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Technology Tuesday: Inspiration Boards Made Easy

Want an easy way to create wedding inspiration boards?

I love inspiration boards, and until now, I found no easy way to create them. While I know how to use Photoshop, I'm a busy gal. I longed for something easier. You may have noticed a few inspiration boards on the blog already. This past Sunday I posted Mountain Daffodil Inspiration and before that Rustic Cake Inspiration. You may have also noticed a little caption saying "created at circle.stylemepretty.com." That's where you go to create inspiration boards in a drag and drop format. Can I get a woohoo?

Before I started blogging–when I was planning my own wedding– I was curious about how wedding bloggers created the beautiful style boards that graced the wedding blogosphere.

Inspiration boards are insanely useful for brain storming and communicating your ideas. While I had an artists notebook full of cutouts from magazines, I did most of my research and wedding planning online. There was no easy way for me to corral, organize, or cite all of images I have downloaded to my desktop.

Paper and cut out inspiration board
My super low-tech inspiration notebook (with annotations)

When you–the bride or groom full of contemporary ideas about the look and feel of your wedding–are trying to communicate to your future mother and father in law how you want your DIY flowers arranged in the hundreds of jars tiny vintage vases you had amassed, but she's just not feeling it, it can at best cause some tension and frustration. As worst, it can dramatically alter the look of your wedding. (ahem, cough, this happened to me.) If I had an easy way to create inspiration boards, I could have put a lot of my ideas on my Wed-site. My future mother in law could have seen with her own eyes exactly what I meant.

You–who is planning your wedding now–have the tools you need thanks to Style Me Pretty's Style Circle. Sign up for a free account, and you're ready to go. The Style Circle makes it insanely easy for you to upload your own images you've found on the web.

Style Circle webpage

A note of caution. the folks at Style Me Pretty are big on giving credit where credit is due, and rightly so. You cannot upload your image without properly citing it with a Website name and URL. So keep track of these things!

If you haven't gathered your own images, you can create inspiration boards from images uploaded by other members. Everything is well tagged and categorized so you shouldn't have a problem finding what you need. They also have an interactive color palette so you can look only at images in your wedding's colors

Added bonus: The ladies at Style Me Pretty have thought of everything. In the Style Circle, you can start your own blog, connect with others (mostly brides) planning their own wedding, and add people and ideas to your "favorites.

For you western North Carolina brides and destination brides, a few of our local vendors are members of SMP's the illustrious Little Black Book and have uploaded real wedding and inspiration boards, including  Michael Oppenheim and Woodward + Rick. Just click on the Vendors tab at the top left. Then do a keyword search for "North Carolina."

Vintage looking Biltmore Wedding
A Biltmore Wedding
Image from Style Me Pretty, courtesy of Michael Oppenheim