How to Curate a Wedding Mood Board

5th August 2022

Congratulations!

Your wedding day is a once-in-a-lifetime event (hopefully), so it has to represent yourself and your partner’s personalities and styles. Following trends and what you’ve seen done elsewhere isn’t necessarily the best way to make your wedding personal or unique for yourselves and your guests. Remember, to make the impression of a lifetime, you need to have a plan. In this post, we’re going to outline a few simple steps that will help you create an initial wedding mood board, that will get all of your suppliers on the same page, from venue and décor to cake and print. When everyone is reading from the same page, everything becomes easier.

If you’re yet to decide on your venue (Cedar Court Hotels have fantastic rooms for weddings), a mood board can help you pinpoint things to ask about during your initial consultations. If you find you like a certain type of décor, furniture or lighting, some venues might be more suitable than others.
First things first, if you don’t have a Canva account, simply sign up for a free account. With this, you’ll have access to a host of easy-to-use tools to make a simple mood board to get your colours and style perfect. To make things even easier we’ve created a mood board template for you to get started! Just download the template from the link below and get started.

Use our Canva template

First steps

First things first, you want to create a list of things you both love that make up your combined personalities. Think about the dates you’ve been on, the activities you’ve enjoyed, the places you’ve seen together and what created memories that brought you closer together. Do you prefer the sun and heat, or do you find winter a magical experience? Do you prefer the idea of being close to home or jet-setting away for a cosy get-together?

Chances are you’ve been to a few weddings before, so you’ll have seen things that you love and hate about them. What stood out to you? You want to make sure you only repeat the aspects that worked. While you’re both talking this over, make sure to take notes of the kinds of words and ideas that come up, it will make looking for images and ideas so much easier later. For instance, do you prefer a pristine perfect wedding, or do you prefer a more rustic chilled vibe? These kinds of words will help you define the right images to portray the perfect day and make sure everything goes together perfectly.

Finding your visual style

Now for the daunting part, finding the images to make up your mood board. Many people use Pinterest to collect their images and get an idea of their specific style. Pinterest is great for this; however, it can also become overloaded and all-encompassing, rather than narrowed down to represent your big day. You can use Pinterest at this stage to collect all of the images that suit you and use your mood board to hone in on your specific style.

Start searching for images using the words that associate with you as a couple as well as photos that go with the specific aspects of the day. Below are some key considerations that you’ll want to get a feel for to make sure everything goes together.

  • Stationary (think of everything that needs printing/ menus/ invites/ table plans/ place cards)
  • Table centrepieces (flowers/ candles/ lighting/ ornaments/ how do you want your tables to look, your guests will be there for a fair while)
  • Bridesmaid and groomsmen dresses and suits (co-ordinated outfits look amazing)
  • Cakes and treats (do you like a theme, a stripped-back naked cake or a traditional cake)
  • Venues (the venue will make up a big part of the day, what kind of space do you dream of?)
  • Special features (maybe a garden fountain or a Tipi?)
  • Props (are there any aspects you love, such as polaroid photographs?)
  • Catering (do you prefer a traditional meal or something more unique?)

You’ve got a few options for collecting your photos, the easiest is to get straight on Pinterest and start collating a set of boards that have everything that fits. While you’re doing this though, you’ll want to keep your camera handy and be on the lookout for inspiration in everyday life. Inspiration is all around us, chances are your wedding will represent your tastes, so if you frequent certain restaurants or destinations, there will be aspects of their aesthetics that you love and would like to replicate in some fashion, so get a snap of them. For instance a restaurant menu, or a destination feature.

Once you’ve got a great selection of images, it’s time to get them transferred into your Canva mood board. Simply open our link, use the template and upload your images, then drag them into the photo holders we’ve made for you.

Choosing your colours

Now you have your photos in place, you can create a colour scheme based on your images. Flowers make for great colour choices. For instance, if you have certain flowers that you love the colour and feel of, you can take these colours to create your overall colour scheme. This step is extremely important, many people make the mistake of not creating a unifying colour theme for their wedding, which ends up making the day forgettable in its visual impact as nothing works together quite right. These weddings also come across as quite generic instead of a well-thought-out magical event (which is what every couple wants from their big day right?). Choosing colours will help your florist, identify bridesmaid dresses and outfits for the groom and groomsmen as well as your invites and all other stationery. The beautiful thing about Canva is that you can select each of the colours we’ve placed for you and select the colour changer to find photo colours from your page.


Now you have a mood board for your wedding in place, it’s time to start sharing it with your suppliers! Remember a venue space can often be completely transformed depending on how you dress tables and the features that you add to the day. Flowers are often overlooked but a great florist will make your day a truly magical experience. If you’re at the stage of finding a venue, our hotels are placed in great locations across Yorkshire so take a look at our wedding details today or get in touch with our wedding event specialists to learn how we can make your big day a memory for many lifetimes!