How to Use Pinterest for Wedding Planning

It’s safe to say that we are well and truly in the digital age right now when it comes to wedding planning. Gone are the days of torn out magazine pages, bulky folders, and stacks of handwritten notes. These days it’s all about online platforms and tools when it comes to planning a wedding for the modern bride. A perfect example – Pinterest!

Whether you are newly engaged, or have been secretly planning your wedding for the last 5 years, it’s likely you have stumbled across the extensive visual platform that is Pinterest. And by ‘stumbled across’ we mean… have been obsessively scrolling, clicking and saving pins of flowers, dresses, cakes and more wedding-related inspiration than you know what to do with!

Although Pinterest is an amazing visual tool and can be an incredibly helpful resource when it comes to planning your wedding, it can be a little overwhelming if you don’t know where to start.

Luckily we have some tried-and-tested tricks up our sleeve when it comes to using Pinterest to plan your wedding!

How to Use Pinterest for Wedding Planning

Get Pinterest-ready!

First things first, are you signed up to Pinterest? If not, it’s definitely a tool you should be utilising when it comes to planning your wedding.

Pinterest is so much more than just a collection of pretty pictures (although there are so, so many pretty pictures!). It’s actually a really useful and simple way to collate wedding ideas and inspiration, communicate with your vendors, learn how to DIY your own wedding decorations, and help define your wedding vision. And did we mention the pretty pictures?!

Think of it as an interactive vision board where there are no limits. Pinterest gives you access to all of the inspiration you could ever need to create your dream wedding. And the best part is that it’s completely free!

The first step is creating your account to get the ball rolling. All you need to do is head over to Pinterest and make a new account with your name and email address. It’s really that easy, and now you’re ready to start using Pinterest to plan your wedding!

How to use Pinterest – the right way

Creating boards full of inspiration is essentially what Pinterest is all about, so this is where the fun really begins!
But make sure you have an organised approach when it comes to collating your inspiration. If you don’t, you could end up feeling very overwhelmed very quickly!

Create and organise your boards

Once you sign up to Pinterest, you’ll see you have your own profile with the option to create different ‘boards’ with different titles. As you start browsing through Pinterest you’ll start to find images you love, and the option to save it to a particular board. So it makes sense to create a ‘Wedding’ board and save all of your inspiration here, right?

Well… take a second first to consider all of the different elements of your wedding. The flowers, the stationery, your hair and makeup, your dress…and the list goes on.

Only allocating one board for all of your wedding inspiration means that it could grow to contain literally hundreds of pins. Inevitably, that’s going to get super confusing when you need to start making actual decisions, or communicate your inspiration to someone else!

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The easiest way to organise your pins is to create a separate board for each category. One for ‘floral inspiration’, one for ‘dress inspiration’, and so on. This way, you can save each pin into the relevant category and keep things nice and streamlined.

If you’re already an active pinner with tons of boards already on topics like food or interiors, it’s a good idea to create an entirely new Pinterest account solely for your wedding planning. This way you can log in to your wedding Pinterest account with a clear frame of mind, and avoid unrelated pins from causing you distractions!

Think of your Pinterest profile as a filing cabinet, and your boards as different folders that you can file your inspiration into. When you need to refer back to a particular photo, you’ll know exactly where to find it!

And don’t forget that you also have the option to create ‘secret boards’. Secret boards are great to use if you are connected to friends or family on Pinterest, but want to keep your wedding plans hush-hush.

You’ll see the option to create secret boards right there on your profile, underneath your public boards. These secret boards are only visible to you, so you can pin your heart out without giving away any details!

Find and save your dream pins

So your categorised boards are set up and organised thoughtfully. But, they’re empty! Where to begin with finding your dream inspiration?

There are a few different ways you can start collecting your wedding inspiration on Pinterest and finding beautiful images that you love.

When you first sign up, you have the option of following different categories created by Pinterest. By following categories like ‘weddings’ or ‘pretty flowers’, Pinterest will then tailor your feed to reflect this. So each time you sign in, you have hundreds of wedding-related pins waiting for you to browse through. Can you see now why brides are spending so much time on Pinterest?!

Keep in mind that simply searching for ‘weddings’ can give you some broad results. It’s likely you could be scrolling through pins for hours without finding exactly what you’re looking for. It’s best to use the handy search bar and be a little more specific when it comes to the vision you have in mind.

Instead of searching for ‘weddings’, try searching for something like ‘organic wedding tablescape’ or ‘colourful summer wedding’. Use descriptive words to describe the look and feel you are wanting to achieve. You can even get super specific with something like ‘blue watercolour stationery with gold foil’ and you’ll find it!

wedsites blog how to use pinterest for wedding planning searching

The clever thing about Pinterest is that once you click on an image you love, it will suggest some similar photos that you might be interested in.

