If you haven’t started yet, now is the time to learn about how to use Pinterest for wedding planning.
Most people don’t realize this, but Pinterest is actually not social media. Pinterest is a search engine like Google and YouTube. In fact, it’s one of the biggest search engines on the internet. While it does have some elements of social media, such as groups and followers, it really is about searching for inspiration and information.
If you’ve never used Pinterest before, let me tell you all about it and how you can plan your wedding using it. In fact, according to a 2016 study performed by The Knot, about 40 million people go to Pinterest each year to help plan their weddings. Those people save about 900 million wedding-related Pins, and conduct 378 million wedding related searches. Now those are some staggering numbers!
Pinterest is an image-based search engine, where every idea or bit of information has an attached image or video with it. While anyone can go onto Pinterest to search and find information, you’ll need an account to actually save what you find. The beautiful part about this, though, is that you can easily curate a space online that provides images that you find ideal for your search. This is why so many people use Pinterest as a useful wedding planning tool.
How To Use Pinterest For Wedding Planning
Hopefully all of this doesn’t sound too complicated to you, if you’ve never used Pinterest before. The good news is that Pinterest is very easy to use. In fact, because you can save your searches, and there are other features you won’t find on Google, it actually becomes quite easy to use Pinterest’s features as you plan your wedding. You can interact, curate, and visualize with ease. And I’ll walk you through how in this post.
Let’s get into how to use Pinterest for wedding planning!
PINS
To understand Pinterest is to understand what a Pin is, first and foremost.
Pins are essentially the image that you’ll find on Pinterest. They are referred to as pins because they can be pinned to a Pinterest board (more on that later). When you conduct a search on Google, a bunch of titles of websites come up with their links. When you conduct a search on Pinterest, pins are what appear. Depending on the kind of pin they are, they may or may not be linked to a website.
Pinning From Pinterest
The easiest way to “pin” on Pinterest is to use Pinterest’s search function to look up your specific interests. The best part of this is that you can research anything, and there are a ton of wedding-related pins available. So, if you’re using Pinterest for wedding planning, you’ll be able to search a wide range of topics from engagement photos, wedding colors, wedding gowns, wedding parties, bridal showers, honeymoons, and everything in between. Literally millions of ideas will appear for your viewing.
Pinning From Websites
You can also save to Pinterest from other websites.
For example, you may be looking at wedding-related website and want to come back to a particular image or post. If you hover over an image on that website, you will probably find a “Pin It” button available. Clicking on this button will allow you to save the image, and the link back to the website, to your Pinterest account. This is great if you’re using Pinterest for wedding planning because it allows you to keep all search results in one location, even if they weren’t originally found on Pinterest.
Static Pins Vs Idea Pins
One other thing to note on Pinterest is that there are multiple types of Pins.
Now, some pins are images, and some are video, but there is another big distinction between them. Pinterest has Static Pins, or pins that are a single image or video that leads back to a website. Pinterest also has Idea Pins, formally called Story Pins. These are pins that do not link back to a website, but tend to have 5-20 different images, all telling some sort of a story. If you’re familiar with Instagram, Idea Pins are sort of a combination of carousels and stories.
In both cases, these pins can give you a lot of information that can help you plan your wedding. Static Pins are great for images, inspiration, and links outside of Pinterest. Idea Pins may give you a step-by-step DIY tutorial, or multiple ideas all related to one topic. They are different, and both serve their purpose on the platform. In both cases, they can be pinned to a board for later viewing.
PINTEREST BOARDS
When I was going over Pin’s, I mentioned boards a lot.
A Pinterest board is kind of like a virtual vision board. A pinner creates boards that will host all of the pins that they choose for it. These boards tend to be named after a main topic or theme. For example, if you’re using Pinterest to plan your wedding, you may have a board called “Wedding Planning Ideas”. You could also have a board named “Wedding Dresses”, “Wedding Cake”, or “Wedding Entertainment”. You can create as many boards as you like, and get as detailed as you want.
If you’re a regular Pinterest user, you don’t really need to do much more than add a title to a board. There are other features such as adding board covers and board descriptions, but unless you’re a content creator, you don’t need to worry too much about those.
Main Board
When you start using Pinterest for wedding planning, it may be easiest to start with one main board. You can call it whatever you’d like, such as “Weddings”, “My Favorite Wedding Ideas”, and so on. While looking for pins, once you find one you like, you can pin them all to this board. This will make it easy for you to go back to one place later on and move pins to different boards, delete them, or reference them.
