Inspiration vs Imitation; How to Use Pinterest to Your Advantage

Maybe it’s the millennial in me but I am a Pinterest girly. It’s actually one of the first places I often start with my clients when working on their events. A lot of professionals hate when engaged couples have vision boards (and for a while I was one of them), but it’s not Pinterest’s fault! The disconnect comes with the inspo board becomes more of a checklist instead of inspiration. Boards should be about capturing the vibe you’re creating and not making a checklist of ‘things’ you need to have. My job is to help take that vibe, and make it a realistic plan that fits your vision and your budget.

Finding Inspiration

Don’t limit yourself to just wedding photos! Inspiration is everywhere around us, focus on colors and textures, how you want to feel, and the experience you want to create over exact details when starting. Once you have a loose vibe (and a few saved posts) I step in and turn it into a clear visual plan for your wedding.

Into the Details

After we’ve started establishing a base outline for the visuals of your wedding, we can start to dive into the details. You don’t need a lot of ‘things’ to make the experience you want, but think of fun, unique, and meaningful things that are important to you and would help elevate the experience of your guests. Again, don’t forget to look outside of the typical wedding trends! Search for hobbies and Pinterest’s suggestions will also lead you down some new trails where you fall in love with ideas you wouldn’t expect.

The pinterest board vs…

…the actual details.

Managing Expectations

I think a lot of people realized after the viral the Euphoria wedding, that florals cost a lot more than people expect. This is probably the biggest issue with something like Pinterest, where you can see all these stunning weddings and styled shoots without a realistic idea of what the cost for that display could be. Be open to scaling things up or down with your vendors to best fit your budget and focus on what details are the most important.

Watching out for AIis unfortunately the next biggest (and surprisingly difficult) challenge as it becomes more and more popular and easy to create deceptive images. Try to look at inspiration from from the vendors you are actually hiring- this will show what is within their skill set and what is more realistically possible for your venue space!

Yes, this one is real!