Are you using Pinterest for wedding planning? Pinterest is an incredible tool to help curate ideas and design your dream wedding. Whether you are a Pinterest novice or aficionado we’re here to help you use Pinterest to start planning your upcoming wedding.

Create a New Wedding Board

The majority of our clients have admitted to having a Pinterest wedding inspiration board long before their fiancé put a ring on it. And that’s totally okay! However, we recommend starting a new wedding board. You could be at a completely different place stylistically or emotionally than you were when you first pinned to that “One Day” board. So, starting fresh is always the first thing we suggest.

You’ll be using this new wedding board to pin everything – and we mean it. Unsure of where to start? You can start by following professional publications like Style Me Pretty, Green Wedding Shoes, Martha Stewart Weddings, and California Wedding Day. Or you can follow people like your wedding planner, photographer, or another wedding vendor for style inspiration.

Pin everything wedding-related to this board. Some wedding categories to start with are noted below:

• Bridesmaid dresses
• Calligraphy
• Cocktail Ideas
• Color palettes
• Flowers + floral designs
• Food Ideas
• Groom + Groomsmen style
• Honeymoon tips + locations
• Invitations
• Venue styles + inspiration
• Wedding dresses
• Wedding tips + advice
• And so much more!

Don’t rush through this step. Take your time finding images and pins that really resonate with you. Keep in mind the time of year you are planning your wedding and your ideal venue attributes (indoors, outdoors, or both!). Do you have more than one color palette you want to pin; or different wedding styles? That’s okay! Pin with purpose but pin everything you will want to revisit time and time again.

Decide on a Wedding Style

After you feel like you’ve reached the end of Pinterest. And have hundreds (or thousands) of pins on your wedding board, it’s time to move onto the next step. The second step is all about curation. Get with your fiancé and discuss the different wedding styles you’ve pinned. It’s their day too and you want to make sure the wedding is a reflection of you both. If your fiancé isn’t overly enthused about this part that’s fine. Any input can go a long way.

At this point, you’ll have a clear wedding style that rings true to what you’re envisioning for your big day. Now we want you to start deleting any pins from your master wedding board that don’t fit within that style. This will help you curate images and inspiration in a well-defined way. It also helps by eliminating shiny toy syndrome down the line. Once you’ve fully committed to your wedding style – don’t look back.

Create Element Specific Wedding Boards

You’ve reached one of the easiest steps – create unique wedding boards. These Pinterest wedding boards are specific to different elements within your wedding planning. We’ve listed some common wedding board topics:

• Bouquet Ideas
• Bridesmaid dresses
• Cake + Desserts
• Centerpieces
• Ceremony floral design
• Food + beverage ideas
• Tabletop design
• Wedding dresses
• Signage
• Wedding stationery (menus, escort cards, etc.)
• And so many more!

Once you’ve created all the individual boards begin transferring pins from your master board to their element-specific board. Once you are finished you should have everything organized into its own wedding subcategory.

Share Your Board

Now is the time to share your boards with your chosen pros. Share a specific board like bouquets or centerpieces with your floral designer. Or share all the boards with your wedding planner who can help refine your wedding design. Sharing your Pinterest boards with your wedding planner can also help ensure your wedding planning direction and inspiration is translated to reflect you and your partner. While Pinterest is great for finding inspiration, your wedding should take elements from your inspirational pins and make them unique and special to you.

This part is essential so your wedding vendors fully understand your vision and can ensure they do their part to bring your vision to life.

Have Realistic Expectations

While using Pinterest to plan your wedding can help get your creative juices flowing there is a downside. One thing to take into consideration is the region of the wedding. The gorgeous wedding that you pinned from Arizona carries a much different price tag if you are planning your wedding in California. The region also plays a huge part in sourcing flowers, the price of flowers, seasonality of flowers, etc.

Additionally, you’ll find a lot of weddings that you’ve pinned are actually from editorial or styled shoots. These shoots are used to help inspire other wedding professionals and couples alike. If you love the way a certain editorial photo looks – let your wedding planner know! They can help recreate a similar design that works within your financial comfort zone.

Use this opportunity to discuss what you love about certain pins with your vendor team. Perhaps instead of a particular flower, you wanted that is out-of-season (steeper to source) your floral designer can suggest a similar flower to recreate the same look. Or instead of hand-painted sugar flowers on your wedding cake, you can use fresh flowers for a similar effect.

Final Words of Advice

We’ll leave you with two of our biggest pieces of advice.

The first is to limit (or avoid) DIY projects at all costs. Pinterest is full of infographics with creative titles that make DIY projects seem easy.  Be honest with yourself and take on what you have the creative and time capacity to undertake. DIY projects can become costly, and if you wait too long can end in disaster. Things will pile on towards the last month of your wedding and you don’t want to go into your wedding feeling overwhelmed with a DIY project.

Finally, once you’ve made a decision don’t look back. We cannot stress this enough. If you’ve decided against providing wedding favors, don’t change your mind in the months before your wedding. Pinterest has endless ideas for everything you could possibly imagine.  Changing your mind can turn costly and cause unnecessary stress.

Looking for more of our wedding planner tips + tricks? Click here!