How to Use Pinterest to Plan Your Wedding Wardrobe (and How Not To)

It hasn’t been long since Pinterest came on the scene, but it has become a place for brides—whether they’re planning a wedding with a set date or just dreaming—to collect ideas and inspiration for their weddings, from the dress to the place settings.

One of the biggest collections to put together for an Outer Banks wedding is the wedding wardrobe—bridal gown and bridesmaids’ dresses included. Pinterest can be a great tool for planning this aspect of the big day. Here are three things brides should use this tool for—and one thing you shouldn’t choose via Pinterest!

Let’s get the big one, the real whammy, out of the way first.

Don’t choose your wedding dress via Pinterest.

This might seem counter-intuitive. After all, the point of Pinterest is to collect all your inspiration in one convenient location. But your wedding dress is the one thing you don’t want to be over-inspired about.

Here’s the thing about shopping for a wedding dress: nothing is ever as it seems. Many women struggle to accurately picture how a dress in a bridal magazine will look on their own unique frame. It’s very common for a woman to walk into a bridal store with a dress all picked out, only to leave with something totally different.

Let the bridal store experience happen for you. Don’t over-engineer it with hundreds of images from magazines and predetermined choices. A good bridal consultant can respond to your style and preferences with many great options, and keeping an open mind in that situation is always best. You never know what the perfect dress will turn out to be.

That said, here are three ways brides can definitely use Pinterest to plan their wedding wardrobes.

1. Collect ideas for and choose accessories.

The choosing of a wedding gown should be approached with a wide-open mind. Accessories? Not so much. Brides can find themselves overwhelmed with the variety of choices when it comes to wedding accessories—headpieces, tiaras, and veils don’t even scratch the surface of available jewelry. The important thing is that the overall style comes together for the bride. Pinterest is a repository of thousands of images, usually with links, to bridal accessories, and it’s a great place to build a collection and narrow it down. It’s much easier to picture how the accessories will look—when you have plenty of pictures.

2. Frame a discussion with your bridal party about the bridesmaids’ dresses.

There’s usually not much to choosing the wardrobe for the groomsmen in the wedding party—standard suits and tuxes with coordinated color pieces work every time. It can be different for bridesmaids.

Although a bride should retain some control—for instance, choosing the color of the bridesmaids dresses and even narrowing it to a few styles—including your bridesmaids in the planning process for wardrobe can help take some of the load off. Pinterest is a great place to gather ideas for accessories, shoes, jewelry…even bridal gifts. Perhaps the most convenient feature is the ability to create boards. Boards can be shared with your bridesmaids so that details can be discussed without clicking through an email crammed with links.

3. Share your wedding wardrobe with family.

Boards are a wonderful tool for sharing collections of pictures and ideas with your bridal party, but they’re also a quick and easy way to include distant relatives who may not be intimately involved in the wedding planning process. This is an easy way to show your relatives the details without spamming them with too many emails.

Ever wanted to show a faraway aunt what your wedding dress will look like? Put it on Pinterest. Have you wanted to give your grandmother an idea of how the accessories will come together to complete your bridal look? Create a board on Pinterest and share it with her. Pinterest doesn’t yet offer private boards, so you can’t password-protect this information (and keep it from your future partner’s eyes), but if you’re careful about what you post to other social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter, your partner will be none the wiser.

Pinterest is so popular because it offers a unique and easy way of collecting visual ideas, and this is perfect for brides who want to see everything in advance. Don’t go Pinterest-crazy—there’s something to be said for having too many choices—but if used mindfully, Pinterest can be the perfect avenue for planning a full wedding wardrobe.

So pin away & don’t forget to check out the wedding hairstyles!

Jenny Houston is a professional blogger that writes for AllureBridals.com, a leading designer of wedding and bridal dresses.