A few months back we were engaged by Annie + Chris to do a styling consult, they essentially wanted to do everything themselves, but were struggling with a lack of vision and how to transform their space to make it something extraordinary.
We absolutely understand, it can be really difficult. You have hundreds of photos saved to your Pinterest board and an empty space at your venue. How do you bring all of those photos to life, without covering every square inch of the venue whilst making it tasteful and elegant, and also don’t forget that little issue of the budget! There are so many things to consider and when you look into it further and further, you will notice the details just do not stop.
Whilst it can be overwhelming, some couples still want to work with the DIY approach. Sometimes this can be a way to get around a tight budget, or you are just a couple that wants to be really hands on! Every couple is different and sometimes all you really need is some advice from someone who has done it before to bounce your ideas off.
This leads us to exactly what a styling consult is and how it could help you. A styling consult is a one on one discussion with our head Wedding Planner & Stylist where you go through everything involved in styling your wedding. We start at the basics and work our way up, so by the end of the consult you are fully prepared to tackle any styling challenge that comes your way for your wedding!
Inspo Images
The first thing we do is look at all of your inspiration images, they are usually across Instagram, Pinterest and saved in an album on your phone. If you’re anything like me, there is a tonne of it, and it’s all a little bit different to each other but it’s saved absolutely everywhere. The first step is to condense it all in one place. Once we have done that, we start to look at the images and cull them. You don’t need 100 inspo images. You really only need about 10-15 at max.
In order to achieve this process, we firstly cut all the images that aren’t sparking excitement in you. This is usually pretty easy to do. Your Pinterest board can be developed over years, and what did excite you a year ago, doesn’t anymore.
Identifying the elements
Now we start to look at exactly what your vision is and start to develop a clear direction as to how to achieve it. We look at the elements in your photos that you really love. Often you won’t love the entire image, but there may be a floral arrangement you love, or the relaxed nature of the image, or maybe it’s as simple as the name card is really exciting you.
When we boil it down, styling is essentially just the culmination of many elements to bring together an overall design. By identifying the elements you love in your inspo images, makes it easier to then start to design your own elements.
Mood Board
It’s mood board time, here we sit down and bring together your inspo pics that you already have, research any new pics we may need and decide on a colour palette.
You may be wondering why we would research more pictures if you have just spent an hour culling your images from hundreds down to 10. The reason for this is to highlight exactly your main features. You may have decided in the inspo images phase, you absolutely love a certain style of bouquet with cascading orchids, if this is the case, we would look at finding a few more photos of the bouquet in your colour palette to really set the scene.
Here’s an example of the mood boards we develop at Forever A Moment Events. As you can see, the images are all within a similar style and colour palette. Your mood board is incredibly important as this is essentially the vision that all of your suppliers will start to work with.
You will send this to your florist, your stationer, cake baker etc and everyone begins to work towards this same vision. Without a mood board, it makes it incredibly difficult for each of your suppliers to line up and produce a similar final product that all ties together and doesn’t look like it got made by a bunch of different suppliers.
Once we have our top images selected, we use a colour dropper to pick up the most common colours, these then become the core colours that everyone works towards and highlights within their designs.
Priorities
During this step, we start to come up with your top 3 priority list for styling. This is where we again go back to your mood board and look at the elements you must have. These help in the next step when it comes to budgeting. They are things you really must have and so therefore are prepared to spend a little bit more on.
Here you look at your design and identify your favourite elements. An example list could be:
- Orchids in bridal bouquet
- Acrylic name cards on table settings
- One long trestle table for all guests
Budget
Arguably one of the most important steps, here we will have a look at your budget for styling to determine what you should be spending on each supplier and what things we need to cut from the list in order to come in on budget.
This is where your priority list comes in, these are things that we will allocate more of the budget to and will not cut. At this stage we can reduce things that are not necessities if we the budget does not allow. Things like using the venues cutlery instead of bringing in gold cutlery at $5 per head or removing the charger plate on the table. These things seem like small amounts, but when you multiple a $5 set of cutlery over a 100 head wedding, you can see how these things add up.
That’s it! We are now done with your consultation and you are ready to go out and tackle your wedding styling on your own. We are always around if you want to float something past us or get another opinion.
