Did you have a scrapbook as a child? Did you enjoy collecting pictures of things you liked all in one place? Well then you’ll love the vast array of online moodboard tools available nowadays – particularly the mother of all moodboards, Pinterest!
If you’ve been living on Mars for the last few years or so, then you might not know what Pinterest is, so here’s the lowdown: it’s completely fabulous, totally addictive, and a great wedding planning tool. Plus, it’s free! What’s not to like?
What’s on Pinterest for brides?
As a bride-to-be, you’re probably spending a fair bit of time browsing on the internet. You might be looking at different stationery sites and wondering what style to choose for your save-the-date cards, wedding invitations and menu cards.
With Pinterest every time you see an image you like on a website you can ‘pin’ it, either by clicking directly on the image (as you can do on the Wedding Ideas website), or by copying the image URL and saving it to your Pinterest board. Voila – images from all over the web are saved into one place!
On your Pinterest account you can set up as many boards as you want with different titles. So, for example, you might have one called ‘Wedding Stationery’ or another called ‘Potential Wedding Venues’.
Just add everything that catches your eye to the relevant board so that all your thoughts are gathered together. You can also e-mail pins from your board to friends to show them your thinking – it’s a great way to get the feel of your entire day at a glance.
Sharing ideas
Let’s say you’ve set up a Pinterest moodboard called ‘Wedding Flowers’, on which you’ve put together images of all the wedding blooms you like, styles of bouquet and thoughts for your wedding tables. To show your florist what you’re thinking, you could share the board with him or her so they can keep up to date with your imaginings.
You can also invite them to pin to your board themselves, so they can add images of things they think you’d like. It’s a great way to communicate – particularly if you’re planning your wedding from a distance or even another country and can’t get back to visit florists, venues and suppliers very often.
Getting your bridesmaids involved
Nowadays the trend is very much to give your bridesmaids a choice of frocks – possibly in co-ordinating colours but different styles. We think it would be a great idea to have a bridesmaid Pinterest board for your wedding day, where you can put your thoughts and then invite your maids to pin images of dresses they like so they can share and help you add to your moodboard.
You’ll find that a theme begins to develop which should be very interesting. The pin will also tell you where the image is from so it’s easy to track down the supplier of an item you’re interested in.
Finding your wedding theme
Many brides like to theme their wedding day around a certain colour or style, such as 1920s art deco. Maybe you’d like to do something similar but aren’t sure what your personal style is.
Why not trying just starting a Pinterest board called something like ‘My Wedding Style’ and then just pinning images to it of everything you see that you love? Again, you’ll start to see a style emerging from your random pins that is uniquely yours.
Maybe you’ll discover that in fact you’re not a country garden type at all but you’re subconsciously yearning for a city wedding, because you’ve been pinning images of city churches, red double decker buses and chic restaurant venues. Or perhaps you’ll surprise yourself by discovering that in your heart of hearts you’d actually like to get married on a beach somewhere exotic.
That’s another beauty of Pinterest – it can teach you something about your natural taste that you might not have known yourself!
The same rules apply to your wedding dress
If you haven’t been wedding dress shopping yet, then start up a Pinterest board and then just pin images of everything you think you would like to wear. There’s no shortage of gorgeous styles – just search ‘wedding dress’ and you’re away! If you’re looking for a particular silhouette you can start narrowing down your search – try ‘drop waist vintage wedding dress’.
Remember that you can also pin YouTube videos to Pinterest so you could have footage of models walking down the catwalk in your favourite wedding designer dresses – it doesn’t have to be a static photograph.
When you do actually go off wedding dress shopping, show your boards to the boutique salesperson so she gets a good idea of what you like and can show you the appropriate frocks.
Pinterest also comes as a mobile app so you can add to it whilst you are on the move and share with your suppliers when you’re out and about.
Can’t wait to get started? Just visit www.pinterest.com, open an account and have a look around. Decide what boards you’re going to have – you could have boards for wedding dresses, wedding flowers, wedding venues, wedding cakes, wedding food, and wedding transport, to name a few! Name your boards and if relevant invite your friends to pin to them. If you’re worried that your guests or fiance will get wind of things you’d rather keep private, you can have up to three secret boards – anything you pin to these can’t be searched or seen by anyone that you haven’t directly invited.
Now the real fun begins – just carry on searching the web as normal and whenever you find an image you like, just ‘pin’ it to the relevant board you’ve set up.
You’ll also find it useful to follow some top pinners. We like Martha Stewart weddings, The Knot Weddings and our very own Wedding Ideas Pinterest boards!
What do you think? Have you got pinning yet? If not, it’s time to begin – we’re sure you’re going to LOVE it!
