Social media can be an excellent resource for wedding planning! You can find all kinds of inspiration from vendors and other couples, but there’s another side to it. As a bride-to-be, it’s also really easy to feel overwhelmed with pressure to create the most beautiful and over-the-top event anyone has ever seen! Especially with such easy access to popular wedding trends. So for as helpful as social media can be for wedding planning, it can also be disheartening and sometimes mean.

In this episode, we are going to talk about the pressure that can come from social media and how to deal with it.

Decide what you and your partner really want

Your wedding day is extremely personal. The only opinion that really matters is yours and your significant other’s (despite what some family members might think!), and the whole day should ooze your personalities and preferences!

But when you incorporate using social media as a resource for wedding planning, you’ll see that people start injecting their opinion as if it’s the only truth. In fact, we have an entire post dedicated to the wedding elements that attract the strongest opinions here!

Keep in mind that although comments can be pretty ruthless, it’s all a matter of opinion. All that matters is what appeals to you and your significant other! So establish this before you even start planning so you will be prepared when you start coming up against other opinions.

Stay true to What Makes Sense With Your Budget

Planning a wedding is a constant balance between your vision and your budget. Your vision can be endless, but a budget is usually pretty solid. 

On behalf of the wedding industry, we apologize now, because weddings are expensive! There are ways to save money by doing some things yourself (check out our DIY Planning Post), but coming in under budget is just not something we see. 

Keep that in mind as you are scrolling through ideas on TikTok and Pinterest. 

Take the ideas and suggestions with a grain of salt and put them through your own filter. 

• Does it make sense with your budget?

• Does it make sense with your vision?

Lots of beautiful wedding ideas come from social media, and if it passes both of these filters, forget any negative comments and add it to your day!

Be wary of Wedding Trends: Which Ones Are Here To Stay?

Trends come and go really fast, especially in the age of social media. Many of them die out within 6 months or so, but every once in a while, something sticks around. 

A couple of recent trends that we have seen linger are: 

The private last dance.

This is one of those really good ideas that stuck. It’s a very sweet and simple way to end your day. 

The social media minute.

This trend started as a way to limit the temptation for guests to take out their phones during the ceremony. The Social Media Minute is allowed once the bride walks down the aisle before the ceremony starts. The officiant will announce “for the next minute, everyone is free to take photos of the couple, but then we ask that you put your phones away and enjoy the ceremony”. It’s proven to become a very effective way to curb phone distractions!

There will always be elements that are timeless and elegant. But if you come across a brand new trend, it’s worth taking a minute to decide, “will this still be a good idea in 18 months when the wedding is here?”

Talk to Your Vendors

In this industry, there’s a reason we do some things the same general way for every wedding, like creating timelines. We’ve fought that there are just certain things that work best to keep the day flowing efficiently.

Consider bouncing ideas you come across with your vendors. They do weddings for a living and can tell you if an idea works logistically.

If you see a trend you’re considering with the meal for instance, talk to your caterer to see what they think. They should be able to let you know whether it will work for your event specifically.

They might say:

“We could make this work if we do A, B and C.”

Or

“You really want to think about it because if you do this, it will cause A, B and C to happen.” For some more insight, check out our post about the 10 Most Commonly Asked Wedding Questions!

Talk to Recently Married Couples

It can be really valuable to talk to someone who has gotten married in the last couple of years.

Ask them what they loved and what they would have done differently when it came to the wedding. There always seems to be something they would have done differently:

”I wish I would have left more time for dancing” or ”I didn’t get a chance to eat”, for instance.

We see the wedding differently before the day than we do after it. There’s just some things you can’t foresee before the event happens so it’s helpful to get perspective from someone who has been there to help you navigate it.

P.s. we are planning to have a former couple of ours on the podcast to talk about some of that stuff soon, so make sure you follow us on social media and subscribe to our show! (Links are at the bottom of this post!)

Beware of going down the Pinterest rabbit hole

Don’t let your DIY become a D I WHYYY did I do that??!?!?!

When you see something on Pinterest or TikTok that you want to do, take the time to look at your budget and the time it’s going to take.

You may find a wedding project that you fall in love with, but when you get into it you realize it’s a black hole that sucks up all your time and just frustrates you. 

And social media doesn’t always help here either! Oftentimes social media can be misleading and can make these projects seem much easier (and quicker!) than they really are!

There are tons of tips and tricks out there that promise to help make your wedding more affordable, but in doing that you are going to sacrifice something. Some ideas may be worth it but just be careful when looking at ideas online. Take the time to decide which ones are really worth your time and money to take on as projects.

Remember: Your Guests will be impressed no matter what!

Chances are that majority of the people you invite to your wedding are not as obsessed with wedding planning TikTok as you are!

When your guests come to your wedding, they experience this event that you have invested time and money into, and it’s going to be lovely. They are going to enjoy the day for what it is; a celebration of your love! 

Social media as a whole has created this society where we are really hard on people that we don’t even know. Thankfully those are not the guests coming to your wedding, the people that know you and love you are! 

Even if you have a group of girlfriends that have the same taste as you, chances are you aren’t all getting married close to the same time. If you are, a quick conversation can ensure you don’t overlap on ideas that are really important to each of you.

Tips on Dealing With Criticism Online

People who create any wedding content at all, even just putting your own ideas online, are targets for criticism. Post it, and the barn doors open wide and criticism comes rushing in! It’s an inevitable part of social media. 

A good thing to remember is that people are only that brazen because they can hide behind their phone, without feeling any repercussions. 

Most of the time, we can just filter out the criticism, but some days it can be really hard to take.

On days when it gets too overwhelming, it’s ok to give yourself permission to take a break. 

Take the weekend off from wedding planning altogether! Put the binder on the shelf, hide your apps and just don’t think about it for a bit. 

Shifting gears and taking some time away from planning can be very refreshing and important for your mental health!

What would it be like to plan your wedding before social media existed?

Think about what it was like to plan a wedding before the advent of social medial 

We want to know what you think!

Do you think it would be more or less stressful?

Do you find it helpful to see what other people do and get ideas or would it be easier to live in ignorance of what is going on in the wedding world?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

The Wedding Duo: A Wedding Planning Podcast