How Do I Choose a Style for My Wedding? — Offbeat Wedding Stationery for Alternative Couples

It’s daunting to select just a single way of representing you both aesthetically for one big day. You’re complex, but the look of your wedding can pull out just a few parts of both your personalities without looking messy. It’s all about a balance of backdrop, details and atmosphere.

The Backdrop

By this, we mean:

The venue - the space you’re all going to occupy
The amount of people coming (and therefore the level of intimacy of the event)
The guest dress code, if you have one
The venue’s table, chairs, exterior, the walls and foundations - textured vs smooth walls, graffiti etc

All of these things will set the scene for the day. If you want a pretty summer garden theme, it might not work so well in an old warehouse by a canal. Selecting a venue you LOVE will give you some big clues as to what to choose for your day’s overall style. It’s the biggest visual tool you’re going to have!

Ashridge Great Barn in Devon. Photo by Clare Kinchin

The Details

These bits can cover:

On-the-day stationery like your welcome signs, menus, place names, table names
Favours, if you choose to have them
Decorations like a photo backdrop, bunting, pom-poms, wall-hangings
Practical objects like tablecloths, napkins, crockery, cutlery, glassware
The transport you choose
Your cake
Your outfits, shoes, accessories like jackets and jewellery
Your hair and make up choices
The flowers you choose
What you show of your usual day-to-day look: Tattoos, coloured hair, that necklace you wear and everyone recognises as yours etc.

These details not only overlay on top of the backdrop, but are the parts which are really from the heart and make the day feel like ‘you’. You can play with so much colour and texture here and really have some fun with it. You can DIY a whole bunch of it, delegate to the wedding party over a few wines or get some external help. There are 👏so 👏 many 👏awesome wedding suppliers who can help you with these finer details. Here’s a few of my faves:

Iridescent wine glasses by Anthropoligie

The Atmosphere

This is more than just the look - it’s how your day feels. It can include:

The music you choose, including if you have a band
Any other entertainment - magician, fire dancers, arial performers… Go wild!
The scent - many venues let you burn incense, candles or use diffusers if you ask them to
The food you choose and how it’s served. This could be food trucks, pizza boxes, grazing tables and buffets or a sit-down 3-courser. They all create the atmosphere - be it formal and fancy or super chilled.

Choosing a Style

Doing this brings all those visual cues together. Take the venue as the foundation, and then think what you like about the place. Brainstorm some things that really matter to you both and see how they’d play out in a style and whether they correlate with each other and fit well with the backdrop, too.

Try not to be literal - if one of you loves West Ham Football Club and the other is big into knitting, you don’t have to knit everyone a West Ham scarf as a favour. But, you know, you can! However you might like to have pops of claret, light blue and canary yellow in your flower arrangements and stationery instead, which give a nod to the Hammers but don’t dominate the day. You could knit some bunting or ribbons to hold knives and forks together and people will know this is made with love and genuinely represents you both.

The difference between a style and a theme is that a style mixes a combination of foreground and background visual inspiration to create an overall aesthetic and vibe, but a theme is more literal. For example, a style is something loose like ‘Celestial’, a theme is more direct, like ‘Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet’.

Here are a few more examples of how you might plan a style or theme:

Travel

As a theme: You might incorporate stamps, flags, airmail envelopes and maps

As a style: You might have more of a nod to land, sea, sky and time through floaty dyed tablecloths and using grass, tropical plants, sand, water, wood, shells and stones in your centrepieces

1950s

As a theme: Think petticoats, quiffs, Teddy boy jackets, Grease soundtrack, set in an old-school diner

As a style: More like a red lip and a netted birdcage veil, a retro car like a Chevrolet Bel Air, a 50s-inspired font like Syrup and pretty faded pastels for contrast

A Pink Table Setting by Otto Maya via Conde Nast — *A Pink Table Setting* by Otto Maya via Conde Nast

Disney

As a theme: That yellow Belle dress, tables named after specific characters, a Mickey Mouse cake, horse and carriage as transport

As a style: Flowers displayed under a glass bell, candelabras, pumpkin centrepieces, soft princessy linens, chiffons and silks

Sundried flower bells by Ginette et Ernest

Summary

To round it up, my advice is to find balance. Negative space gives the important details room to breathe. You don’t have to blast every element and plaster every surface to get the point across. No one will look at the forks and think, “That fork is SO Ashley and Joel”, y’know? Find colours and textures you BOTH like and create a mood board with something like Pinterest, which is packed full of inspiration.

You might have been able to tell that I’m more of a fan of style as inspiration rather than a cut-and-dry theme or scheme. For me, I think it leaves plenty of room for you both to shine - it’s the stage you set but not the show. However, as always, I fully support people doing their day their way, so take want you want from this and run with it!

If you’re stuck on the big picture, ask for help! There are loads of suppliers who are wedding styling experts who you could chat to at wedding fairs and on Instagram, and you can always email me on carly@withbellson.co.uk for some FREE chat and advice. I’d love to help!