While, of course, you don’t have to have a theme for your wedding, (there are no rules when it comes to weddings!) you might find it makes planning easier.
A wedding theme ties everything together beautifully on your big day and is a wonderful way to make sure that your personality shines through. The right wedding theme will perfectly tell the love story that you and your partner want to share and celebrate.
Here are some of our best tips for narrowing down the selection and choosing a wedding theme for a magical day.
Why is choosing a wedding theme important?
If you haven’t yet figured this out – there are about a million different choices to make when it comes to your wedding. From the big stuff like the venue and the dress down to the tiniest detail such as the font on the place cards or colour of the bridesmaids’ earrings, there are A LOT of things to plan.
Choosing a wedding theme helps to make many of these decisions so much easier. You will be looking for a seamless flow to the whole day, so every big and little decision can be tied into what will go with the overall theme.
Why is choosing a wedding theme so hard?
Because you only get to do this once! Narrowing down all the aspects of your and your partner’s individual styles into one all-important theme for the biggest day of your life does loom as a rather daunting task – right?
Everything hangs on this choice. You want it to be magical and memorable, you want your guests to be blown away. You want to celebrate everything that brought you here as a couple as well as crafting the ideal first day of your blissful married future.
Of course, choosing a wedding theme is hard! Why are there so many choices?
Here are some great questions to ask yourself and your partner to help narrow things down:
- What kind of wedding day have you always wanted? For example, romantic, traditional, bohemian, vintage, sophisticated, country, vineyard, casual, contemporary, etc?
- How formal do you want it to be? Are people sitting down to a five-course meal or are they wandering between shared tables with cocktails in hand?
- What time of the day would you like? Consider morning, brunch, lunchtime, afternoon tea and evening wedding celebrations as all have a different feel and look to them.
- Does either of you want to celebrate your cultural or religious roots on the big day?
- Do you have a favourite song, movie, book, artist, plant, cocktail, sports team, etc.
- Where did you meet? Where did you have your first date?
- What is your style like, for example in your home and how you dress?
- What are your favourite colours?
- Is there a hobby, interest or activity that you both love?
- Do you have a favourite city or country that you’ve been to, or perhaps that you’d love to go to?
- What are you deal-breakers for your wedding day? What do each of you absolutely have to have?
- How important is it to you to have an original, unique day that stands out?
Your wedding theme can literally be anything
You might choose one or two colours as your theme, or a season, a time period, or part of the world. You and your partner might have an activity that you both love such as sailing, travelling or enjoying gourmet food. You could base it around how you met or where you went on your first date.
You might choose a design mode like French Provincial or Hamptons Chic. You could choose a book or a movie, a piece of fabric, a song that is important to the two of – anything you like.
Some of the easiest themes include:
- Country or rustic
- Contemporary cool
- Beach boho
- Vineyard
- Vintage glamour
You can always choose a popular theme like the ones above and then put your own unique spin on it.
Tips for choosing the perfect wedding theme
A wonderful way to start is to imagine your wedding.
Close your eyes and transport yourself to the perfect wedding day. What does it look like? What does it feel like? What experience will your guests have when they walk in? What are the smells, sights, and sounds? What is the vibe of the day?
Chat to your closest friends and family, and be sure to make this choice with your partner. What themes do the people around you think of when they think of your wedding day?
Browse through galleries on wedding websites that you love to get ideas for what other couples have done.
Set up a Pinterest board (or several!) and start compiling the ideas and images that really move you. If you an even more visual person you could set up a real vision board – use a large corkboard and pin pictures, colour swatches, fabric and textures to it that might inspire you.
Some completely out of the box wedding theme ideas that we love
- Jazz era – Gatsby-styled wedding with a sexy art-deco setting and décor, swinging fancy dress and cool cocktails
- The wild wilderness – locate your wedding at a zoo or on a working farm, use animals in all your motifs and even look into glamping for your guests
- Outdoor vintage country fair with pony rides, old-school sideshows, and roaming minstrels
Some final thoughts
A simpler or more common theme will streamline your planning if you are a bride-chilla. Go for a completely obscure theme if you love the DIY and planning aspect of the day and want to be completely different.
Keep an eye on your budget. You might not want to choose a contemporary luxe wedding if you only have a casual backyard budget. Be aware as well on how much time and effort you want to put into the planning – if you are pushed for time, then a more popular theme will make things easier to source.
It can be difficult to make decisions on your wedding day if you are trying to incorporate everything and please other people as well. The best advice may be to just stay true to yourself and your partner. It is YOUR day after all.
If you are still completely lost, why not have some fun and check out this quiz:
https://www.popsugar.com/love/Wedding-Theme-Quiz-35278661
Main Photo by The Evoke Company | Florals by Be Designed Events
Resources
https://www.bridestory.com/blog/a-guide-to-choosing-the-perfect-wedding-theme
