I think we’re all here looking for inspiration in one way or another. Brides, grooms, wedding businesses – creativity is important. Finding something new shouldn’t always be about the latest tiara design. Sometimes it’s about taking inspiration from something unexpected. That was the message I wanted to share.
Whether it worked for you or not (and please, do tell me if you’re getting married in a red cape now), I have some more ideas to share on creativity – for brides, grooms and wedding suppliers.
Inspire your wedding
- could you learn a new creative skill in the run up to your wedding day? Anything from calligraphy to card making, jewelry design or dancing can be a great confidence booster, a lovely way to relax and useful for your wedding planning (or first dance) too!
- use your personality to inspire your wedding. We’re all different, and we all have our interests and things we love. Whether you’ve a love of fantasy fiction or you adore Elvis – find your quirky bits and see if you can’t include them in your wedding somehow!
- doing something creative is a great way to inspire confidence. Think how Gok Wan does it: you do a photoshoot, you do a fashion show, you become confident and it makes you gorgeous from the inside out. I love that. Why not take your best girls to do something creative and see what an amazing confidence boost it can be.
- make inspiration boards – it’s a little thing but anyone can do it. If you have Photoshop it’s dead easy to copy and paste images onto a blank screen. If not, get a big pile of wedding magazines and cut them into little pieces to make a collage of all the ideas you love in your colours! A night in with your fiance, a bottle of wine and some pritt stick can be such creative fun (that’s really not meant to sound as dirty as it came out!)
- your day, your way. <— a phrase I hate a little bit, but it’s true! If you have creative ideas for your wedding don’t let anyone stomp on them. I’ve heard tales of brides going for a dress fitting, loving a new style, going back with mom and being pressured to go for a more traditional dress… the same applies with your stationery, venue – everything. If you love something, even if it’s quirky or unconventional – stick to your creative guns!
Progress your wedding business
- do you ever have ‘creative days’ to do something crazy, play with designs and materials and create something new? This is the idea Chris Hanley gave me, and I’ll be doing it for sure! (especially over winter when no one’s ordering calligraphy) – it’s all too easy when you’re self-employed to work 100 hours a day for fear you won’t have any orders next month. But it’s more important to love what you do, and to feel inspired by a job you love. Taking time out to be creative is a great way to keep things fresh and exciting in your wedding work.
- come up with ideas that are a little bit ‘out there’! I recently called an English Wedding blog feature “I don’t love you any more” – and my friend Nia Fiori (a wedding stationer and illustrator who inspires me!) messaged me on facebook, joking “maybe I should design a card saying that!”. I love the idea. Something like this will grab potential customers’ attention, create a buzz, and appeal to creative clients.
- broaden your horizons as a wedding business. Creative days can be anything – getting involved in a photoshoot with twitter friends, going to an art gallery or climbing a mountain with your husband or wife. Whatever you do, taking time out to free your mind can broaden your horizons. Give it a whirl!
- break new ground. Is there something you haven’t tried before? A technique, a pattern, a design from an era everyone’s forgotten? (Vintage goes jurassic… I don’t know – it could happen!) Think of something no one’s tried before, and see if it will work for you. There are always wedding businesses launching new things and starting exciting trends: take a little time out for creative thought, and it could be you!
- be distinctive: make your collections memorable. As a wedding blogger, if you say ‘tiara’ to me, the image that springs to mind is this (see the full blog post) – amongst the hundreds of pretty tiaras for sale, to create one which stands out so beautifully from the crowd is a real triumph and something I aspire to!
Whatever your focus in life, it’s always fun and inspiring to step outside of your comfort zone and discover something new. Do something different. Take your ideas from somewhere unexpected – free your mind for a moment or two and never, ever let boring ideas and other people’s preconceptions limit you in any way.