The best weddings are personal and include things important to the couple. One of the better ways to make your event more personal is to have a wedding theme. They can also use this theme to help pull together all the various elements of the wedding into a unified vision. Wedding colors are a start but do little to personalize the event.
Start With the Location
Start by taking the wedding and reception locations into account. If you’re having a beach wedding, a winter wonderland theme won’t work. Likewise, if you’re getting married on a farm, The Great Gatsby isn’t the best choice. A barn location goes well with a more rustic option.
Keep the Date in Mind
As with the location, the wedding date can help limit the options. A Christmas theme probably won’t work well in June, for example.
Think of the Overall Mood and Style
Picturing your ideal wedding day in your head can help give you some ideas. Is it a casual event, or is everyone wearing their fanciest clothes? Is the mood more fun or more formal? What activities are people taking part in? Are they dancing under disco lights late at night or playing lawn games in the middle of the afternoon?
Consider Your Personality as a Couple
Are there any things you love to do together or that you’re both crazy about? This could be a good start. For example, if you both love baseball and met at a Red Sox game, this could use this. Or if you dream of taking trips together, you could have a travel theme.
Take Personal Interests Into Account
Not everything has to be about things you both enjoy together. Perhaps one of you is a fanatic reader and the other loves to dance salsa. Make a list of all the things you each love and see if any of them is important enough to you to include it. Think of the foods, places, activities, colors, clothes, books, and movies you like.
Remember That a Wedding Theme Can Comprise Multiple Ideas
You don’t have to pick just one idea, such as a Cinderella wedding. You can include multiple elements. This is especially good for those who want to combine elements of two different cultures or who have very different interests. Some couples even have a double-sided cake so it shows their separate personalities.
Think of Any “Must Haves” for Your Wedding
Are there any wedding traditions or extras you definitely want in your wedding? For example, do you want to wear your mother’s wedding dress or arrive riding on horseback? If you have a Pinterest board full of things you’d like to include in your big day, see if there’s some way they relate to each other. These could help narrow down your options.
Keep Cost in Mind
If you go all out and make everything theme-related, it could get expensive. Either just have a few elements so people get the idea (such as the centerpieces on the tables, the color choices, and the takeaways for the guests) or select something that isn’t too expensive to implement.
Consider the Future
It might be fun to have a crazy theme and make every element of the wedding fit it. However, this isn’t always the best idea. Think about how you’ll feel looking back over those wedding pictures later in life. Will you wind up wishing you had more traditional wedding pictures if you get married dressed up as the characters from your favorite fantasy movie?
Make it Personal
Remember, the most important thing is that the theme is personal to you. Perhaps there’s a story behind it. You may be so fanatic in your love of something that anyone seeing the theme would say “yes, that suits them to a T”. It should show off your personalities and be unique to the two of you.