Must Have Styling Tips For Dressing Your Wedding Venue Like A Pro
I am sharing with you a few of the top styling tips I have learnt from my visual merchandising background and picked up along the way in my wedding styling journey. I use these principles myself when styling weddings.
Wedding styling is not just about collecting pretty props and placing them on your tables, there is a strategy and a design process behind it. Knowing how to style a wedding will create a stunning first impression for your guests, create a consistent look and feel and to your wedding, and help you create truly show stopping wedding decor that not only reflects you as a couple but that your guests will be talking about for years to come.
Create a Colour Palette
A great place to start your wedding styling journey is to create a colour palette. If you get stuck trying to choose colours think about what colours you love, you can do this by looking around your home, what colour is your furniture? Take a peek in your wardrobe, is there a colour that makes you feel good and that you love to wear?
Have you been busy on saving wedding images on Pinterest? Take a closer look at your boards. Do your boards all have a common colour theme, are they filled with light and airy images or are you drawn to more dark and dramatic tones?
Once you have chosen your favourite colour the next step is to create the colour palette. Look at what other colours work well your chosen colour, your colour palette can consist of three to five colours and a metallic accent, such as gold silver or copper.
Your colour palette will be the foundation for the rest of your wedding styling decisions, keep it in mind and keep referring to it to stay consistent with the design for your wedding decor.
Inspiration mood board created for an Autumn styled wedding photo shoot. Images from Pinterest
Choose Your Wedding Theme
The theme for your wedding styling should be much more than just following a trend. The easiest way to choose your wedding theme is to decide on what reflects your personality as a couple.
If you are struggling to think of a theme for your wedding styling why not take inspiration from what you love to do as a couple, do you have a joint hobby? Do you have a favourite city or country you have visited together? You can even take theme inspiration from the style you decorate your home.
The venue you chose can also play a part in deciding on the look and feel of your wedding. Think about the location, look at the style of the venue and its architectural details. What themes spring to mind?
You can also take inspiration from the seasons, think about what time of year your wedding is going to take place.
Having a theme helps you to keep consistent in your wedding styling and it should run through every element and every detail, this will help pull everything together and create a design that makes sense.
Create Mood Boards
A mood board can be a collection or a collage of images, swatches of fabrics, colours and pieces of texts that conveys an idea in a visual way. Whether created digitally of physically, putting together mood boards for your wedding styling is extremely helpful. Collating all the images that inspire you will help you make sense of the overall look and feel that you want to create for your wedding day.
Once you have a main mood board for the theme of wedding styling, create separate mood boards for each other element that you want to style, for example your ceremony space, the reception, the welcome area, the guest book area.
Image captured by The Light Painters, Flowers by Sage and Co, Vintage glassware, Vintage props and styling by me
Style Your Props in Groups of Odd Numbers
When it comes to figuring out how to style your chosen vintage props around your reception venue It’s really useful to keep odd numbers in mind. A small grouping of odd numbers in particular three’s is way more visually appealing than creating pairs or using even numbers. Centrepieces created with odd numbers will draw your eye into and around the arrangement, especially if there are different heights involved. When planning your wedding tablescape and centrepieces you could also use groups of fives but no more than this as the centrepiece will become too cluttered and too complicated.
Remember to keep referring to your colour palette and your chosen theme when it comes to making design decisions like selecting the props you are going to use for your tablescapes.
Style Your Props Using the Pyramid Principle
Another tip to remember when styling your centrepieces and displays is to imagine that there is a triangle in the space you are styling. Place your vintage props at either point of your imaginary triangle. Work with the height of your props, your tallest piece should be placed at the back and just slightly off centre. Next your medium sized prop should be placed in front of that but slightly to one the side, followed by your smallest prop in front of that slightly to the opposite side.
The tallest prop forms the focal point of the display you have created and draws your eye into the arrangement, the different heights and odd numbers used then help to draw your eye down and around.
Remember to keep stepping back as you style and looking at your work to check that you are happy with the results.
There is an actual sciencey bit behind these principles of styling! The ancient Greeks discovered the perfect ratios for design, scale and proportions that are the most pleasing to the eye. They are still used today in architecture and interior design.
Image captured by The Light Painters, Flowers by Sage and Co, Vintage glassware, Vintage props and styling by me
Create Focal points
A focal point is an area that immediately grabs your attention and draws your eye into a space. It is the area that will stand out the most in a room and is the perfect styling opportunity to bring heaps of personality and interest to your wedding venue.
If your wedding venue is quite large consider having several focal points for the key areas in the room, for example the ceremony space, guest book area, the top table, the cake table. This will help you to draw the guests into the venue and get them moving around and exploring the space.
These are just a few of the many different styling tips and tricks that I have learnt through my career in design and wedding styling. If you are planning a DIY wedding and are thinking about doing your own wedding styling remember that its your day do it your way! Don’t forget to tell your story through your wedding decor. Fill your wedding wedding venue with your personality as a couple by using your favourite colours and patterns, nods to your favourite era or your hobbies.
I hope you find this useful. Take a look at what services I have to offer and please get in touch if you are thinking of hiring any unique wedding decor or vintage props to complete your looks.
But that’s not all, I have even one more secret to share with you, the contents of my wedding styling toolkit! Click here to get the Ultimate Wedding Stylist Toolkit Checklist straight to your inbox!
If you are starting to feel a tad overwhelmed by enormous task of styling your own wedding day or you have decided that you would rather relax on the morning of your wedding with a glass of fizz and enjoy the build up to your day then rushing about trying to pull together all those little finishing touches, and want to hire a professional wedding stylist, I’d love to hear from you!