How to Plan a Wedding That’s Unique, Memorable, and Totally You

This blog is not for brides looking for a general how-to or for the same advice you can get from any corner of the very saturated wedding planning Internet. This also isn’t a basic “how to plan a wedding” checklist. This guide goes beyond (though we’ll share some tips and guidance on the logistics); we’re here to help you with all the things those checklists won’t tell you. We want to share how to plan a wedding that is you, that meets your budget and your dreams, that will wow your guests and put any Pinterest board to shame. We’ll include plenty of creative wedding ideas throughout, as well as a couple of exercises to help you and your partner plan your big day!

How to Plan a Wedding That’s Creative and Memorable

The most unforgettable weddings aren’t just planned. They’re strategized with heart. Turn on your marketing brain and treat every component as a chance to make a statement or share your love story. Venue, date, theme, décor, activities, food, drinks, ceremony — each one is a decision, and the more you approach each decision as a chance to make things your way (and not a default tradition), the more you’ll craft an event that feels perfectly you.

Be intentional. Be bold. And if a few choices ruffle feathers? No worries. Memorable never came from playing it safe. Keep reading for our step-by-step guide on building a day people can’t stop talking about.

Trust Us, We’ve Got Creative Down to a Science

You may be wondering what a team of marketing experts knows about planning a wedding. But before you leave us too soon and head over to a wedding planner’s blog (and miss out on all our biased, yet stellar ideas), let me share a few insights on why we’re exactly who you should listen to for advice on how to plan a wedding:

1. We’ve all been brides. We get it. We lived it. And we planned bespoke, one-of-a-kind weddings our guests raved about. We took our design and vision into our own hands to create memorable events that celebrate our unique love stories. And we’ve built our careers on helping others bring their unique visions to life!
2. We aren’t typical wedding planners, coordinators, vendors, or anyone at all with skin in the wedding game (though we’d love to work with more wedding venues, vendors, and planners). For this reason, we’re able to give you unbiased advice, bride-to-bride; no hidden sales agenda.
3. We’re creative by nature and professionally. We’re literally in the business of idea generation — coming up with unique and effective ideas is our best skill!

It’s worth noting that, while I am first and foremost a writer, as well as a social media specialist and SEO strategist, I have a long-standing love affair with events. Living in Charleston, SC, since 2013, I’ve worked on multiple sides of the event industry — as a venue coordinator, as a vendor, and on a wedding planner’s team. Combined with my extensive marketing experience and endless creative juices? Just trust me.

So while those other blogs will tell you how to plan a wedding, this is where you’ll learn how to plan a wedding that is unique, unforgettable, and perfectly you.

How to Plan a Wedding Theme, Aesthetics, and Branding

Sometimes having a theme, or at least a cohesive aesthetic in mind, can help guide all other elements in the planning process. Other times, the pressure to pick a theme can feel creatively limiting. Either way, gathering inspiration is step one in creating your vision, and the more you can cultivate this vision, the easier and more beautifully the pieces will fall into place.

Select a Theme or Aesthetic

A theme can be as simple as a color scheme or your favorite flower or as niche and specific as you’d like.

If you’re having a difficult time settling on one theme, don’t worry. You don’t have to choose one at all. In fact, building a wedding around all the things you and your partner love, and sticking to trusting your artistic taste, will naturally develop into a cohesive whole that reflects your personal style as a couple. Your wedding’s aesthetic may turn out eclectic, but that can be wonderful and whimsical, or it may be surprisingly cohesive and classic.

Get Personal

Wedding planning is like branding — you’re developing a design that ties elements like invitations, a website, signs, and décor all together. And just like good branding, that design should be personal and unique.

When we work on developing a brand identity for a business, we get to know our clients because truly understanding the people behind the business is crucial to crafting branding that they’ll love — and that will connect the right people with their business. Apply this same concept to your wedding to create an event that seamlessly comes together and feels completely, perfectly you.

