When we got married in 2015, Pinterest was ruling the day. The endless streams of beautiful, wonderful and wacky ideas were so inspiring and it made us even more excited about our wedding and what Pinterest-worthy designs we could create for ourselves.

We pinned and re-pinned and then we got lost...how the heck do we get all these wonderful ideas into our wedding? How do we avoid it looking like Pinterest has dictated our day? Will we end up feeling like we're at our wedding or someone else's?

It can feel challenging trying to overcome this. After all, the chances are you're on Pinterest because you want to create a truly beautiful day and, when you see just how much is out there, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed with what to focus on and the pressure to impress your guests.

Let us say, we love Pinterest! We think it's a fantastic resource and we use it pretty much every day. This post isn't a criticism of the platform at all - in fact, we highly recommend you use it! - but we've laid out six key principles for the ways to make it work best for you when you're in the midst of wedding planning:

1. Share Pinterest boards

We’d recommend having boards that both you and your partner share so you can see how each of your personal styles work together. It may be that you realise you have very different visions for your days and you need to realign your focus. Alternatively, it might become clear very quickly that you’re picturing the exact same day (if that’s the case then it’s true, you’re really meant to be!) What can be surprising, and really exciting, is when you see something they’ve pinned that you might have scrolled past, but you really love! It’s this joint sharing of ideas and planning that will ensure you create a wedding day that truly reflects you both.

2. Make your Pinterest boards private

It seems obvious but lots of people forget to make their Pinterest boards private. Be sure to select this setting when you’re setting up your boards to avoid ruining any surprises for your guests on the day!

3. Categorise your Pinterest boards 

Have a board for each aspect of your wedding day - Fashion, Cake, Flowers, Stationery - to avoid your Pinterest board becoming an overwhelming hodgepodge of every detail.

4. Pin everything, then edit 

You might like part of a Pinterest picture but not another. Or you might not be sure if an idea will fit with other parts of your day. It doesn’t matter, pin it anyway and make a note of the detail you like and why, in the comments. There’s nothing worse than desperately trying to hunt for a picture you wished you’d saved or trying to explain an image or an idea to your partner that they need to see to understand. Also, don’t worry if you might have pinned a picture before. If an image appears more than once on your boards, it’s a clear sign that it’s an idea you really like.

5. Review and shortlist together

Once your Pinterest boards are full of ideas, or parts of ideas, you like, it’s crucial that you and your partner go through your shared boards together and talk through the things that stand out to you both. You’ll then be able to shortlist your favourite pins from different categories onto a ‘Final’ board to see how everything your planning will work together visually.

6. Focus and personalise

Once you have your joint-favourite ideas, you can work out which are the most important to you and how you want to make them your own. This might be through changing colours, materials or layouts of things you’ve seen that other people have done. It could be through a totally unique theme which means you could create the same items you’ve seen from other peoples’ weddings but give them a particular twist. Alternatively, it could be through utilising a particular skill or talent of you or your partner.

For example, when we got married, Tom was really keen to put his practical and graphic design skills to use and so he made all of our wooden signage and our handprinted rustic wooden bar - which became the centrepiece of our wedding and, although we didn’t know it then, the very start of Made by Wood & Wood! Another example was our wedding favours. We’d been to lots of wedding where we’d arrived to our tables to find the traditional sugared almonds waiting for us. Given neither of us even like sugared almonds, we were happier to save ourselves some money and give favours a miss entirely than just follow the ‘norm’. That was until we thought about how important music would be to our day and so we decided to create a CD of the ‘Sounds of our Day’ for our guests to relive our favourite songs which would play throughout our celebrations.

It’s natural to feel like every idea you have is already on Pinterest and find that quite overwhelming. If you’re someone that doesn’t feel ‘creative’ or lacks confidence in thinking of ideas but wants something a bit different, there are two key things to remember:

First, don't worry! The chances of your venue, matched with your theme, decorations, colours and style are really unlikely to have been combined before. It’s all these factors that will make your day look different to all other weddings.

Secondly, if you really want something different, just ask for help! You might have creative friends or family who are desperate to support you and, as the people who know you best, might have some novel ideas for ways to reflect you both. Alternatively, there’s a whole industry made up of creative people including wedding designers and planners who can work with you to create the wedding day you imagine. We've discovered throughout working within the industry how kind and helpful everyone is and they're always happy to help think of ideas and produce new and wonderful products if they don’t already exist (it’s one of our favourite aspects of the job!). If you really want something different but are struggling to know what it could be, just ask.

We hope this provides some helpful hints and tips to get the most out of Pinterest during your wedding planning. Let us know if you have any questions and please do share any tips of your own!

You can find our Pinterest account here: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/madebywoodandwood/

With love and happy pinning,

Chloe & Tom x