With thousands upon thousands of wedding inspiration images that might be flooding your Pinterest or Instagram, curating unique wedding ideas might seem incredibly daunting. I have a lot of clients who are focused on making their wedding feel intentional, heartfelt, and personalized, but don’t know where to start because they are flooded with so much content of what is trending. If this sounds like you, I have five tips that will level up your design game so that all of your friends will leave the wedding saying, “wow, that was so THEM!”
There are two different lists: senses and experiences.
Senses: What are your your favorite smells, textures, tastes, and sights/colors, and sounds? This one translates easily, but might surprise you. I LOVE the smells of rosemary and tomato vine, so I incorporated those unique wedding ideas in my floral selections! This can also overlap with the experiences section; for example, maybe you love baking together, so the smell of vanilla is a core memory in your relationship. Maybe you got engaged on the mountaintops in Sedona, so soft sunset colors become your palette.
Experiences: What are your favorite foods, date nights, and memories together? It’s okay if you and your partner disagree! But for both of you, when someone says “hey do you want to do this?” you emphatically say HELL YES every time. I will always be down for karaoke, and it was the coolest thing I’ve seen at a wedding. Maybe your favorite date night ever was ice cream and stargazing! So guess what? You can have this at your wedding!!
One more takeaway here: if you really want a unique, intentional wedding day, come back to this list in every phase of planning. If you find yourself straying too far from what brings you joy, your wedding is probably falling into an “I might as well” category.
Rather than just yellow…is it sunflower, sandstone, dijon mustard, or saffron? Try to narrow each and every color in your palette into a tangible item. Even neutral colors go a long way in narrowing down the hue or shade. “Brown” could literally be anything from bittersweet chocolate to desert sand! White and black are a bit harder, but if you’re up for the challenge, go for it!!
Not only will this help guide you in having a consistent color palette, but it also might inspire you to incorporate some of these items in your design! If you realize that your brown color is almond, have almonds sprinkled in your tablescape! If your yellow color is sandstone, you could have sandstone table numbers! I tend to relate everything to food, which is SO fun and easy to incorporate for unique wedding design ideas. Even if you don’t physically have this item at your wedding, using a pattern in your design makes a big impact (example: a pink flamingo envelope insert!!) But if you’re like me and end up with too many foods, try to think of mineral/stones, animals, wood/trees, and flowers.
Try to have one item carried through every piece of the design. Whether it’s one color, texture, or shape, the consistency alone will have a massive impact on what people will remember. I planned an entire wedding based around the texture of mushroom gills, intentionally reflecting the texture in everything from the stationery to the shoes!
I recently had a client ask how to incorporate her love for cooking into her wedding! My brain immediately flooded with ideas. Imagine how cool this could be! Cooking for your engagement photos, turning those photos into a recipe book for your guest book, having little bottles of olive oil for place cards, putting fresh produce in the flower arrangements, and more!
The mushroom gill wedding design was discreet, whereas the cooking wedding theme is pretty obvious. Unique and heartfelt wedding design could be either; it just has to be intentional. When you spend your energy making intentional decisions, it will unfold into a true reflection of you and your partner!