Look Offline for Wedding Inspiration

If you want a theme or guiding point for the vision of your big day, Pinterest is a wonderful place to start. But I’d recommend branching outside of the Internet for inspiration — the algorithm will be favoring what’s trendy, and not necessarily what aligns best with you.

Consider instead how you and your partner decorate your space, the traditions you share together, your fashion style, and your hobbies. A beautiful theme could be born from something as small as a line from your favorite song, a painting you both love, or the pillows you chose together for your living room. Pulling inspiration from the life and love you’ve built together will ensure a visual aesthetic, or wedding brand identity, that is authentically you.

How to Plan a Wedding Date, Location, and Venue

When and where? These are the most important questions for any event. Another to consider: for how long?

Determining the location, venue, and date are the first on your to-do list when planning a wedding. These decisions build the foundation for your event and can also be the most stressful, with the venue cost often being one of the highest expenses, and the options being nearly limitless.

How long your wedding is for is an equally important piece of the event’s foundation. It could be the traditional afternoon into evening, or just a couple of hours, or several days long. It’s totally up to you!

Talk to Your Partner about How the Day Will Look

We suggest several long talks with your partner about what you both envision on your big day before even considering dates or venues. You may realize that these visions drastically impact when and where you get married.

Maybe you’re picturing a lot of quiet time with your partner while wearing a dress you feel perfect in, and maybe your partner thinks about sharing his vows and sharing a small celebration with close family and friends. Before you book the big venue designed for 200 guests for a full night of dinner and dancing, maybe consider a micro-wedding venue for a daytime ceremony followed by cake and toasts and ending before sunset so you and your partner can spend the rest of the night just the two of you.

Contrastingly, you may picture your day ending with all of your friends and family dancing the night away under the stars. That information tells you to seek an outdoor venue with a large capacity during a month that’s not too hot or too cold.

Try This Exercise Before You Start Touring Venues

I’d start with a little exercise with your partner. Each has a separate paper and pen. Without showing the other, write down the least you’d want to budget for your event, and the most you’d feel comfortable spending on it. Next, for the more fun part, spend 10-15 minutes jotting down what you picture for your dream wedding day. It could be a list or a story of how you’ll feel and what will happen.

When you both have your thoughts down, share them. If they are fairly aligned, beautiful. If they aren’t (and know that is normal!), let this be your first opportunity to learn compromise in your marriage. Now, let this decided budget and vision direction for your day be the guidelines for selecting your venue and date.

Find a Venue that Fits Your Vibe as a Couple

Keep your minds open to the endless possibilities of where. Traditional venues that specialize in hosting weddings are beautiful, classic, and often a seamless option with on-site coordinators, preferred vendors, and all-inclusive options. But depending on your vision and budget, there are many out-of-the-box places to throw your wedding.

Some places to consider for creative wedding locations:

Narrow Down the Dates

If you’re married to being married at a certain venue, their calendar will likely determine your date for you. But if you’re more open or working with a venue with more availability, I’d consider both yourself and your guests when thinking about the following:

This may all sound overwhelming, but don’t worry — you only need one place and one date to make it all happen. These questions and considerations are designed to get you thinking of all the possibilities, so you can narrow down all the things you don’t want to determine your perfect venue, and lock in your dates.

Wedding Invitation Ideas that Stand Out

Once you have your dates locked in, the next step is spreading the word! The sooner you can send Save the Dates, the better. Then, depending on your wedding timeline, you may have anywhere from a couple of months to nearly a year to get your invitations together.

Invites are one of the most fun ways you can let your creativity shine! Let the aesthetics you settled on or the location of your venue (especially if you chose a destination venue) influence the design of your invites.

You can send a digital card, a traditional mailed envelope or postcard, or get as creative as you’d like! A video invitation or custom website can be a fun and exciting way to let guests know to save the date and build hype for your event!

