I am sure you are familiar with the phrase, “Pinterest Wedding” or “Pinterest Worthy Wedding” by now if you are in the midst of planning your dream day. Planning a wedding has turned into asking couples to create their own personal brand and then put it all on display for their family and friends to experience on a specified date with no prior wedding planning experience. Sounds exhausting right? Well, we have Pinterest to thank for that as it has been instrumental in changing the wedding planning game and the expectations around what weddings should and shouldn’t be. With its continuing popularity for planning all of the things I am sure you have seen what I like to call the “standard Pinterest wedding”. It’s the usual suspects. 

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 For example, any time you type in, “Tall Wedding Centerpiece” the first style of centerpiece that comes up in the search is a round ball of tightly packed hydrangeas, roses, and greenery. They are considered a staple of the “classic” wedding. I can understand why they are so popular. First of all, the fact that they are a tall centerpiece immediately makes them eye catching (I love tall centerpieces!). Especially if they are the appropriate proportion for the room (we’ll get into that in another post) and then there are the flowers. Oh, the FLOWERS! I mean flowers are always pretty. You can have a single stem of something, and it is just beautiful all on its own but add multiple stems of flowers together with varying varieties and oh my! What a feast for your senses! Of course, anyone will think these tall centerpieces are pretty. Why wouldn’t they?

 This is where I ask you to zoom out a little bit and take a look at the page results as a whole. How many times do you see this exact style of centerpiece repeated on the page? When I say exact, I mean the colors may vary but the flower varieties and the shape tend to be the same. You see it repeated over and over and over again, right? We see this with so many other wedding design elements as well. Wooden signage, draped fabric backdrops, the list goes on and on and on. So, you have to ask yourself, “Do I care more about just having something because everyone else has had it?”, “Or because it is pretty?” “Is this the only way to decorate for a wedding?” “Does this really represent our personalities and our personal style?” So many questions start to pop up, don’t they?

 At this point I am guessing you are thinking, “Heather I want to make sure my wedding feels like a wedding! I want it to feel timeless when I look back at photos.” I will level with you that yes; these arrangements make weddings feel like a wedding but everything we see in weddings was once a “trend”. This is how we are able to identify certain wedding styles throughout history and one day what I call the “standard Pinterest wedding” will become synonymous with this time in wedding history that we are living in today.  

So here are a few things I want to point out about your wedding aesthetic and how to achieve it while still making it feel like “US” meaning you and your partner.

• While Pinterest is an incredible tool it is also only meant for inspiration. When hiring vendors to help you design your wedding aesthetic, I am willing to bet that you aren’t hiring them to give you the wedding they designed for a previous client. You are hiring them to come up with a design that is only for your wedding. This also applies to the floral.

• Pick vendors who you click with. Picking vendors based off of price is not something I would not recommend. If you are working with a small budget but want to achieve a certain look be openminded about your options. When I am working with couples whose max budget is at my minimum, I often discourage them from having centerpieces on every table. This may seem crazy but floral is something to be experienced not just stared at. Guests spend most of their time socializing on the dance floor so put your money into an epic ceiling installation or if you are having a band create an installation that highlights the stage. It will be in your photos much more than table centerpieces and people will be more likely to remember it.      

• Often times there are certain aspects of design that make something feel specific. For example, something that feels modern usually has simplicity incorporated. Clean lines, monochromatic color palettes, natural elements, etc. When we think of the word classic in the terms of style, we often think of something vintage. Something that has a lot of detail or is aged or weathered. Quite literally the opposite of something that is modern. With this in mind how would you describe your wedding aesthetic? What about it your aesthetic makes you describe it that way? Is it the venue you picked? Is there an era you are drawn to like Victorian times?

• We get stuck on color when it comes to weddings. The most popular color palettes are combinations of shades of white, pinks, creams, navy, burgundy/wine, and of course green. Outside of a wedding are you naturally drawn to any of these colors? If the answer is no but you are considering one or multiples of the colors I mentioned, why is that? Do you feel like you have to use those colors in order for it to feel like a wedding or to feel timeless? What colors are you typically drawn to? This is something that your florist can help you with. I actually highly recommend reviewing your color palette with your florist before setting anything in stone as color choices can impact your floral budget depending on your choices and time of year you are having your wedding.      

Everything I mentioned above is really important to think about when planning your wedding. It will help you figure out what your priorities are and how to stay true to yourselves while having a wedding that feels like a wedding. Know that you do not have to have a mass-produced wedding. There are florists out there like myself who value the design aspect of floral arranging meaning everything we chose for our clients is intentional. Not only do I consider the color palette, but I also consider the varieties of floral and foliage as well. I want to incorporate as much local product as the budget will allow me to. Whenever possible I try to purchase from local flower farms here in Ohio or from farms here in the US. Sometimes the best price is not the best quality and quality is much more important to me than price. This is also why I avoid the style of centerpiece I mentioned above.

Tall centerpieces are not “budget friendly” in the least even when they are foliage only. Using the type of hydrangea that I mentioned in them requires them to be imported. The flowers are grown on factory farms that use heavy amounts of pesticide to keep the flowers in sellable condition. Do I import flowers for weddings? Yes I do. As florists we are not always able to get everything in the design locally. When I am looking at what my budget is to purchase flowers I would much rather the money go to support local farmers, however. This way the couple unknowingly spreads the love to not only myself but to another small business.

 The biggest reason we see this style so often is it is the cheaper option to give someone a flower focused tall centerpiece. The hydrangea takes up a lot of space, so it is easier to scale the centerpiece to a large size while keeping the cost down for the client (I do love hydrangea but prefer to showcase varieties that we don’t typically see). In my mind this is where we lose the personal touch in the design. It is no longer about creating something unique that speaks to the couple’s hearts and creates a unique experience for all to enjoy. It becomes about just having pretty flowers for a wedding. Whose wedding? I don’t know.

The same can be said about so many things we see on Pinterest when looking for ideas on how to create the dream wedding. This is why I no longer aim to design floral that is worthy of being on Pinterest. I design floral that is worthy of my clients love and admiration. Anyone can add images to Pinterest and the most standard, repeated, and popular things will get center stage especially if they have been done for a very long time. So, I ask the question again, do you really want a Pinterest wedding? Knowing what you know now does this align with you and your partner? Does this feel unique to the two of you? Would your family and friends walk into your wedding and think, “Wow this is totally something they would have designed.” Put most of your energy into finding the right vendors who truly understand you and the style of your wedding and then trust them to handle the rest.