Use Vision Boards to Bring Weddings to Life

Mother of the Bride, when it comes to preparing for a wedding, it’s too easy for you and your daughter to overthink the details. Even if you have the invitations, ceremony details, menu, and attire nailed down, it’s still tough to feel 100% confident in every decision when you can’t visualize everything all together.

Why not suggest the following vision board ideas and plan to her? As she creates it, she can share it with you so you can know exactly what she has in mind. But first, share this post with her!

For the Bride:

To sort through your thoughts and focus on the most important elements of planning a wedding, vision boards are lifesavers. Designing a wedding vision board helps you slow down and lay out every idea—and it doesn’t have to be complicated. Whether you’re a fan of cork boards or streamlined digital formats, vision boards are effective because you’re dedicating time to bring the mental images you’ve been envisioning to fruition.

So, what’s the best way to start a vision board? Let’s narrow down the process to the three stages below.

Stage 1: Figure out your goals and inspiration

If all of your ideas are saved on Pinterest or folders on your Desktop, a digital vision board is probably the way to go. There’s a lot less manual work involved in these, and most future brides and grooms will appreciate how easy it is to move things around.

However, if most of your ideas are cutouts from magazines or printed out, a traditional format like a corkboard or foam poster board might be best.

If you feel really stuck, sometimes it helps to draw inspiration from your favorite leaders, authors, poets, etc. The free printable quote cards below can be fun and meaningful reminders you can add to a vision board (or just use to inspire yourself when you’re feeling stuck.) You can download these quotables right here.

Stage 2: Prep your physical and mental space

To make your vision board creation process as enjoyable as possible, clear the space around it. No one wants to be envisioning one of the most beautiful, meaningful days of their lives when they’re in a cluttered space. The preparation has to be mental, too. With new restrictions and mandates due to the pandemic, it’s easy to let stress get the best of you (even though micro weddings can be just as magical as a huge extravaganza.) Relax and clear your mind before diving into a vision board project so you can view prospective plans with a positive mindset.

Stage 3: Organize materials and start creating

Whether you need to gather all of your saved image files, Pinterest boards, or magazine clippings, it’s helpful to gather and organize all of your vision board assets in one place. Then, the fun can begin and you can start creating.

One of the best ways to keep yourself on track with your wedding planning goals when using Pinterest is by having a checklist. This checklist below is perfect—and you can download it for free right here.

If there are certain parts of your wedding you’re still struggling to nail down (like a family tradition you don’t know how to incorporate), play around with different ways to include it on your board. When you have all of the components of your ideal wedding laid out before you, either physically or digitally, you have the power to make the decisions that are best for you.

Do you wish you had a digital vision board template to get you started? Check out the free template below. You can access it right here.

Vision boards are lifesavers for couples who want to plan out all the details but need some structure for all their ideas. Plus, if you have budget constraints or challenging restrictions due to the pandemic, vision boards allow you to be more creative with your problem-solving strategy. You can seamlessly collaborate and bring your ideal wedding to life when you’re using a vision board as a tool.

Organizing a wedding is an exciting, detail-oriented endeavor and you’ll want to make sure you’re on the same page as your partner and your wedding planner/coordinators. Like any wedding planning tool or tactic, there are dozens of ways to go about using vision boards. I hope these vision board ideas have been inspiring. Happy planning!

*Thanks to Zola and their original post  as well as Siege Media for providing me with content for this helpful post!

*For info about my book Mother of the Bride and also my Wedding Inspiration cards, check out my Books/My Work page.

*The new issue of Life Notes, my quarterly inspirational newsletter with a giveaway in every regularly scheduled issue, came out today. It’s not too late to receive it. Sign-up is free and to the right! (If you’re on a mobile device, scroll to the bottom of the screen and click View Full Site to find it.)

Cloudy No More — Cataract Removal

Some simply call it cataract surgery. I call it a minor miracle. The sky gets bluer, the grass turns greener. Cloudy vision is made clear again with a simple outpatient surgery.

The patient? My husband Don. Last summer during his eye check-up, the doctor discovered a cataract. Don knew his vision hadn’t been as good but certainly never expected to hear that diagnosis. As the doc told me yesterday after the surgery, Don is, in fact, too young for cataracts, but sometimes for unknown reasons, younger people develop them. Don falls into the unknown reasons category. Why am I not surprised by that? :)

By the way, did you pick up on the fact that he has waited a year to get the problem fixed? Along with getting very nervous at the thought of surgery, Don also didn’t want to take time away from classes to have it done. After all, he didn’t want his students missing out on any of his stimulating lectures or outlandish stories :)

Since the timing never seemed to work out during his shorter breaks throughout the year, Don just plugged along, living with vision that was not all that it could be. Sometimes in the evenings, he’d finally set the newspaper aside, tired of trying to focus on the crossword and sudoku puzzles he loves so much. Driving at night with him became an adventure I wanted to avoid. And why was he driving? He thinks he has to do all the driving when we’re together, but that’s another post altogether :)

I’m guessing Don will soon be wondering why he didn’t get the problem corrected sooner. Who wouldn’t want the best vision possible?

I’m also wondering if some of us are struggling along with limited vision of another sort. Have we allowed hurt, anger, or bitterness to cloud some of our current perceptions? Other obstacles can be at fault as well — pride, envy, low self-esteem, buying into the wisdom of the world… The list goes on. All of these things keep us living with a vision that’s not all God wants it to be.

Why don’t we ask the Great Physician to remove the cataracts of our minds and souls? Let’s ask Him to open our eyes and use His Word to bring the healing we need today. After all, don’t we want the best vision possible?

“For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” Hebrews 4:12

Flickr photo by Nicholas_T; Creative Commons License