Creating a Wedding That Feels Like You, Not a Pinterest Board

If you've started planning your wedding, there's a very good chance you've spent a lot of time on Pinterest. And I completely get it.

Pinterest is amazing for finding ideas, discovering colour combinations, saving beautiful flowers and figuring out what you like (and, sometimes, what you definitely don't like!).But there comes a point when you can have so many saved ideas that your wedding starts to feel like a collection of everyone else's weddings.

And that's when I think it's worth stepping back and asking yourself:

"Does this actually feel like us?"

Because your wedding doesn't need to look like a Pinterest board. It should feel like you. Start with how you want your wedding to feel. Before thinking about colours, flowers, stationery or table decorations, think about the feeling you want your guests to have when they walk into your wedding. Do you want it to feel relaxed and cosy? Romantic and elegant? Colourful and joyful? Intimate and personal? A little bit quirky?Maybe you want your guests to feel like they've stepped into your favourite garden, or perhaps you want the whole day to feel like one big dinner party with your favourite people.

There isn't a right answer. And knowing how you want the day to feel can be much more useful than choosing a wedding aesthetic. Because once you know the feeling, the details start to make much more sense. Don't be afraid to use the things you actually love. Your wedding doesn't have to follow a particular trend just because you've seen it everywhere. If you love blue, use blue. If you love wildflowers, have wildflowers. If you adore your dog, find a way to include them. If you have a favourite flower that isn't necessarily "in", use it anyway. If there's a little detail about your relationship that means something to the two of you, find a way to bring it into the day. Those are the details that make a wedding memorable. Not because they're necessarily the most expensive or impressive, but because they mean something to you.

Your venue can be a huge part of your story

One of my favourite ways to make wedding stationery feel personal is to take inspiration from the place where you're actually getting married. Look around your venue. What made you fall in love with it? Was it the old stone walls? The gardens? The windows? The flowers? The little doorway you walked through when you first visited? The view? The fact that it felt completely different from anywhere else you'd looked?

Your venue doesn't have to simply be the backdrop to your wedding. It can become part of the story. And this is one of the reasons I love creating hand-drawn wedding venue illustrations. I can take those little details that made you fall in love with the place and turn them into something that becomes part of your stationery. Imagine opening your wedding invitation and seeing your venue, drawn especially for you. It's a small detail, but it's one that instantly makes the stationery feel like your wedding rather than something picked from a catalogue.

Let your stationery tell your story

Your wedding stationery is often the first little glimpse your guests get of your wedding. So why not use it to tell them something about you? Maybe that's through your venue. Maybe it's through your flowers. Maybe it's your favourite colours. Maybe there's a little illustration that represents something important to you both. Maybe it's the wording you've chosen. Maybe it's the way your invitation opens. Maybe it's a ribbon in a colour that runs throughout your day. It doesn't have to be obvious. Sometimes the most personal details are the ones that only you two know the meaning behind. And I think that's rather lovely.

You don't need to recreate something you've seen online

One of the easiest traps to fall into is seeing a beautiful wedding online and thinking: “I want exactly that." And then you find another wedding you love. And another. And another. Suddenly you're trying to combine five completely different weddings into one day. Instead, use Pinterest as inspiration, not instruction. Save the things that catch your eye, but then look for the common thread. Perhaps you've saved lots of soft blue weddings without realising it. Maybe you've saved loads of romantic floral stationery. Maybe every table setting you've saved has lots of texture, candles and beautiful handwritten details. That's where you can start to see what you naturally gravitate towards. You don't need to copy one particular wedding.You can take the little bits you love and turn them into something completely your own.

Don't forget the little details

Sometimes it's the smallest details that make a wedding feel the most personal. A handwritten note for your guests. A favourite song playing as everyone sits down. A menu inspired by your favourite meal. A table name that means something to you. A little illustration of your dog. A photograph tucked into someone's place setting. A favourite family recipe. A handwritten thank-you. These aren't things you'll necessarily see on every Pinterest board. And that's exactly why I love them. Because they're yours.

Your wedding doesn't need to impress Pinterest

At the end of the day, Pinterest isn't going to remember your wedding. Your guests probably won't remember whether your stationery was the exact shade of sage green that was trending that year. But they will remember how your wedding felt. They'll remember walking into the venue. They'll remember the flowers. They'll remember the laughter around the tables. They'll remember the little details that made them think, "That is so them." And hopefully, years from now, you'll look back at your wedding photographs and stationery and still recognise yourselves in it. That's what I think beautiful wedding design should do. It shouldn't just look pretty.

It should tell your story.

So, before you add another thing to your Pinterest board…

Ask yourself:

Would we choose this if we hadn't seen it online? If the answer is yes — wonderful. Keep it. If the answer is no — you don't need it. Your wedding doesn't need to follow a trend. It doesn't need to fit into one particular aesthetic. It doesn't need to look like anyone else's. It just needs to feel like you two. And that's where the really beautiful weddings come from.

Creating stationery that feels like you

This is one of my favourite parts of being a wedding stationer. I don't want to simply create something pretty and put your names on it. I want to understand what makes your wedding yours. Your venue. Your flowers. Your colours. The little details that matter to you. The story you're telling. Then I can bring those things together through hand-drawn, watercolour wedding stationery that's been created especially for you. Because one day, your wedding stationery won't just be something you sent in the post. It'll be a little piece of your wedding story. And that's what makes it worth keeping.

Lauren

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