A colossal 73 million users use Pinterest, so it’s little wonder many brides (its users are one third female) but also some grooms use this medium to help them plan their big day.
This virtual pin board serves up a myriad of ideas on a feast of themes. And although an utterly fantastic resource when it comes to sourcing wedding ideas and planning themes, the amount of content on there can leave you feeling overwhelmed.
Thankfully, Pinterest is prime for plucking ideas and then enabling you to catergorise them. First, you will no doubt find an exhausting amount of wedding ideas, themes and inspirations and you will doubtlessly end up with far more than you know what to do with.
Luckily, as you go along, Pinterest gets to know the type of images that you pin most and begins to organise a collection of them for you to browse whenever you log on.
A user can also chose to create a pin board for each different type of wedding that takes their fancy. Best of all, it saves on all of that expense and mess buying bridal magazines and tearing out reams of pages … oh and then losing them.
Start Early
A good tip for Pinterest wedding scanners is to start early. In fact, some brides-to-be (sometime in the future) plan so far that they do not even have a fiancé yet –check out the "Just Add Groom" pages. And yes, we know that sounds obsessive, but the point is, without even signing up you can browse a ‘Wedding & Events’ category or search for wedding-related pins and pursue anything from weddings on a shoestring to flamboyant first night honeymoon ideas. The choices are vast.
Re-pin, re-pin, re-pin!
You can also re-pin ideas from other boards onto your own. You may also come across the ideal cards or DIY centerpieces elsewhere on the web, and you can add them here too, even if they are from different sites. You can even source everything you might need for the wedding on Pinterest and purchase them without even leaving your seat: equally, you may decide just to use them as inspiration.
Then you will have to start narrowing things down. Initially, you will probably be pinning everything that catches your eye. However, as your vision takes shape for the day, you will have to be a bit more ruthless and distinguish things you like from the things you actually want.
Create lots of boards
You should create multiple boards. Although it does have catchall boards for ‘wedding ideas’ it would be easier to devote separate boards to flowers, stationery, wedding photo ideas, honeymoon ideas and by doing this, you can dwindle down things that aren’t really relevant to the theme that you’re developing.
Narrow down!
A word of caution though: make sure you eventually start narrowing things down, and get the board that reflects exactly the style, feel and colors of your celebration, in say 15 images. Be ruthless in order to achieve this. Hack away everything else that doesn’t fit in with your decided style and do not go back and start searching for more. Keep to your theme otherwise you will never get to the church on time.
Make room for alternatives
Also, it’s worth noting to have a few alternatives in mind. Collating masses of images of that sphere of blushed peonies as your ideal bouquet only to find they’re not available in the time of year you plan to tie-the-knot, is only going to disappoint. Make sure you think about the time-of-year of your wedding, or at least have a winter / summer boards.
Use Pinterest as a Gift Registry
Once you have decided on the key components and even the details of your wedding, you can even use Pinterest to set up an online gift registry. Most boards boil down to the ‘stuff I want’. You could take this a bit further and consolidate all the wedding registries on a single Pinterest board. You could pin products directly from your registry pages on retailers' websites, so that clicking on a pin leads back to where the product can be purchased. Do, however, make sure you’re logged into your registry as a guest as not to appear like a greedy bridezilla to be.
Invite your guests
Once you’ve got some things together that you’re happy with, you can also invite members to comment. This way your bridesmaids can give you some feedback on cakes, décor or flowers, for example. And if you don’t want everyone having a nosey, you can make your board secret and invite only those who you want to view it.
And then you’re done: Wedding planning on a virtual pin board, from the comfort of your own phone, tablet or laptop. Take it with you; show vendors, photographers and florists to give them the ideas that you are after. Then reward yourself with a large glass of non-virtual wine.