Canva is an amazing and user-friendly tool for all things design. We use it to help our clients literally every day, from social media content creation to marketing collateral and so much more. But we also use it for our wedding invitations. You can print with Canva or elsewhere. Have fun with it! Start with a template you like if you don’t know where to start, but play with fonts, colors, and adding and taking away elements to create something unique!

Some ideas from the Charm for unique invites:

• Shop for stamps that fit your vibe for a cohesive touch.
• Seal your invitations with a wax seal with your initial, or just a fun sticker!
• Decorate your envelopes; play with writing guests’ names and addresses in a fun (but legible way) or add little drawings and doodles. I painted watercolors on the envelopes for my Save the Dates. 
• Design your own return label with your and your partner’s name. This will come in handy for thank you cards down the line, too!
• Add a cute little sticker, photo, or confetti inside each envelope for a fun or personal touch.

These are all totally optional, and they do add extra work. Some people will get the mail, throw your Save the Date on the fridge or in a drawer and go on with their day, but others will cherish the love you put into their invite and save it for years! Whatever extra touches you add, the invitation is an opportunity to tease what’s to come and build excitement and anticipation!

Wedding Dress Codes: Creative, Traditional, and Everything in Between

From your gown or suit to your shoes to your guests’ attire, fashion is a huge element of any wedding. And yet another opportunity to get creative!

Wear What You Love

This is your day. From head to toe, you deserve to wear whatever you want. Don’t be afraid to veer off from a traditional white gown if you want to. Play with colors and find something that matches your style. If you do the traditional wedding dress route, try on at least one of every style. You might be surprised by what you end up loving once it’s on you! Have fun or get sentimental with your jewelry, shoes, and other touches. Whatever you feel comfortable and stunning in is the right choice!

Wedding Dress Codes Explained

For your guests, the typical options are semi-formal, cocktail attire, formal, and black-tie. In case you’re not familiar with the differences, here’s a quick breakdown of each:

Semi-formal and cocktail attire are fairly similar. These are both dressier than your average outfit, but not full “fancy mode.” Semi-formal is more versatile and a bit more understated, while cocktail attire is generally a bit flashier and reserved for evening events. For semi-formal, think flowy dresses with sandals, nice skirts with a blouse, and dress pants with a button-up. Cocktail attire can be shorter dresses constructed from elevated material, sleek maxi dresses with heels, a suit with an elevated shirt and tie, or a blazer with dress pants.

Formal attire is one of the most common wedding dress codes. Formal attire involves a matching suit or a floor-length or ankle-length dress that is classy and made of nicer material. Black-tie optional events fall near the formal category, inviting guests to level up their attire, but also accepting outfits that lean more on the side of formal.

Black tie is the fanciest of traditional wedding dress codes. Think elaborate gowns with your best accessories and tuxedos with simple or expressive bowties.

Creative Wedding Dress Codes

The problem with these wedding dress codes, while they are universally understood and a clear way to communicate the outfit expectations to guests, is that they lack any direction aside from the level of formality. If you’re creating a bespoke, highly intentional event, why not have a more defined dress code?

You might not want to worry your guests about their attire or encourage them to go out and buy a whole new outfit. (Or that might be exactly the kind of thing you want to encourage — who doesn’t love shopping for a fabulous new outfit?) But you can get more specific about the dress code while clarifying you want guests to wear whatever they feel their best in!

Some ideas for more specific and creative outfit themes:

• Funky Formal
• Dress like a Cocktail, Cocktail Attire
• Coastal Chic
• Jewel-Toned Black-Tie Optional
• Southern Soiree
• Semi-Formal Garden Party

Include inspiration on your wedding website, or even link to a full Pinterest board, to help your guests understand the assignment.

It is your big day — if you want to give guests a color palette to stick to, do it (but maybe make sure to include some common/easy to find colors). Otherwise, give guests inspiration and vision, but let them know that this is simply inspiration, and they do not need to go buy a special outfit. The people who love a theme will love having the guidelines to inspire their outfit!

Keep in mind: Etiquette suggests your wedding dress code should match your theme, in that your dress code should not be significantly more elevated than the event itself. At the end of the day, do whatever feels right to you! But consider the venue when selecting a dress code.

