7 Steps to Auditing your Pinterest Board Before Meeting With Your Wedding Planner

When you meet with your wedding planner for the first time, you want your Pinterest boards to paint the clearest possible picture of your vision for your wedding. To achieve this, you should begin by auditing your wedding inspiration boards prior to that first meeting. If you aren’t sure where to begin, I’ve put together a guide to decluttering your content so that it truly reflects your taste and style!

Step One: Evaluate your current Pinterest boards.

Open up your inspiration boards and scroll through them one-by-one. Delete any pins that no longer resonate (and feel free to use the delete button VERY liberally). Remove any images that are unclear or poorly captured. A few solid pins that represent your style will communicate your vision much more effectively than 100 confusing or conflicting images.

Step Two: Create a new wedding inspiration board.

Now that you’ve scrolled through your boards and deleted content that doesn’t stand up to the rest, you’ll need to create a new wedding inspiration board—just one to begin with. Having multiple boards can be confusing and can cause content to be overlooked. Rather than placing each image in a separate board, you should rely on detailed descriptions to highlight what you like about each image. Go through your old boards and transfer only the best pins to your new board. If categories are a must, take advantage of the “Sections” feature, which is essentially like creating a mini board within a board.

If you plan to add new images to this board, try to pin content that evokes a feeling rather than images that showcase concrete elements from weddings that have already taken place. This will allow room for inspiration, ensuring we create a day that is one-of-a-kind.

Step Three: Rewrite the descriptions.

This could almost be included in “Step Two” because the two should be happening concurrently, but I decided to give description-writing its own heading because I believe this is possibly the most important part of the process. Once you’ve transferred old pins to your new board, you should erase and replace any pre-existing descriptions with your own thoughts. In this box, type in detail what resonates with you about each pin. Here’s an example:

Step Four: Conduct a “style assessment.”

It’s time to look through your new board and make an assessment of your overall style. This post from Brides offers a great cheat-sheet, but don’t be afraid to define your vibe in your own terms either. I’ve included a few examples below to help you identify a general wedding style based on your pins.

• Classic — Garlands of white roses, grand church sanctuaries, and dresses with a train.

• Modern — Minimalist table decor, neutral furniture with clean lines, and metallic accents.

• Rustic — Farm tables, stringer lights, and lots of greenery.

• Bohemian — Gemstone centerpieces, macrame backdrops, and succulents.

• Vintage — Antique briefcases, silver teapots, and strings of pearls.

• Beach — Sea-inspired color palettes, driftwood accents, and palm trees.

• Garden — Pastel florals, organic centerpieces, and tables on the lawn.

• Whimsical — Garlands of bold colors, non-traditional cakes, and mismatched furnishings.

Step Five: Create a board for color inspiration.

Create a second board (or a Section within your original board) and title it “Wedding Color Palette.” Next, pin five non-wedding images that communicate your wedding color palette. Rather than thinking about specifics—like the color of the bridesmaid dresses—think about your wedding as a whole. If it helps, you can think of your wedding as one image or work of art, and then imagine the colors that would fill that image. Choose images from nature, travel, or fashion, but avoid pinning other weddings. Your wedding should be original and worthy of creating new content, not simply a recycled version of other beautiful Pinterest weddings. By pulling colors in this way, we will be able to create a wedding experience that is authentic to you and your fiancé. If you’re looking for amazing photographs, Unsplash has high-quality images that could have you blissfully scrolling for hours. If you’re looking for an easy repin, here are three great boards for color inspiration:

Nature

Fashion

Travel

Step Six: Create a memory board.

Design is built upon human connection, and designing a wedding is no different. Your wedding should be the culmination of your past experiences with your fiancé while also casting a vision for all of the future experiences you hope to share together. For this board, you should think about the top five experiences you’ve had with your partner. Find images that best capture these experiences (maybe even from your own camera roll!) and pin them to this board. Pinterest has a feature that allows you to upload your own images or videos, which you can use to create a digital memory board. You can mark this board as private if you’re not keen on sharing your personal photos with the whole world—it will still be curated and collected into one place when you’re ready to meet with your planner.

Step Seven: Meet with your wedding planner.

Once you’ve completed these steps, your inspiration boards are ready to be brought to your wedding planner—but expect to delete and cull even more content during your meeting. By cutting away at the content clutter, you will be able to narrow your vision and design every element around your personal story.

CURATION IN ACTION: DISCOVER A ONE-OF-A-KIND SAN MIGUEL WEDDING

As a wedding planner, there’s nothing that excites me more than bringing beautiful elements of a couple’s love story to life through their wedding design. I had the privilege of planning a wedding last year that encapsulates what it means to cull away and get to the root of a couple’s vision so that a truly amazing experience can grow from it. This bride and her family grew up going San Miguel, Mexico and studying at their world famous art school for three generations. When planning their wedding, our goal was to capture what Mexico was to them rather than being influenced by the way Mexican culture is perceived by outsiders.

Instead of using materials imported from China, we made a special trip to Oaxaca to seek out authentic artisan goods. We purchased all vases and containers used at the wedding from these artisans, and focused on creating a wedding design that highlighted the couple’s love for this part of the world. Going on an in-person sourcing trip to find these elements created a sense of connection with the people of San Miguel and the surrounding areas, and resulted in an experience that was 100% true to the couples’ story.

INSPIRATIONS FROM OUR BUYING TRIP

THE FINAL LOOK

If you’d like to learn more about working with a wedding planner or would like to talk about creating an authentic wedding experience of your own, contact me here. I look forward to hearing from you!