How To Plan A Stylish Wedding Without Losing The Meaning of The Day
September 19, 2026
Hear me out, I love a pretty wedding. I am *just a girl* and a wedding photographer after all. AND, I do believe that there is a point where planning a stylish wedding can come at the cost of leaving out personality, emotion, and what makes your love so damn special to begin with. Your wedding can be stylish as hell without losing the emotion behind why everyone is there in the first place. The trick is curating the day around what you actually want to live, remember, and feel instead of what you think is going to look cool on Pinterest or socials. Let me show you what I mean.
Why It’s Important to Place the Emotion of Your Wedding Day at the Center When Styling Your Wedding Day
Before I dive into how to curate the day around what you actually want to live, remember, and feel, we first need to quickly address the elephant in the room: “but I want my wedding day to be beautiful!”
I am by no means saying you cannot have both. What I am saying is that there is a very big difference between attending a wedding that has the most insane florals vs. the wedding that chooses specific florals that hold additional meaning to them and their love story or personality.
Like yes, I’m a photographer and love pretty things. Give me the most whimsy florals, funky glassware and the bold color. But I also wanna see more of you and your relationship sprinkled throughout as well. The cheesy cutouts of your furry friends, the hot pink heels instead of the traditional white, shotgunning a beer instead of clinking champagne because you actually don’t care for champagne.
Basically, make sure you are incorporating elements into your wedding day that are true to you and your love.
How to Curate Your Wedding Day Without Losing the Feeling of You
Your wedding day is so much more than one singular day where you gather all of your favorite people together. It’s a commitment to each other, space to proclaim your unconditional love for each other, and a time to celebrate your relationship.
No matter how “stylish” a wedding is, it should never overshadow the reason we’re all here to begin with.
4 Ways of Creating Space for Emotion During Your Wedding Day
1. Decide What You Actually Want to Experience
Before you decide what time dinner starts or whether you’re doing a first look, ask yourselves what parts of your wedding you actually want to be present for.
Molly and Daniel are such a good example of this. They knew they wanted to actually be at cocktail hour with their guests, so they prioritized a first look and completed the majority of their portraits before the ceremony.
The timeline served what they wanted to experience instead of the other way around.
Before worrying about what your wedding day is “supposed” to include, decide what you want to remember being a part of.
2. Your Wedding Timeline Needs Buffer Time
Screw the timeline templates for 6,8, and 10 hours. Those timelines are simply examples for what you could do, not always what you should do.
If you’re planning a wedding day centered around a family style dinner, or heading to a restaurant, those template timelines could never account for travel time or time to set the table.
Or maybe you want to get all of your portraits done before the ceremony like Maddy and Calen did, that template timeline of 1 hour is not going to cut it.
Work hand in hand with your wedding coordinator and photographer to ensure you have more than enough time to have space to breathe between each part of the day.
I share more about creating a timeline with intention here.
3. Built in Time with Your Spouse
I’m not sure when it became mainstream to have like no more than a handful of uninterrupted time with your spouse on the day of, but just know that you can have more time and dare I say… should?!?
If you want 1:1 time before the ceremony, build it in. If you want a second to decompress with each other before the reception, take it. If you want to get ready together, do it! This is YOUR day, and you get to create it exactly as you want.
Check out my checklist for a relaxed wedding day.
Because at the end of the day, if you want to share breakfast that morning, exchange private vows, take a walk after the ceremony, eat your appetizers together before entering cocktail hour, or simply sit somewhere and go, “Holy shit. We’re married”… I say DO IT!
4. Let Yourself Fully Participate in the Things You Chose
If you decided something mattered enough to include in your wedding, give yourself permission to actually experience it.
- Want beach portraits? Let the dress get sandy
- Excited to spend cocktail hour with everyone? Don’t schedule two hours of portraits during it
- Dreamed of a long family-style dinner? Let dinner be long
- Want everyone outside playing yard games? Go play with them
There’s no prize for keeping your dress spotless or sticking so closely to the timeline that you miss the reason you planned something in the first place.
Decide What Matters…and Let the Rest Be Less Important
You do not need to care equally about every wedding detail.
Less is more when it comes to most things wedding-related, especially when you’re curating an entire space to welcome your friends and family into.
And when I say less is more, I’m not talking about minimal beige vibes. Unless that is your vibe, in which case… pop off.
I mean decide which things actually deserve your time, money, and brain space.
If you don’t love florals as much as your bestie who got married last year, you don’t need flowers covering every available surface. Maybe you spend that money on candles, greenery, an incredible meal, or something else you genuinely care about.
Don’t love dancing?
Cool. You do not have to spend thousands on a DJ simply because receptions traditionally have dancing. I also have 15 non-dancing wedding reception ideas if the idea of being forced onto a dance floor makes your skin crawl.
Choose Wedding Details Because You Freaking Love Them
Okay, now we can talk about the pretty stuff. Because again: I am NOT trying to take away your fun.
Have the bold florals, wear the hot pink shoes, order the funky glassware, splurge on the tablescape if tablescapes are your Roman Empire.
A stylish wedding becomes personal when the details aren’t there just because they photograph well. They’re there because you saw them and immediately went, “Oh my god. That’s so us.”
Your wedding doesn’t need to choose between being meaningful and being freaking gorgeous. You can have both and deserve to have both! The goal isn’t to stop caring about aesthetics, it’s to make sure the aesthetics are supporting the experience instead of becoming the entire experience.
The weddings I remember most aren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest floral installations or the trendiest details. They’re the weddings where I can immediately tell who the couple is, the ones where people linger over dinner, where grandma is crying, when someone’s cat appears on a freaking cardboard cutout, and where the couple isn’t afraid to get their clothes dirty because they’re too busy living their wedding.
Curate the beautiful wedding, just make sure you’re actually there for it. And if you’d like me to help document the day I’d be absolutely honored. Get in touch here.