Typically, more laid-back or daytime weddings will opt for a semi-formal (or even dressy casual — a bit more casual than semi-formal) dress code, while most evening weddings will fall somewhere in the range of cocktail attire and formal. Because a black-tie dress code asks your guests to wear a tux and full gown (something expensive that they may not already own), this attire option is typically reserved for elevated, indoor, evening events.

How to Plan a Wedding Ceremony

Sure, a lot of us are excited for the dancing, cake, and open bar, but the ceremony is truly the most important part of the wedding. This is a key moment in your life, the official coming together as one with your partner, and also an opportunity to show your people a glimpse into the inner workings of your relationship. So why not get creative with it?

You can keep this traditional, but this is one of the most special ways to make your wedding unique, beautiful, and memorable. From the music and the ceremony location to the people involved — the officiant, speakers, and bridal party — you can craft your ceremony to be special and completely you.

Steal Ideas from Ceremonies You Loved

I’d recommend thinking back on the wedding ceremonies you’ve been to and start piecing together all the little touches you loved. And if you can’t tell by now, our philosophy with weddings is to forget tradition — do what you want! And this belief is especially true with the ceremony. Of course, any or all traditions you do love or cherish should be included, but I’d recommend you don’t include any tradition in your ceremony that doesn’t feel authentic to you.

Officiants and Speakers

If you’re having a religious ceremony, this part of the event may be a no-brainer. You might still select some special verses to share, or ask special family members to read them, but it’s likely the traditions of your religion give you a good template for a meaningful ceremony.

If you’re not having a religious ceremony, you can still create a ceremony that is special and memorable — it doesn’t have to be rushed in 5 minutes (unless that’s what you want)! Consider having a close loved one be your officiant, or a silly friend who can work a crowd. You can hire a professional who helps walk you through building a seamless ceremony, or hire an officiant who is an impersonator of one of your favorite icons.

Consider asking parents, siblings, or whoever your closest people are to prepare a short message to share. This could be reading a poem, sharing a story, or giving loving marriage advice.

The Vows

You can opt for traditional vows, or write your own. A non-traditional option that takes a lot of pressure off is writing your vows together with your fiancé. It can be a lovely way to align on what you both want this next chapter to look like, and to truly commit to the words you’ll be saying at the altar (or metaphorical altar). My husband and I chose to write our vows together, but we also each additionally wrote a separate message about each other to keep a surprise and read during the ceremony.

An Exercise for Writing Your Own Vows

Here’s how my husband and I wrote our vows together. We each got a piece of paper (and a glass of wine because why not?) and set a timer for 15 minutes. In that time, we quickly jotted down a list of things we think we bring to the relationship. This was a mix of our strengths, the ways we show love to others, promises we want to make to each other, and even a few things we weren’t great at but wanted to grow in.

We didn’t share our answers. We reset the timer, flipped over our paper, and wrote a list of things we want from each other. It was a mix of existing habits we cherished, ways our love languages were fulfilled, and requests for things that we’d like to be more frequent.

In the end, we read through them, typed them all into one doc, and found that we were pretty much on the same page, sometimes just with different wording. As the writer in our couple, I then took the words we wrote verbatim, organized the ones that went together, and worked a little editing magic to spruce it up. And there were our vows. A list of line-item actions beginning with “I promise” and “I’ll always” and “I’ll never stop.” And they were completely true and unique to us.

Some more ways you can mix up your ceremony:

How to Plan a Wedding Reception That’s Authentic to You

The standard playbook goes entrance, dances, dinner, toasts, cake, and lots more dancing. But you get to write your own timeline! Depending on that list you created with your partner, your reception may be looking pretty close to the standard, or very far from it. Your budget, location, and length of the event may play a major role in this as well.

Food and Beverage

This segment of the wedding is where a lot of your budget gets eaten up, pun intended. You can choose to splurge or save in this category depending on what factors matter most to you.

