Defining Your Style with Your Wedding Planner
Updated: Mar 2, 2020
When you’re preparing to work with a wedding planner/ designer, communicating your vision in a clear way can help your designer understand exactly what you’re looking for — and deliver your dream wedding. By gathering inspiration and assessing your likes and dislikes, you will be better armed to have the ever so important design convo with your planner.
Love It or List It It’s a good idea to gather images and ideas of things you love when you’re preparing to meet with your planner. But have you considered making a list of the things you don’t like? Those dislikes can be equally important.
A Wedding Planner is Visual A wedding planners’ work is visual, so it makes sense that the best way to communicate your likes and dislikes is through images and that means Pinterest. Now please keep in mind this is inspiration not replication! Pinterest is such a great tool but often people use it as a template vs. an inspiration source. But when you can point to a photo and say, “I love this,” or “I really don’t like this look,” you and your planner can start creating. Eventfully Yours will always create a secret board to share ideas.
Images That Directly Relate to Your Wedding A good place to start collecting images for your likes and dislikes lists is with examples of the specific venue you will be hosting your big day. If you’ll be working with a barn or ballroom, images of those specific venues will allow your vision of the space to be clearly conveyed.
Images That Relate Directly to the Couple Also include a few images that don’t directly relate to your wedding but to your personal style. Lifestyle, food, fashion, home interior and garden images can be wonderful examples of color palettes and can give your planner a good handle on your overall style.
Be Picky When you first start filling those boards with photos, allow yourself free rein to choose as many photos as your heart desires. Have fun! But when you’re ready to go back in for a second look, get picky. Narrow your boards down to your top 10-20 images. This will this give your planner a more manageable number of images to narrow down your specific style. The more you focus on this, the easier it will be to talk about your likes and dislikes.
Get Specific Once you have your two curated boards —the love it board and the list it board — it’s time to make those boards even more useful. Being able to point to an image you love, or hate is helpful, but confusion and miscommunications can still arise if you don’t specify exactly what it is about the wedding that you like or don’t like. You might be thinking about the color palette, but your planner may think it’s the specific flowers so make sure to note what you love or don’t love about the image!
Love It Checklist
Color palette or combination of colors
Florals you love
A wedding where you love the mood or vibe
Overall style: casual, formal, elegant, beachy, country, etc..
Accessories and personal touches
List It Checklist
Specific colors that you have a strong aversion to
Motifs or finishes that are not your cup of tea
Pet peeves
A wedding where you do not like the overall mood or vibe
What’s Your Style Take one more look at your board, do you notice a theme? Is there one clear style taking the lead- Boho, Traditional, Classic, Trendy, Modern? There’s no right or wrong answer, but if you do notice a trend in your likes you’re off to a good start. If not keep narrowing!
Have Your Defined Your Style Yet? It’s not easy to pin down your exact wedding style, don’t worry. This is where your planner will help guide you. Your planner is there to walk you through this process. But the more thought you have put in on the front end, the easier it will be for you and your designer to have a successful working relationship.
Trust Your Wedding Planner Finally, remember that although it is important to be able to communicate with your planner, it’s equally important to step back and trust your designer to come up with some creative ideas that you would never have thought of on your own. Will they all be things you love? Maybe not, but it’s the start of a really fun process and you will end up in your happy place on your happy day. And you might just surprise yourself by learning your personal style that you never knew you had. Keep an open mind.