A wedding is a collection of small details that create a whole. Small, often tiny things that create something special to celebrate your love, wedding and that set the scene for your marriage. And if I may let the styling cat out of the bag, great wedding styling is about a wonderful, cohesive group of details, expressed thoughtfully.

What if we got our wedding styling ideas from within ourselves and not from Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok? What if we focused on the small details instead of grand styling statements designed for max social media traction? What if we shut out all the screaming noise of the ‘must haves’ and the trends and the celebrity wedding inspo and took a quiet moment to create the look and feel of your wedding from something important, meaningful and special to you?

Sounds quite nice, doesn’t it? Suddenly you’re transported from heaving club-esque intensity to the tranquillity of a walk on the beach or a peaceful cuppa in the morning sun.

Now, I know you very much like the sound of this approach to styling your wedding, so let’s work through a simple exercise to create your style, that omits the unending torrent of social media, opinion and peer pressure, leaving you with a plan for your wedding styling AND an audible calmness that will have your friends, colleagues and pets asking if you’ve had Botox / a holiday / a bunch of orgasms lately.

OK, hear me out…

You’ve lived a little. Maybe a lot. You’re a Rock n Roll couple after all. So, I expect you’ve had a teacher who was mad for writing prompts. Just wild for them. Always banging on about encouraging creativity through narrowing your focus and examining it. Boring when you’re a highschooler. Maybe you’re even rolling your eyeballs right at this very moment. Well sir slash madam slash human being, let me refer you back to the very heading of this paragraph; HEAR. ME. OUT.

The way to easily create your special, personalised wedding styling is to create your own special writing prompt. And then write! Voila! Exclamation! Excitement!

Good listening legend! Now, create your prompt

Get your betrothed, light a candle/neon sign/fire place, pour your favourite drink, and get out your favourite writing implement.

Without fussing about and ado-ing further, create a writing prompt that shall be the tool to explore and create your wedding style. And it’s easy, because we’re laser focused in this issue with the details.

✨ Choose a category: your favourite memory as a couple, your favourite place, or an object special to you.

✨ Weave it into a prompt:

‘Our favourite memory as a couple is _____, and it makes us feel ______.’
Or, ‘_______ object is special to us because it makes us feel ______.’
Perhaps, ‘When we think about our favourite place _________ we’re transported to _________.’

✨ Pat yourselves on the back, then make out for 14 minutes.

Now let’s take our free writing from the paper into reality…

Straighten your clothes, clean up that smudged lippy smoochy pants, you’ve had your fun. It’s writing time. Get down to some free writing to let those thoughts, feels and ideas come right out. The pen is mightier than the sword, after all, and while swords have absolutely nothing to do with this, it’s always a good idea to fire yourself up with a classic figure of speech or analogy.

It needn’t be the perfect piece ripe for the Pulitzer Prize. It’s simply a different way to access your creativity, that maybe you didn’t even know was in there! You can tackle more than one prompt, or try the same one a couple of times until you feel the magic appear from your words.

Choo, choo! All aboard the delving train! Explore what you’ve written and delve into the feelings it evokes, the colours, textures, sounds, smells, the memories and history attached to it. Outline the details of these things and see where it takes you. This is how we bring your words to wedding styling life!

For example, if your prompt is: Our most special object (Robert the Bruce, a majestic ceramic white horse statue) is so special to us because it makes us feel like a pair of silly in love people who have their whole life together ahead of us.

Now, do some free writing around this: “We bought Robert the Bruce on a really special surprise birthday trip to Dave’s home town, which Kate organised. On the first afternoon, we saw the horse in the window of a kind of crappy souvenir shop and bought it on a whim. The object itself is so special because of how important that foundational time in our relationship was, as well as how well the quirkiness of the actual object suits us as a couple. It’s silly and odd, and really only means something to us. It was a cute spontaneous moment that started our joint home decor collection, and our collection of horse figurines and horse-based art.”

Now its time to come up with some wedding styling ideas

Vibes: quirky, unexpected, slightly odd but overall, fun and not too serious.

Horses, obviously. Literal (though prob not live!) horse figurines, statues, etchings, paintings, graphics and illustrations and so forth. But also, things that evoke that cool, outdoorsy, carefree horse aesthetic; sunset skies, open fields, pony tails and braids, ribbons, trophies!

More broadly, it could be quirky vintage decor such as statues, figurines and other cute ceramic and brass knick knacks. A personalised horse motif as part of your invitations and on-the-day signage. Knick knacks to decorate with, and use as vessels for flowers, or alongside flower arrangements.

We also found Robert while on a trip so map iconography could also be used as a styling cue.

Colours: Robert is a white horse, so not an especially helpful styling cue for a rock ‘n’ roll couple. But, we’re now thinking of retro horse figurines, vintage statues and ceramic knick knacks, and these things def conjure a colour palette of gold, tan, sand and pastels that you might see on an old atlas page; pale green, sky blue, the teal of the sea, washed yellow; it’s colourful but a little subdued.

It’s the literal opposite approach to endless scrolling and Pinterest pinning frenzies. Instead of letting the algorithm dictate your styling direction, you’re reaching deep inside yourselves to your own personal algorithm of experiences, memories, relationship history and all the things that you love as the basis for your wedding styling.

It’s nice to be able to avoid being bashed repeatedly about your senses with what’s trending and most popular. You can miss the overwhelm, the pressure and the over-complication. How good is that?

See what I did there?

Maybe you’re not yet sold on this super rad writing prompts approach. Take a moment then, to observe the magic and power of using a writing prompt to delve into our creative minds, in this very article.

When I pitched this story and when I wrote the outline, I had zero intention to include weird references to pens, swords or choo choo trains, but here they are, and aren’t they adorbs? YES, YES, THEY ARE THANKS FOR ASKING.

Being the deadly serious writer I obviously am, I can obviously tell you (since you are obviously reading this article #thanksforthat) that if my article outline (which is basically a writing prompt) was to write about wedding styling being all in the details by mentioning pen vs sword, trains and smooching for 14 minutes, it would be a piece of hot, very contrived garbage.

Why? Because it’s not about those things. They’ve come to the surface via the process of writing about an alternative way to create your wedding styling. They are not the story, but a way to help tell the story. It worked writing this for you, and it will work for you and your betrothed when creating your wedding styling.

Trust the process and see what happens.

This article originally appeared in issue 48 of Rock n Roll Bride magazine. You can purchase the latest copy here, or why not subscribe to never miss an issue?