The Directory Gigi's Journal Planning Advice

Are We Over Pinterest? Why Your Wedding Doesn't Need To Look Like Everyone Else's

Pinterest is brilliant for inspiration, but somewhere along the way it can quietly start deciding your wedding for you. Here’s how to use it for research, not instructions, with input from planners and a florist in the Directory.

Claudia Judd October 9, 2026 5 Min Read

There comes a moment in wedding planning when Pinterest stops being inspiring and starts feeling slightly terrifying. I know, because it happened to me.

At first it's wonderful. You save a dress. Then a table. Then some flowers. Then a wedding in Italy you love, then another, then another. I lost count of my boards somewhere past 30. Thousands of saved images, and somewhere in there I stopped being able to tell you what my own wedding actually looked like.

Pinterest is brilliant. But somewhere along the way, inspiration can turn into imitation without you ever noticing it happen.

The Pinterest paradox

The point of Pinterest is to find things you love. The problem is that once you've looked at enough weddings, you start seeing the same things again and again: the same white flowers, the same candles, the same menus, the same champagne towers, the same Bridesmaids, the same editorial photographs, the same cake.

Here's what actually caught me out. You think you've landed on an original idea. Then you see other couples on Instagram doing exactly the same thing, and you realise you've all been fed the same concept by an algorithm. Look into one theme once, and that's what keeps getting pushed back at you, over and over, until it starts to feel like it was your idea all along.

I found myself saving image after image because I'd seen it and liked it, not because it said anything about us as a couple. That's the real trap. Ask yourself why you're choosing each element. Is it because it's your favourite food? A genre of music you actually love? Something that's genuinely inspired you? Or is it just something you've seen enough times that it started to feel inevitable?

Timeless doesn't have to mean neutral

We've become obsessed with the word timeless. Somewhere along the way it started meaning beige: neutral flowers, neutral stationery, neutral Bridesmaid dresses, neutral everything.

There's nothing wrong with that if you genuinely love it. But don't choose it because you're worried you'll look back and think it was too much. You're just as likely to look back and wish you'd been braver. As Jemma Palmer at Halo & Wren puts it, a timeless trend is still a trend.

Start with your life, not someone else's wedding

Instead of asking what's trending, ask what you actually like. What restaurants do you love? What places matter to you? What music do you listen to? What colours are already in your home? What did your parents' wedding look like? What do you collect? Where have you travelled together? What do you always order? What do your friends already associate with you?

Emma Gold, who has been planning destination weddings at GSP for 30 years, says she has never worked to a single house style. She adapts entirely to the couple in front of her instead, and warns that Instagram in particular can create an illusion of what a day should look or feel like that has nothing to do with what will actually suit you.

You don't have to have a wedding aesthetic

Maybe you don't need one at all. The flowers can be romantic, the stationery a little eccentric, the music nostalgic, the food completely informal. The dress can be minimalist while the reception is maximalist. The Bridesmaids don't have to match.

A wedding can hold contradictions. Often that's exactly what makes it feel like yours.

Use Pinterest for research, not instructions

There's nothing wrong with saving images. Once you've found what you like, close the app and take the feeling rather than the exact thing.

Don't copy the table, work out what you love about it. Don't recreate the bouquet, notice why you saved it. Don't buy the exact shoes, ask what you were really responding to: the colour, the shape, the memory it triggered. That's where your own taste actually starts.

"The greatest source of unique floral inspiration for your wedding won't come from Pinterest or Instagram but from the mind of your florist," says Lisa at The Sunday Floral Studio. "That's how you create something personal to your wedding, rather than a version of one you have already seen online."

The best weddings have fingerprints on them

You should be able to walk into a wedding and know something about the couple before anyone tells you who they are. Not because their initials are printed on everything, but because the music sounds like them, the food tastes like them, the people around the table feel like them. Little references that don't need explaining.

"Less convention, more personality," is how Emily King at planners In Awe Weddings & Events sums up what she wants for every couple she works with. That's what makes a wedding memorable. Not perfection. Personality.

So, are we over Pinterest?

Not exactly. We're over letting it decide for us.

Use it to find inspiration, then close the app and make a few decisions of your own. And if you want a second pair of eyes on which ideas are actually yours, that's exactly what planners like Wiskow & White, who work under the line Never Assume, or the rest of the Directory's partners, are there for.