Can we acknowledge the fact that I’ve been engaged for over 3 months, and I have yet to post about it on the blog!? I shared my news on Instagram a few days after Kyle and I were engaged, but dove straight in to planning and have had little time to share anything new about it on my site. Seeing as it’s Valentine’s Day, I figured it was high time to let you all in on a few details and share my inspiration process!

I considered sharing an engagement post with you all, but in order to keep Kyle’s privacy sacred I decided not to. It was very romantic and sweet, thoughtful and truly perfect! But after spending a couple of weeks in engagement bliss, you KNOW I was all over Pinterest getting the ball rolling! The first thing I did to try to get an idea for what the wedding would be like was to create a handful of wedding boards in different categories. I saved inspiration photos for venues, cakes, flowers, dresses – you name it! With hundreds of pins saved, I quickly realized that there were some themes emerging, but that sharing these boards with someone would be overwhelming and confusing. In order to get a really distinct story and feel solidified, I made a wedding mood board with the best of the best of everything on it.

Once I created this board, I told some friends about it and found out that many people didn’t know what it was. Read on below to learn about what a mood board is, how it can be helpful in planning a wedding, and how to create your own!

What is a Wedding Mood Board?

A wedding mood board is exactly what it sounds like. It is a collection of photos on a board (or PowerPoint slide or piece of paper) that express the mood you are looking for for your wedding. Photos can be collected on Pinterest, Instagram, or cut out of magazines of your favorite wedding items like decorations, food, and invitations. Once you have a large collection of photos, you choose your most favorite images from each category and lay them out in the order your guests will see them that night, starting with invitations and moving through the ceremony to the end of the night when you leave the reception. The board tells a story of what the wedding will look like and feel like.

Why is a Wedding Mood Board Important?

Mood boards can be really helpful because they are a central place where all of your wedding items are shown together as a cohesive scheme. Rather than showing your cake maker images of 10 cakes you like, show them your mood board so they understand what colors you will be featuring, if your wedding is modern or glamorous, and how you want the day to look. They can then take this inspiration (along with a photo of your favorite cake that you found and placed on the mood board) to create a cake that is perfect to fit your vision.

The mood board gives a snapshot to a large group of people (most importantly your vendors) of exactly what you want your wedding to look and feel like. This makes the conversations with everyone easier because they immediately have an idea of what you are seeing in your head without you having to explain it all each time you meet with someone new.

How to Make your Own Wedding Mood Board

1. In order to make your mood board, you will need to start collecting images from somewhere. I personally love Pinterest for inspiration because you can search for anything in any theme or color. I started by broadly searching for “Weddings” and then narrowed it down to “Modern Wedding”, “Modern Garden Wedding”, and even “Modern Garden Wedding Pink and Orange”. If you don’t love Pinterest, then you can search around your favorite blogs or websites. Furthermore, maybe you are a person who loves magazines. Grab a bunch from the store and start clipping!
2. As you collect images, place each of them into folders with like items. As a starting point, I suggest making boards in the following categories: invitations, ceremony, reception spaces, flowers, cakes, dresses, decor/colors, and bridesmaids/ groomsmen.
3. Don’t be afraid to also pin images you like for inspiration that are in a non-wedding category. Images of fashion, home decor, and general party planning can make for unique ideas!
4. As you begin to save photos, you will realize that you have some common themes occurring. For Kyle and I, I began to realize I loved a brighter color scheme with pinks, oranges, greens, and whites. We both also loved a clean, modern aesthetic with romantic touches. Look for trends like this and start weeding out photos that don’t match with your overall favorite vibe.
5. To create a mood board from this large number of photos, narrow it down to your favorite photos from each category. Make sure you have one or two from each area to represent the entire evening.
6. Organize your photos from first to last seen over the day in a grid-like format. Start with the invitations and then add in the ceremony, bridesmaids/groomsmen, flowers, dress, reception space, any tablescapes you like, general decor for the space, and then any later evening items like dancing or farewell festivities.
7. Once you have your images arranged, go ahead and come up with some adjectives to describe your mood board to help you explain it to your family, friends, and vendors that you will need to be working with.

I hope this post helps you to organize your wedding visions and get inspired to create your dream day! What other ways have you come up with to get inspired for your wedding?