I met up with a lot of my 2017 couples last week and some of their ideas have blown me away! I can’t wait to start creating them! Their happiness is my happiness when I create the day of their dreams, so I’m working hard designing some moodboards for them this week to get the ball rolling. This helps us visualise their day and ensure we’re on the same page creatively, but it’s also a great tool to illustrate our ideas to suppliers.
Here’s one I made last season for a bride who was having a destination wedding in Greece, that had the working title ‘Sail Away With Me’…
There’s so much more to a nautical theme than navy, but it’s a great place to start! Navy is unconventionally classy in a modern way, but it can be overpowering or cheesy with a nautical theme so keep it simple. Use navy as a base but raise the bar with some soft coral or pastel pink shades.
I’m a big fan of nautical and seaside themes, because there’s a lot you can scavenge and it’ll still look great (check out my Seascape Wedding Inspo moodboard here) – although you’ll need to do a trip to the beach, of course. However, this wedding needed to be a little more slick than that, and for Greece the bride wanted clean colours, lines and shapes. The theme was strictly nautical, not seaside. Thus, I kept any scattered soft aesthetics out (pebbles, drift wood, shells, etc) and included the life ring as a newly purchased but customised item, and added the marine steering wheel arch as an idea in the hope that we could source a cool vintage one.
If you haven’t got that much décor (or budget) at your disposal, or are travelling abroad, a few features with a play on words will work to emphasise your theme, too. Try a guest booked themed around a message in a bottle, or some variations on ‘tying the knot’.
You could quite easily get carried away and go a bit wild with an exotic, aquatic or naval themed table plan here, but I thought simple numbers in a clean font mounted on blue card would work better with the sharp navy. This way you can make more of a feature out of something more authentic on the table, like the cute knotted balls of rope for the table numbers and place settings.
Unless you are literally getting married on a boat or luxury liner somewhere, I think the bridesmaid’s dresses may be a little too much – although they look great here with a harbour in the background! Also, depending on what’s in fashion (nautical wise) at the time, bridesmaid’s dresses could date quite quickly in your photos. That said, brands like Ralph Lauren and Banana Republic usually do great classic versions of preppy/nautical styles.
While my new 2017 brides have very much trumped this moodboard with their amazing ideas, you can’t beat a classic.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, the working title was with Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers in mind, rather than David Gray!
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