How To Find Your Wedding Theme

It can be a daunting task for you to come up with a theme and execute it without the aid of a wedding planner, but you can do it, especially with a little or a lot of help from your friends and family. But what if you're one of those upcoming brides who has a lot of ideas all rolling around and you don't quite know what you want.

1. Create a Mood Board

It doesn't have to literally be a board, but you can create a mood board where you stick clippings and fabrics and pictures onto a board, or the popular digital mood board, Pinterest, with all the things that you love and would want at your wedding. Think of the colors you and your future hubby like, the fabrics that you love, like a tulle or a satin, your favorite flowers, etc. Once you get a bunch of stuff on your mood board, really look at all the things and start thinking, if this was with this, would you still like it? Would these colors clash? Having seen it all together, do you just want to go a different route? Go through that in your head, and start editing your choices down to the things you definitely must see at your wedding, and those that you'd rather not.

2. Pay Attention to Your Budget

Your mood board, is the dream stage. Those are all the things you want and like and that suit your fancy, but step two is where reality hits. Sure, you'd love to have your wedding in the old ancient ruins of Rome, but can you actually afford to do that? If the answer is no, don't just throw all your ideas away, think of how you can bring in the essence of those ideas to a venue that you can actually afford. If you can't really afford to rent 36 gold vases, can you use spray paint and dollar store vases to create the look you want?

3. Do Attend a Bridal Show

A Bridal show is a great way, in person, to see and talk to a lot of vendors, but, be sure to take someone with you that understands your budget because it can be really easy to get bug eyes and see and want everything that is there. You want someone with you, who can bring you back down to reality if you get carried away.

4. Create a Mini Wedding

If you've got your ideas honed down a bit, create a mini version of your wedding. Wedding designers do this all the time, where they will show a client exactly what the gist of their wedding will look like by decorating one table with all the linens, flowers, plates, etc. You can do this by just ordering a swatch of fabric or one linen, a small bouquet (or faking it with fake flowers), similar plates/cups, etc. to see if everything really works well together.

5. Putting it All Together

If you are putting together your own wedding, please DO NOT think you can go at it alone unless you have a very small guest list. You cannot put together 100 gift boxes, decorate the entire space, make all the floral arrangements, set all the chairs, decorate the church, and everything alone. This will only serve to stress you out. Get one of your friends who knows their stuff, and have them help you break down how much time each task it going to probably take (and budget extra time in case you run into issues), and then figure out just how many people you need to be able to pull it all off in a timely manner. Don't be afraid to delegate (nicely!) either. It's your day, and people understand you've got a lot on your plate, so take the help when it's offered.