Your wedding day is one of the most important days of your life, and you want every vendor to be your dream vendor, every venue to be decorated and lit perfectly. You will find inspiration from so many really good sources and that’s a really great thing, but there are some pitfalls of tempation in those sources. Today I’m going to introduce you to three big temptaions that many couples find themselves falling to, and hopefully, help you avoid them.
These are images that came straight from wedding pinterest board. That is not going to be what my bouquet looks like that. Suitcases display? No plans for it. Mini wedding cakes? Out of our budget. Flagler Museum in West Palm Beach, FL? $10,000k+ to book. That is not what my engagement ring looks like, and I’m not sure on our cake.
TEMPTATION TO SETTLE FOR NOTHING LESS THAN YOUR PINTEREST PERFECT DAY
Pinterest is a phenomenal source of wedding inspo. I, for one, have over 1500 pins on my wedding board. Don’t skip a Pinterest wedding board. It can be helpful for a lot of vendors and is one of the best sources for DIY wedding decor. You spend so much time on Pinterest and you see decor, you see photographs, you see dresses, you see all of those things and you’re on fire with inspiration. Trouble comes when you set your heart on having your Pinterest-perfect wedding.
THe photos you see are probably going to be lit differently, maybe in a different season, a different location and have been photographed and edited by a different artist. If you want “that picture,” that might be impossible unless you live in that area and have hired the same photographer for that destination. As a wedding photographer, I won’t copy someone else’s work, but I am committed to getting you photos that will be loved for life.
The hairstyles you see and the makeup you see might be able to be done, but if you have shoulder length hair, doing a long half-do is not going to be possible without a wig or extensions. Makeup looks will depend on your skin tone and your hair. Bring your ideas to your hair and makeup consultation, and talk to your artist about what they can do.
The dresses you see on models will not fit you like them, and putting on that dress will not make you super-model skinny. But that doesn’t mean you won’t look jaw-on-the-floor gorgeous. Look at you in the mirror in that dress. Look at the way those details hug your amazing curves. Or decide that it doesn’t work for your body type and find something else. But don’t decide it doesn’t work because you don’t look like the photos you saved on Pinterest.
You will not have your Pinterest board wedding. But you will have a Pinterest-worthy wedding because it’s your wedding.
THE TEMPTATION TO NOT ASK FOR HELP
There are lots of good reasons to keep your wedding planning off of social media, but avoiding asking for help is not one of them. Wedding planning is hard work and if you need help from people social media is an EXCELLENT place to to crowdsource some help. The only caveat is money. If you are looking for financial help, stay off the web.
If you are like me, you will take on a hundred things at once and refuse to ask for help and struggle to accept it when its offered (and even insisted upon). Your wedding is not the time for those kinds of antics. Ask for help. Invite people to help. Welocme people’s help. This is one more way they get to celebrate with you, and you might hurt some feelings if you refuse to accept help.
TEMPTATION TO COMPARE YOUR BTS TO THEIR HIGHLIGHT REELS
Picture it. You’re scrolling instagram or Facebook and you see pictures of someone’s finished decorations, their florals, their Insta-perfect centerpieces. You watch their perfectly choreographed first dance and how perfect she looks in her dress. And then the spiral begins. You see your box of DIY decorations in their unfinished state and you think, My decorations will never look that good. I’ll never look that lovely in my dress. I want a dance that magical. I’m going to stop you right there, friend. Either they paid for their decorations, or they were once an unfinished DIY project. They took dance lessons and you haven’t found the dress yet.
The examples shown above are pieces of our unfinished collateral. I look on Pinterest and I think, Mine aren’t that good and I designed them. I must be a bad designer. First of all I have spent a lot of time looking at them so I see not just the finished product but the hundreds of changes that went into them to this point. Second of all, I can like a post I see on Pinterest without shaming myself.
I promise you, your DIY decor will be special because you made it. You will look and feel good in your dress because you’re not seriously going to spend that much on something that doesn’t make you feeling like a million bucks, are you? And nobody is going to look dumber on the dance floor than me at my wedding. Take some dance lessons, seek out tutorials on YouTube, or just shake what you got!
Behind all of the great things your wedding will be is going to be you, your story. and the life you and your partner have ahead of you. I have been to some weddings that were in what most would consider unattractive venues. But nobody cared. It was so beaufitul and perfect because of who this was about: the couple. Your wedding is going to be special no matter what. You can’t get so focused on the wedding that you lose sight of the marriage.