The modern-day standard for weddings is a 45-minute to 1-hour cocktail hour after the ceremony and before a full sit-down dinner. This gives the newlyweds time for photos post-ceremony, without guests getting bored. But you can do whatever you want!

You may choose to follow your ceremony with a simple and short gathering, in which case you might just serve finger sandwiches and charcuterie or simply cookies or cake with champagne. A morning wedding can be followed by a brunch, with just coffee and juice or mimosas if you’d like to include alcohol. Breakfast foods tend to be more budget-friendly, and loved by all!

Drink Options and Ideas

Your budget and vision may include a full bar with liquor, beer, and wine, or you may want to save money with just wine and beer. If alcohol is not a part of your lifestyle, or simply not worth the added cost, you may skip it altogether. Some unique alternatives are a dirty soda bar, lemonade stand with flavor options, or a coffee bar. For the lowest budget option, just offer water and sodas!

Whether you choose to go full bar, dry bar, or something in-between, you can add a creative touch by making a menu to sit at the bar with personalized drinks. There is commonly a “his” and “her” drink, which is a fun way to share with your guests your favorite drink. You may also opt for a drink named after your pet, the cities that are important in your life, or lines from your favorite movies or songs.

Dinner Options and Ideas

If you choose to have an afternoon or evening wedding followed by a traditional reception that is longer than an hour or two, you must serve a proper meal. You don’t want to ask guests to spend several hours with you, over the typical dinner time, and not feed them. However, how you feed them can be as creative as you’d like! Plated dinner, buffet-style, or passed apps and hefty graze boards are all acceptable options!

If you envision elegance and are a foodie, I’d browse caterers for one you truly love. But don’t be afraid to veer off track and serve your favorite foods; pizza, taco bars, and pasta buffets can be great options! Food trucks are another fun way to add a creative touch to your day.

Dessert can be a traditional cake, or a full dessert bar, or milk and cookies, or an ice cream truck rolling in as the speeches finish up. Honor what you and your partner love, and you can’t go wrong — each sip and each bite is a little invite to your guests into your world.

Traditions

The whole wedding in and of itself is a list of traditions, and there are many we discussed so far, but some of the most thought-of and widely followed traditions take place during the reception. These are the dances, the toasts, the cake-cutting, the garter, and the bouquet toss. Do as many or as few of these as you’d like.

Selecting special songs is a common practice and one that can add meaning to each moment. The first dance with your partner is a fun place to express your creativity. Maybe you take it very seriously and learn an impressive dance, or maybe you learn a TikTok dance and have fun with it, or make up your own silly choreography to a mash-up of your favorite songs as a couple.

Or skip the first dance altogether. Replace it with something that feels more you. For example, I saw a couple replace their first dance with a “first game” — they projected Mario Kart on a screen, and their guests watched them race for a round to the finish line.

Activities

While drinking and dancing is the most common post-dinner activity at weddings, dancing isn’t for everyone. If you want to add some alternative activities for guests who won’t be on the dance floor, or if you and your partner aren’t into a dance party, I recommend leaning into the activities you and your partner love, especially those you enjoy together.

Some ideas:

• Board games and cards in a section or at each table
• Group games that include all of your guests: BINGO, trivia about you and your partner, and a human scavenger hunt can include everyone
• A group paint-by-numbers — Draw out a design on a large canvas, with numbers written in each shape. Set it up with paint at the wedding so all of your guests can contribute to a piece of art for your home!
• LEGO flowers in place of centerpieces for guests to put together
• Coloring pages or book— This is extra fun if you create your own images for the coloring pages that depict you, your partner, your pets, your venue, or your life together.
• Distribute disposable film cameras (with flash!) to your guests to capture fun photos throughout the night, or even an old-school camcorder that can be passed around.
• The more the fun and activities at your reception reflect you, regardless of how much they veer from the traditional, the more memorable and unique your day will be!

