5 Ways To Make Your Wedding Memorable
Planning Your Wedding
It’s wedding season! We are ready for a summer filled with celebrations of love and we couldn’t be more excited.
If you’re getting married, you want a celebration that represents the love you have for your partner – and for the community who supports your relationship. What a wonderful thing it is to attend a wedding! To have a front row seat to a beautiful love story? Yes please.
The problem is… it’s wedding season! Most people in a certain age bracket have a calendar booked full of weddings to look forward to between May and October. After a few weddings, the form and flow can start to feel very similar. But you want to make sure that the time and resources you invest in planning your big day really pay off. So how do you make your wedding stand out amongst the rest?
After photographing over 100 weddings, we have a good understanding of what features make a big impact on your guests… the kind of impact that has them talking about and remembering your wedding for years to come.
Read on to learn about the five ways you can make your wedding a celebration that your guests won’t soon forget!
Tips For Hosting A Great Event
1. Imaginative Design.
As one of the oldest human social customs, weddings are chalk full of tradition, trends and patterns. But when it comes to your decor, you don’t need to stick to familiar elements like seasonal themes or fresh flowers-only. One way you can make your wedding unforgettable is to add items to your decor that will surprise and delight your guests.
It’s time to pull out your favourite art supplies and get creative! We don’t mean to disregard all traditional wedding decor – after all, it is popular for a reason. But mixing it up with something unexpected can really captivate your guests’ attention and make your wedding stand out.
We have all seen a fall harvest theme… but what would a summer harvest theme look like? Maybe it would include gorgeous fresh fruit like grapefruit, berries or apricots. A bonus is that your tables will be lightly scented with the smell of citrus fruits, which inspire a fresh, lively, bright energy that could be a beautiful accent to a daytime wedding.
Or you could mix dried flowers or pressed flowers as the main feature of your decor, and then add in fresh flowers as a complement. This seemingly small change can elevate your design from beautiful to s t u n n i n g very quickly.
Your decor is a great way to add a couple unique twists on a classic look – or to change it up entirely!
2. Unique Colour Schemes
The combination of unexpected colours, or choosing colours outside of the classic wedding style can make an incredible visual impact that will stick with guests long after you say “I do”. You can go a few different routes when you are planning your wedding colour schemes. Some brides choose to maximize colour and pick vibrant tones like red and orange and pair them with a navy blue.
Others prefer a neutral backdrop so the colour they choose stands out. As guests, we attended an all white wedding that was filled with gorgeous greenery. The simplicity made the green really pop, and we will never forget the bridesmaids lined up in beige dresses holding eucalyptus bouquets. You can go with evergreen, eucalyptus, or a brighter fern-green – the possibilities are endless! The result is simple and absolutely stunning.
You can also make your wedding stand out by choosing a colour scheme that is not normally associated with weddings. Think pink in the fall or navy blue in the summer. We also love when the wedding party outfit choices use colour to carry the theme. Bridesmaid dresses that follow a colour gradient catch the eye and make for visually appealing photos.
3. Personalization
It’s your wedding and your guests have come to see one thing – your unique love story! Personalizing aspects of your wedding is a fun way to make your wedding unforgettable.
If you want your wedding to be extra social, think of a wedding hashtag and include it on your save the date card. Place little signs around the bar or on the tables to remind guests to use the hashtag. That way, after the big day, you can use the hashtag to experience the wedding all over again – but this time, from the perspective of your guests.
When you are thinking of ways you can personalize your wedding, look no further than your own interests. Are you and your partner avid travellers? What if your guest book was actually a globe, and people signed their name and where you should travel to next? Or if you love to ride your motorcycle, what about rolling it into the lobby of your venue? We promise that guests will love to check out your ride, and your bike will feature in a lot of photos that night.
You can also personalize a photo booth area with props, signs and costumes that match a favourite theme of yours – maybe a hanging wall of empty antique photo frames that guests can pop their own faces into!
Personalization can even come in the form of a signature cocktail (with a punny name, of course). Adding a hashtag, including your interests and offering a signature cocktail are all tasteful ways to put your magic touch on your wedding that will work with any budget.
4. Connection
Weddings are a wonderful opportunity to watch different areas of your life come together because all of your favourite people in the world will be in one place. Is your family always hearing about your hilarious coworker? Or have your college friends ever met your childhood bestie? Worlds collide at weddings in the best way possible. This means that there is potential for new friendships to be made at your wedding. Or discover mutual friends and connections you didn’t know were there. How wonderful! A genuine connection between two people is one of the greatest things in life; humans are literally built for it. If one of your wedding guests has a meaningful connection with another guest at your wedding, you can bet they won’t forget your big day any time soon.
You can help facilitate meaningful connections between your guests by adding a little intention to your planning. One way to do this is by arranging additional seating. Think of a cozy corner with a loveseat and armchair that will encourage people to sit and talk. Another way to use seating to create connection is to mix up traditional seating arrangements. Maybe instead of sitting large families together, you keep couples together and seat them with people outside of their circle. At each table you can have a stack of cards with questions on them (we love decks like We’re Not Really Strangers) to encourage great conversation.
Adding a touch of playfulness can prime people to let their guard down and be open to meeting others. You can add games to your wedding agenda, but hold them loosely enough to let the event become what it is. Maybe you have a game in mind, but your guests are having a blast on the dance floor. A skilled M.C can help manage the flow of the evening, adding energy when necessary or getting an excited crowd even more engaged.
A great resource for building intention into your gathering is Priya Parker’s The Art Of Gathering.
5. Breathtaking Wedding Photography
Of course, the best way to ensure a memorable wedding is to document it with the most beautiful photos. You know, the photos you’ll hang on your wall and see every day. The ones you will send with your thank you cards, and the ones you will place in your treasured wedding album. Your photos will become your strongest, most beautiful memories.
What images do you want to represent your love story? Will they be candid? Posed? A mix of both? Will they be in nature or inside of a wedding venue? Will they be soft and romantic, or playful and fun?
Choosing the right photographer will help make these decisions much easier. A great photographer will sit down with you and your partner well before the wedding day to get to know you so they can capture what makes your partnership unique. Then, they will walk you through creating a timeline, identify your preferred aesthetic, plan your engagement shoot and so much more.
When your photographer gets to know you and your partner, and can help you feel confident in front of the camera, the resulting photography will be unforgettable.
Conclusion:
Every single love story is unique and beautiful. No matter what you decide, your guests will be honoured to witness your union and take part in celebration. But using these five tips can help make your day unforgettable.
As we begin the wedding season, make your wedding stand out among the rest by:
- Using imaginative design
- Incorporating unique colours
- Personalizing decor and interactive activities
- Being intentional about creating connections between guests
- Hiring an incredible wedding photographer
These tools offer a great starting off point to design a wedding that feels authentic to you and your partner. When you are intentional about these elements, you’ll create a memorable wedding your guests will love.
Happy planning!