You can also click on the image again, and it will take you through to the original website source. This is extremely helpful because the original source is usually from a blog featuring a real wedding or a styled shoot. You’ll be able to see even more photos from the same setting. More inspiration!

If you’ve been browsing through some wedding blogs, you can also save images from these sites onto your Pinterest boards for future reference. Just hover your mouse over the photo until you see the Pinterest icon pop up and save it straight into one of your boards.

Annotate, annotate, annotate!

Click, pin, repeat. There’s a step missing here that is going to be super helpful in the long run, and that’s annotating your pins!

Each time you pin an image, take a couple of seconds to write a note in the description. Explain why you have chosen to save that particular photo. Even just a few words like ‘love this colour palette’ is going to be a helpful reference when you are re-visiting pins that you may have saved months beforehand.

It’s also a nice way to personalise the whole process and inject your thoughts and personality into your boards. It can be all too easy to become a Pinterest robot, flicking through images and saving pins without really thinking about why they are meaningful to you. The extra couple of seconds to annotate your pins are really going to make all the difference when it comes to pulling your ideas together!

Communicate with your dream team

Your Pinterest boards can be quite a personal thing to begin with, but when you are ready to start making some decisions it can be a great way to collaborate with your wedding vendors.

You’ll find that most wedding suppliers also have a Pinterest account. This means you can invite them to view and collaborate on your boards, and offer their own advice and inspiration. It’s also a really easy way to communicate your wedding ideas to your suppliers visually so they know exactly what you’re after when you first approach them.

For example, by inviting your florist to collaborate on your ‘floral inspiration’ board, they will be able to browse through your pins and get a really good idea of your style and preferences (this is where the annotations come in handy!). Your florist can then add their own inspiration for you to look over, and can make their own notes on your original pins. It’s a great way to brainstorm and bounce your ideas off each other!

If you have a wedding planner on board, they will also be able to go through all of your Pinterest boards, cull your inspiration, and help you to define your wedding vision. This usually means pulling your key inspiration together into one cohesive board. This can be done without a wedding planner too of course. For more tips on defining your wedding vision you can check out our previous post here!

Get crafty

Are you planning a DIY wedding and want to hand-make some of the details yourself, but have no idea where to begin? You’ll be happy to hear that Pinterest is also the perfect tool for the DIY bride!

Whether you want to create personalised guest favours, or are hoping to save some extra dollars by making your own table decorations, Pinterest has got you covered. And not just with visual inspiration either. We’re talking step by step instructions laid out for you to follow.

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Photographer: Madamoiselle Fiona

Just search for whatever crafty task you are hoping to undertake, like ‘DIY wedding table numbers’ or ‘DIY wedding favours’. Once you find an idea that you love, you will be able to click through to the original source to find out how to do it yourself.

You can even search for things like ‘DIY wedding printables’ which will provide you with pins and links through to downloadable invitations, menus, and more stationery goodies.

If your husband-to-be wants to get involved in the wedding, this is also the perfect opportunity to get his hands dirty! You’ll find plenty of inspiration for custom-built wedding pieces by searching for things like ‘DIY wedding arbour’ or ‘DIY photobooth backdrop’. It’s a nice way to get your groom involved without having to ask for his opinion on flower selections – for the fourth time!

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Be realistic and true to yourself

There’s a fine line between drawing inspiration from all of the beautiful images on Pinterest, and straight-up replicating something down to the very last detail. Remember, there is never going to be another couple exactly like you and your partner. You are both unique in your own way, so do you really want your wedding to be an exact copy of a photo you’ve seen? Probably not.

It’s crucial to keep in mind that a lot of the weddings you see on Pinterest are carefully orchestrated styled shoots. Behind the scenes is a team of professional wedding vendors who have spent countless hours creating one beautiful table that is then photographed from hundreds of different angles and edited to perfection.

These shoots (while incredibly beautiful!) would be extremely difficult and expensive to replicate for an entire wedding. So keep your expectations realistic and understand that the Pinterest weddings you see might not be entirely achievable, but they are amazing sources of inspiration.

By keeping these tips in mind, you will become a Pinterest pro in no time at all as you embark on this crazy wedding planning adventure!

Embrace Pinterest for what it is; an amazingly effective digital tool to source inspiration in a creative and organised way while giving you a platform to communicate with the people involved in bringing your special day to life. And most importantly, a fun way to enjoy the process of planning your dream wedding!

Tip: If you need a little help to get the ball rolling, download this worksheet. Print out two copies and lock in a time with your fiancé to sit down and figure out what your expectations are priorities are for the wedding!