Extra Touches to Make Your Wedding Unforgettable

Unique Wedding Guest Book Ideas

Whatever traditions you do or don’t, I highly recommend having a guest book, especially if your guest count is more than just a few of your closest people! If buying a basic guest book that says “guest book” on the front in fancy calligraphy sounds like a boring pass, know that there are so many creative guest “book” ideas! You can really think outside the box on this one! Basically, if people can sign it, it can be your guest book. Some creative wedding guest book ideas:

Creative Wedding Favor Ideas

A lot of advice will tell you to skip the favors. But I’m here to tell you that they are one of the best ways to add a memorable touch that shows your guests your gratitude. Of course, if done right.

Custom koozies and match boxes are cute (and trust that I will be ensuring mine will be making it home with me!), but they are often abandoned at the end of the night, and the branding of your initials on them might make guests less enthused. Of course, if you’re tied to a personalized initial favor, go for it, but here are some more ideas for wedding favors that stand out to guests!

Unforgettable Wedding Favor Ideas

Hire a portrait photographer. Not the photographer who’s taking pictures of you and yours all night, but a whole other photographer who specializes in portraits, for an hour or a few hours. They will set up a cute space to take photos and photograph your guests during cocktail hour and the reception. The favor? Your guests get a lovely, professional photo with their partner, friends, or family while all dressed up.

An alternative to the above that I’ve seen gaining popularity lately (and one I totally would have as a favor at my wedding had I had the budget) is hiring a watercolor artist. They paint tiny watercolor portraits of your guests, so they can each take home a cute little custom painting.

This idea costs nothing but your time. Write each guest a love letter. You can make them each a card, or simply write a letter on a nice piece of paper, or even type and print it. Thank them for coming to your big day and share some memories you have. You can envelope each letter and place them at their table seatings (their name on the letter can even double as a placecard), or the letters can be your seating chart, inviting guests to take their letter to their seat. I made a seating chart with tiny envelopes for each guest, with a tiny card inside each!

Creative Budget-Friendly Wedding Favor Ideas

If you have any creative skills, and you likely do since you’re reading this, a quality handmade gift is a wonderful favor. Hand-poured candles, baked goods, homemade dog treats, and little jars of jam from your fruit tree are all lovely gifts your guests will cherish.

If you sew, coasters, napkins, dish towels, or a little multipurpose bag filled with sweets, mini-bottles, or a “hangover kit” are great options.

Plant clippings in little jars or tiny potted plants are cute, but consider that they may be difficult for guests to travel home with (I did once take two flights home from a wedding with a tiny succulent I got as a wedding favor in hand, and yes, it’s still alive today!).

An idea we ended up not going with for our wedding was making several of the golf-peg games (think Cracker Barrel) and putting several on each dinner table with encouragement for guests to take it home after. You’d simply need a few pieces of wood, tons of golf pegs, a little paint, and the woodworking skills and tools to create a fun and unique favor!

For our favors, we bought a bunch of tiny canvases on little easels and spent several weekends leading up to the wedding having “painting” dates. In the end, we had a table covered in original art, some of it better than others, but it was so fun to see which pieces our guests picked out. I still love to spot the tiny art in their homes when I visit!

Other Out-of-the-Box Ideas for Planning Your Wedding

Creative wedding planning really comes to life in all the little added details. The décor, the flowers, the loving touches you sprinkle into your day, all come together to create an event that is explicitly you!

Framed photos are an easy, low-cost way to sprinkle personality into an event. Some creative ways to use framed photos:

• A common choice is to honor loved ones who have passed away.
• Sharing photos from your parents’ weddings is a sweet choice.
• Framing photos of you and your fiancé at each age that corresponds with your table numbers. Table one has a photo of you each at age one, table two displays photos of you both at two, and so on.
• Frame funny photos from throughout your relationship, or even screenshots of sweet or funny messages from early on, social posts, or your dating profile if you met on an app.
• Frame your favorite quotes, poems, song lyrics, or even your own handwritten vows for a sweet touch.