Board Sections
When it comes to Pinterest boards, you can have all the Pins within a board stay in that board, or you can break them into sections.
This is a personal preference. For me, I find that board sections can get really detailed and muddled, and I’d rather my Pinterest boards be topic-specific. However, you may find that you like drilling down into sections within one board.
Here’s how it could play out; you may have a Pinterest board that is named “Wedding Beauty”. Within that board, you could section it out into “Wedding Hair”, “Wedding Makeup”, “Wedding Nails”, and “Wedding Gown”. Or, you could create a separate Pinterest board for each one of them instead. It’s all about how much detail and searching you want to do within your own Pinterest account.
Secret Boards
A cool feature with Pinterest is that account holders can view and re-pin from each other. This means that your saved pins can be searched by other people, and vice versa. It also may mean that you don’t want to share what you’re pinning and would rather keep it secret.
If this is the case, you have the ability to keep certain boards secret from others. When it comes to planning your wedding, you may find this helpful if you’d like to keep some elements of surprise from your partner or guests. All you have to do is mark a board as private and it’s taken care of for you.
Invite Collaborators
One of the cool things about Pinterest boards is you can invite collaborators to view or add to a board that is on your account.
When using Pinterest for wedding planning, you can use this feature to work with others. By inviting your partner, parents, wedding party, or vendors to contribute to a board you’re working on, they will be able to add to it. They’ll also see your general interests and ideas so they can help make them come to life. It’s a great way for everyone to see the same vision. Plus, you’ll be able to share ideas, keep organized, and have access to inspiration from any device.
PINTEREST GROUPS
Pinterest groups are when multiple collaborators all share their content and interests on massive group boards.
If you find any large wedding account on Pinterest, changes are you’re going to see that they are part of a large group. You can then click on that group to find the boards that they use. Within that board, you’ll be able to find and re-pin anything that you enjoy. You can even ask to join a group, but unless you’re a content creator this isn’t necessary. For most people who are using Pinterest for wedding planning, it’s easy enough just to re-pin and follow the group, or even specific boards.
One cool thing about finding group boards with multiple contributors is that you’ll be able to find inspiration all in one glance without having to sift through a ton of search results. When it comes to wedding planning, this and this are two of my favorite group boards.
FOLLOWS
Let’s go into what “follow” means on Pinterest.
Essentially, it’s exactly what you’d expect. You find an account or board that interests you, and you can click to follow it. Following on Pinterest will give you updates on when that board or account has new content, and it also tells Pinterest what you’re interested in. The keywords from the accounts and boards that you follow will flag to Pinterest that you should see more of the same content, and you can easily go down a path with more and more ideas.
So, if you enjoy certain websites for your wedding planning, check to see if they have a Pinterest account. Clicking the follow button will bring up any new content for you to look at and save for later, each and every time you go into Pinterest.
PINTEREST ADVICE
Now that you’re aware of how to create boards, pin images, and find wedding related inspiration, let’s relay it back to some general advice about using Pinterest for wedding planning.
Pinterest is really good for inspiration. It is not always practical for application, though. While it’s nice to have wedding related ideas and organization on Pinterest, it’s important to remember that not all of these ideas will be feasible for your wedding. The images that you’ll find on Pinterest are curated. They may be professionally done. There may be a team that created the set up, and the costs of each item may be out of your price range.
When you find ideas and inspiration on Pinterest, keep in mind that they are a general guideline for your wedding. You may not be able to recreate this exact set up later on. In fact, there are entire websites and Instagram accounts dedicated to “Pinterest Fails”. So, even if something looks gorgeous and obtainable, be sure to do your research to make sure it’s actually applicable to your wedding.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
I highly recommend that you use Pinterest for wedding planning, in some capacity. It’s an easy and cost-effective way to group ideas, collaborate with others, and showcase your wedding vision all in one space. You’ll gain lots of inspiration, and you’ll be able to show vendors what you’d like them to recreate for you. Pinterest is an easy platform to use, and there are a lot of reasons why it’s so important to help with wedding planning.
More From Hummingbird Wedding Advice:
12 Fun Wedding Planning Tasks To Share With Your Partner
How To Set Up A Wedding Registry
20 Wedding Hair & Makeup Trial Tips
Did you find this post helpful, inspiring? PIN it to your Wedding Planning Board on Pinterest!
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