How to use Pinterest to Plan and Style Your Wedding

Did you have a scrapbook as a kid? Do you remember cutting, glueing and pasting all your favourite pictures into one super scrapbook? Well now we’re all grown up the scrapbook has grown with us… enter the ring, worlds greatest online scrapbook: Pinterest! Exploding beyond our traditional lo-fi pictures on a page, Pinterest can actually be a really sophisticated space to not just manage your inspiration images, but also share ideas and organise elements of your wedding. 

Pinterest allows you to grab images from all over the internet by literally clicking a ‘pin’ icon you install on your toolbar. Once you pin your image you can save it to a ‘board’ of your choosing. Some board themes we find helpful to create are:

• Wedding Dress
• Hair and make-up
• Theme/Styling
• Flowers
• Groom/Groomsmen
• Stationary

Once you’ve populated your boards, you can invite friends and family to view or contribute to your boards, and importantly, you can make these boards private (ahem.. Wedding dress board!). The great things with these pins is that you have a visual way to organise your day, along with links back to the websites where you originally pinned the image from. So you will never lose that amazing stationary website again!

If you need a little inspo, jump on our Bower Estate Pinterest page for some real wedding images and some of our favourite styles.

Here’s a few of our hot tips to plan your big day with Pinterest:

1. Find your theme

Start playing with key words that resonate with your style and follow the pinterest rabbit hole to pin your favourite pictures to boards. Think of key searches that relate to your style, the venue, or key colours or florals you love. Some example searches could include:

• Hinterland wedding
• Elegant wedding
• Australian wedding
• Boho wedding
• Gold Coast hinterland wedding
• Monochrome wedding
• Botanical wedding
• Blush pink florals
• Wedding reception table settings
• Beige bridesmaid dresses

Once you get started, Pinterest will quickly start providing you with some great suggestions that align with your pinned images. Don’t forget to make notes under your images when you pin them like ‘Love these flowers, but with more roses.’.

2. Get your crew in on the planning

If you’re feeling busy, confused, overwhelmed and overexcited, it sounds like you’re planning a wedding! The best way to kick goals and lock in your plans is to delegate, divide and conquer. Consider starting a board with a few bridesmaid dresses with notes about what you like about them: e.g. colour, fabric, cut. Then pass it on to your bridesmaids! Ask them to do research and add options to the board, then you can all come together and make final decisions. You can do this with every aspect of your wedding. Don’t forget you have friends and family around you who would be thrilled to help out however they can, and you likely know a few people who’ve been married before and can provide great feedback and tips.

3. Use Pinterest when reviewing vendors

There are literally hundreds of vendors to choose from for every element of your wedding. Keep referring back to your favourite pinned images when choosing who to get a quote from. If your photography board has lots of natural and un-posed images in warm tones, don’t even bother considering a photographer that creates highly directed and edited imagery. If you like loose native florals with abundant greenery, don’t look at the florist that creates classic and tightly arranged bouquets with roses, glitter and satin.

4. Don’t sweat the small stuff

Treat Pinterest like a mood board and not a specific shopping list. Sometimes you just won’t achieve a styling look created using autumn foliage in America, BUT you can take a hard look at your ideal images and refine the elements that drew you to them in the first place. Once the realities of budget, timing, weather and venue sink in, your wedding can look a little different to those first pictures you pinned. We can guarantee you your guests won’t notice if the boutonniere florals turned out slightly too pink, or grandma forgot to bring the antique chest for your wishing well. Nail the big elements and everything else will fall into place.

The same goes for hair, make-up and outfits, don’t shoot for the stars with a style that just doesn’t suit your shape, hair or skin. Not only will you be setting an impossible task for your vendors, you might be a little disappointed when your luscious locks fall into a heap after a ceremony in a humid australian summer afternoon. Rest assured you will have amazing vendors at your fingertips. Trust them and their creativity, they will make you and your event shine!