Risking sounding like a broken record I can’t believe how quickly this year is going! Everyone said the year of wedding planning would race by and they weren’t wrong! We had another meeting at our wedding venue Coombe Trenchard on Friday which was absolutely lovely! Its made us feel we are definitely on track and Sarah and Emily are so lovely and accommodating … you really feel like they want your wedding to be a true reflection of you as a couple and not like you are just another in a long train of couples who need to fit around them and how their wedding venue works. I know from speaking to so many brides and grooms over the years that this is not always the case so I feel very luck to have found such a wonderful venue. http://www.coombetrenchard.co.uk/
It got me thinking about how that is my favourite part of working with my couples who order stationery from me. Whether the stationery is one of my standard collections or a completely bespoke design I always try my best to make the invitations as personal to them and their wedding as possible. Its why I will never place any restrictions on wording or give couples a template they have to stick to … It’s just not what I think weddings are about!
So how do you make your wedding personal to you as possible ?
Ditch the rule book!
I think one of the main questions I get asked all the time when clients are planning their weddings is “is this how it’s normally done?”. To be fair I can understand. Planning a wedding is something most people will have never done before. You often have no idea about where to even start, let alone what you should and shouldn’t include. Its often much easier to say well if this is how it’s traditionally done lets go with that. But I think with every decision that you make with regards to your wedding you have to sit back for a minute and ask yourself is this something which is right for us as a couple? Several times during my wedding planning I’ve felt like I ‘should’ have something because I know somebody in the industry who does that thing. Ant has been brilliant though, as an industry outsider, for checking for a second and saying that’s not really us is it! So for everything a magazine ‘tells’ you you ‘should’ have take a minute to decide whether you want it. Don’t be swayed by tradition if its not who you are. We, for example, are not having adult bridesmaids or ushers and we are walking in to our ceremony together and spending the night before together. I’m not one for superstition.
Create a moodboard
Whether this be a physical board, scrapbook or a collection of images on Pinterest, spend some time before you really start planning to look at ideas that appeal to you both and what you love and loath about weddings. Don’t limit yourself to wedding images though! No-one wants to see another identikit Pinterest wedding! They want to see you and your personalities. So include in your moodboard things you love to do in your spare time, books you love, films you adore … what your passions are. You will often find that this naturally creates an idea of how you would like your wedding to look … sometimes it might even suggest a colour scheme you may not have realised you have to your life! We have started decorating our new house in a palette of navy’s and greys with pops of colour and so it seemed natural to include navy in our wedding scheme … a very pale pastel wedding would just not have been us.
Think about your friends and family
How do those closest to you see you as a couple ? You want your day to reflect who you are and how people see you. Asking friends and family for what they see as ‘your’ colour or personality might be really interesting and throw up things you may never have thought of. (Although obviously make sure they don’t think they can get too involved!) Its also lovely to think about what your friends and family like to do and how to incorporate things that they will find fun into the day as well. There is no point having a day which reflects you both completely if everyone of your guests is going to have a miserable time!
I really hope that gives you a starting point for your own wedding planning and how to make it personal to you. We’ve had so much fun planning our ideas that I hope everyone else enjoys it too!
Nikki x