreate that pin you love. It was taken in a specific location, with specific lighting that is often dependent on weather, and a million other variables that come together to produce a one-of-a-kind photo. And even if they try to recreate a pin for you, it will at best be a grand attempt of someone else’s work at someone else’s wedding. As creatives, that’s a waste of our unique talents and passions. If you ask us to recreate a specific Pinned image, you’ll miss out on the opportunity to make your wedding the unique celebration of YOU that it could be.
So instead of asking your wedding vendors to imitate someone else’s work, allow us the freedom to be creative for you. Use your Pinterest boards to communicate your style and the feel of the event you’re going for and to show us the kinds of things you love! But be open and trust your vendors, and we promise they’ll deliver amazing things. And it will not be just like someone else’s wedding. It will be uniquely YOURS!
Pinterest can be a wonderful tool for planning your wedding if you use it in the right way. But honestly, sometimes I feel like it’s not a true reflection of what wedding are about, and perpetuating something that is impossible to repeat or aspire to. And so that’s why I wanted to do this post- because it’s a wonderful tool for planning weddings, but it can also be used TOO much. As I stated above, it’s important to remember to be INSPIRED, and then use that inspiration make something your own.
