If Pinterest isn’t the internet billboard for brides planning their dream weddings, I don’t know what is. Pinterest wedding planning gives you a world where the inspirations are endless and the ability to curate a mini online catalog of stuff you’d love to see on your dream day is a powerful, powerful thing. But with great power comes great responsibility (thanks, Spiderman!) and unfortunately, more and more brides taking to the virtual vision board in a destructive way rather than building something meaningful and helpful for your wedding vendors. To get the most out of Pinterest without going to the dark side, try focusing on these 3 things.

GET INSPIRED, BUT DON’T DUPLICATE

I completely understand how easy it is to fall in love with the exact way you see something in a picture, but when you copy bits and pieces of existing weddings, it often ends up disappointing when you realize your wedding isn’t really yours. Instead, try filling it up with things that inspire you to put your own twist on them. Photos of dessert bars? Awesome, but make yours specific to a dessert you and your sweetheart had on your first date. When you use your Pinterest board as a launching off point, where each pin should be taken with a grain of salt, you open up a whole new world for your wedding. A world that’s way more “you” than a patchwork display of 10 other couple’s weddings.

BRING IN NON-WEDDING PINS

Yeah, you heard me. Don’t stick with pinning stuff that strictly wedding related. Some of the best, most beautiful wedding concepts I’ve photographed have come from a famous painting or a beautiful digital graphic. These traditional art forms house hidden gems of inspiration for even the least artsy bride. You might find your color scheme hiding out in the abstract cover of a book you find in the graphic design category or a beautiful detail you want to incorporate in your stationery and reception decor from a spray paint masterpiece. Maybe perusing through home decor gets you daydreaming of guest favors and perfect pairings for cocktail hour. By not limiting yourself to bridal pins, you’re far more likely to create a wedding that’s totally unique to you and your soon to be spouse.

REFINE YOUR BOARD & CHANGE CAPTIONS

Few things throw off your vendors more than hundreds of pins and captions that don’t make sense. It’s totally cool if you go crazy with pinning when you first get started, but when it comes time to share that board with your vendors, try to keep it to 50 pins or less. Narrowing it down is great for you too, because it forces you to get serious about what you really want and what you pinned on a whim. Then, before you share that link, double check. Do your captions tell a little bit about what you like most in that specific pin? If not, it’s time to edit! It makes the conversation much simpler with your vendors when each pin’s caption tells them why you chose that pin. Maybe it was the photograph pose or the detail shot. Maybe it was the colors or the location. You get the point. Tell ‘em, because they won’t know otherwise.

POSTIVE PINTEREST WEDDING PLANNING

When you use Pinterest like this, it helps keep the doors of communication wide open with your vendors and creates realistic expectations that you can adapt to your taste and budget, which is way more satisfying than crying and downing half a pint of chunky monkey because you pinned the perfect wedding and found out it was going to cost half a million bucks to execute, right? Are you using Pinterest to help create a vision for your wedding? Tell me how you’re using it in the comments!