How to Create your Wedding Mood Board
In my first blog, I shared how to find your wedding day style and creating a mood board was a key element of this. Here, I’m going to share with you the process of creating an inspirational wedding mood board that helps everything else in your planning process fall into place.
Why create a mood board?
As the saying goes, a picture speaks a thousand words. When researching for wedding inspiration, you may come across an image that has something special about it. It could be the colours, décor, or a general feeling that you find inspiring.
Once you have a bank of images, you’ll be able to identify your wedding day style and visually send a ‘wedding brief’ to your suppliers, so they can see for themselves the vision you’re trying to achieve. Here is my 5-step process to creating the perfect wedding mood board…
Words
Words may seem a little counter-intuitive when creating a visual mood board based on imagery, but they’re needed at this stage to form your searches so that you’re looking in the right places. Together with your fiancé, decide 5 words to describe your perfect wedding day.
They could be anything: romantic, elegant, bohemian, traditional, classic, quirky, rustic, fun, intimate, country-chic, ethereal… the list goes on! Once you have decided your five words, add these to your mood board and keep these in mind when doing your research.
Start with the big components
Once you have your five words, start with the big components to get the ‘big idea’: location, time of year and colours.
Start with identifying a location and a season. Straight away, you can look at what the best of that area has to offer and build your wedding style around this to make the most of seasonal produce – for example, a Scottish winter wedding would be very different to a Cotswolds summer wedding.
From this, you can play with what colour palette feels right for you and fits with your season and location.
Start by printing images of what you like the look of and pin these on the centre of an A3 or A2 board. Remember, there’s no right answer apart from finding the things that are right for you! Once you have settled on a first draft of this, you’re ready to move on to the next step.
What to include next?
Once you have an idea of location, season and colour palette, then you can look at the styling elements of your day. Using your five words, search the terms with flowers, dresses, suits, stationery, tablescapes, wedding cakes and any other styling elements that are important to you.
If it makes it on to the board, it’ll show that the element is important to you and suppliers will get an insight into the details that are going to make your day special for you. Pin these items into a circle around your central images so you’re working towards the outskirts of the board.
Furthermore, if there is a symbol that represents your relationship or love story that you would like to see woven through your day, then include this too!
It could be a love of animals, or it could be something like a recent couple of mine who loved New York, so their stationer designed the NYC skyline into their wedding day stationery.
Your wedding day will have your nearest and dearest with you, so they will recognise the importance of this symbol and remember your day for being infused with touches of your unique personality.
Getting into details
Having the big ideas in place are important and make your wedding feel lovely. However, extraordinary weddings have one thing in common: their theme and style is planned all the way through to the little details.
It’s these little things which showcase your personality to your guests, and this creates a feeling – and those are the most memorable weddings to attend.
For example, if a symbol of your relationship is travel and you build a wedding around the theme of adventure and travel, then have fun with globe guest books, aeroplane menus and a leather suitcase trunk for receiving cards and gifts in.
Alternatively, if you’re a country couple a heart then you can create charming touches of magic through fairy lighting, carts with food or shrubbery on, rustic table boards and naked cakes.
Once you have identified the special touches that represent you, pin the images on your board.
Congratulations, you have achieved your first draft of your mood board!
Refine, refine, refine
Now you have a bundle of images, it’s time to refine your board so that it has a clear vision. Less can also be more, so try not to put so much on that it overwhelms you. If something is sticking out like a sore thumb, chances are it would do on your wedding day so take it off the board – you’ll feel better for it!
A wedding style isn’t only about how it looks visually, it’s about how it makes you and your guests feel.Therefore, your mood board and how it makes you feel is a preview of what you’ll create on your special day.
So, looking at your board, how does it make you feel? Does it match the words you started out with? If it does match the words, are you happy with how it looks or has it turned into something different to what feels right for you?
If it’s the latter, don’t worry and keep refining it until it gives you the perfect feeling for you. You can revisit any part of the process and try again. This takes time and is a case of trial and error, so you could spend a week or a few getting it just right, so embrace the journey and enjoy the process.
Eventually, once you and your fiancé have agreed on your mood board, all your hard work will have been worth it and worth a toast of celebration!
Take a photograph on a high-res camera so that you send this to your suppliers to give them a wedding brief and an instant, clear and understanding of what your wedding vision is.
Once you’ve put this effort in, all of your decisions should refer back to your mood board as it will help keep your vision on track, ensuring you have a day that’s unique to you and memorable for the special and unique feeling that it creates.
I help couples through this process so have a look at some of my previous work for inspiration! If you’re newly engaged and would like help working through your mood board to set you on your way, I can help on a consultancy basis or as part of one my wider planning packages, so why not check these out and if you feel like we could work together, drop me a line.
