To start creating your wedding design first close your eyes and imagine your wedding day. What do you see?
The exact details might be blurry but perhaps you have an overall vision for how you want the day to look, or even a sense of what it may feel like to be there. Even though that glimpse or feeling isn’t fully formed in your mind, it’s the perfect place to begin when it comes to designing your wedding day style. But where do you go from there?
Well of course you can hire a wedding designer and stylist like me. Someone who is experienced at creating a unique wedding design from that feeling or blurry image you have in your mind. But there are things you can do too, starting with aiming for cohesiveness. By this I mean intentionally selecting elements for your day that belong together so that they flow seamlessly. How you do that is what I’m sharing with you in this post, starting with, not getting too swept away by every image you admire on Instagram and Pinterest.
To begin creating your wedding design, use Pinterest the right way
When designing your wedding, Pinterest is the perfect place to start. Pinterest can help you to identify what you do and don’t like about other weddings. I encourage my clients to create a secret board for their wedding (or each of the different elements of their wedding such as attire, stationery, ceremony, reception). Once you have your board/s set up, have fun gathering inspiration and pinning images.
But, limit the time you spend on this activity.
There will always be another image to inspire you but that’s not the best way to use Pinterest. Instead you want to look at the images you have pinned to see if there is a common theme. Does a particular colour or colour palette keep popping up? Do you favour a certain flower or style of wedding?
As you do this you may find yourself removing some images and searching for others. But as you pin new images you’ll start to see your boards coming together and forming a more cohesive look when viewed together. And this is the beginning of creating your wedding design with details that flow together seamlessly.
Keep your colours consistent
A colour palette that is used consistently throughout your wedding is one of the easiest ways to ensure your wedding design is cohesive. You may already have a colour scheme in mind, but if not the Pinterest activity described above will help you. You can also take inspiration from your venue, the season or your personal style.
Whilst it’s generally accepted that three to five colours work well, I recommend choosing five. Five gives you enough variety to play with but not so many that the overall look becomes disjointed. Three primary or neutral colours and two accent colours will help you to achieve a cohesive look for your wedding.
Once you have your colour palette, share it with all of your wedding design vendors so they can consider how best to use it. At Evenio we add your colour palette to a Style Guide that we collaborate on with your design vendors to create a beautiful and cohesive vision for your wedding day.
And one final tip, don’t be tempted to add an element in an alternative colour because you find something you like but not in the colours you’ve chosen. It’s amazing how adding just one random colour to your table or bouquet can throw off the overall look of your wedding design.
Build a wedding stationery suite
What’s a wedding stationery suite? It’s simply all of the paper goods for your wedding. From your save-the-dates to your invitations and RSVP cards, to the directions you share with your guests, signage, menus, place cards and thank you cards.
Your wedding stationery helps to tell the story of your wedding and it’s the first introduction to your wedding day style that your guests receive. Which is why it makes sense to build a suite of stationery that is cohesive. To do this ensure that the same fonts, colours, accents and overall style is used for each of your paper goods.
It’s also a good idea to let your stationer know about other details of your wedding that could be incorporated into your paper goods. This creates a link between your stationery and the other details guests will encounter on the day. For example:
style of wedding
venue/location specifics
wedding day attire
choice of flowers
colour or material of your dress.
Pick a theme and stick to it
With so much wedding inspiration out there, it’s easy to get side-tracked as you make your choices. If you want your wedding to have a designer look, you should get clear about your wedding day vision, theme or style before you make any choices. This will help you to avoid randomly choosing elements for your wedding just because you like them – ones that just don’t make sense when paired together.
That doesn’t mean you can’t be creative. Your wedding design should be a reflection of your ‘couple style’ and to achieve that you can mix and match, borrow from different styles or even decades, just as long as they all fit with the overall vision you have.
If you like my insider tips for designing your wedding but would love some help creating a cohesive wedding design, let’s talk!
Image via Brides.com by Abby Jiu Photography
