Pinterest Pros + Cons

Pinterest has become an indispensable tool for organizing visual ideas and inspiration. I love Pinterest and always ask my couples to send me a Pinterest board, if they have one devoted to their wedding. It helps me get a sense of what you’re attracted to, what shapes or styles or colour palettes you are drawn to. Even if there are some conflicting ideas, I can often figure out what the common ground is between your images. But Pinterest can also be a great way to sow seeds of un-met expectations. Today I’m chatting about the pros and cons of using Pinterest to plan your wedding flowers.

We’ve all seen a slew of hilarious “Pinterest Fails” and if you’ve ever tried to execute some awesome house project, hairstyle or cutesy baked good, you have personal experience. Those cute pictures don’t give you the full impression of how much time, effort, practice, or special materials go into a flawless execution. The same is true for elaborate floral displays. The floral arrangements that you are pinning never come with price tags, descriptions of how many flowers are necessary, special materials or how many people it takes to execute a certain look. People pin and pin and pin, composing a perfect vision of their wedding day, committing to a perfect vision without any idea of whether or not the vision fits their budget. That leads to seriously unmet expectations, budget-shame, and overall disappointment. I don’t want that for my clients nor for anybody else. It’s a shitty feeling.

Pinterest Pros:

• Pictures! Not to rely on cliches, but a picture is worth a thousand words. Photo references can help make sure we are talking about the same thing.
• Boards. Pinterest makes it easy to organize your potential ideas: dresses, cakes, centrepieces…etc.
• Pins. If your browser allows, you can add Pins from other places on the internet so you don’t have to rely only on what Pinterest already has.
• Trends, themes. When I have a look at your wedding boards, I can usually identify trends or themes across your pins and this helps me figure out your style.

Pinterest Cons:

• Pretty vs. pretty expensive. Since Pinterest is so visually driven it often collects the prettiest of the prettiest options. Pretty is usually expensive but there are hardly ever any prices associated with the designs.
• Pretty vs. Realistic. I’ve had many clients pin gorgeous images that I know are not realistic. Sometimes the design won’t last more than 30 minutes out of water, sometimes the flowers aren’t available in Southern Ontario, sometimes images have been filtered so much that the flowers in the picture don’t actually exist.
• Too high, too low…where’s just right? I often find Pinterest has a ton of high end images (want to spend $700 per table?) and tons of “budget”/DIY inspiration (baby’s breath in mason jars) but sometimes not a ton of “just right” inspiration, if you know what I mean.
• Looking for advice? The other type of pins Pinterest often collects are advice and infographics especially for the “budget bride”. Unfortunately, anybody can contribute and that means there’s *lots* of bad advice, out-dated figures and generally misleading information. (Like how garden roses are a good budget substitution for peonies. In Southern Ontario, garden roses can run from $8-15 each…)
• Like a game of broken telephone…. Because photos can be pinned and re-pinned many times they can lose their original source which means you won’t know where it was from or when. Any pricing info can be super outdated or dependent on the original creator’s locally availability which could be completely differently from your own local market.

To help break the vicious cycle of Pinterest Let-downs, I’m going to choose some of my top Pinterest trouble-makers and do pricing breakdowns. Check back because knowledge is power folks and I want you all to pin-responsibly.