Storyboard Your Way to a Storybook Wedding
By Christine Boulton, owner, www.thinklikeabride.com
You’re engaged, and it is time to start planning your dream wedding. How hard can it be?
You have always pictured your perfect wedding day; in fact you started planning it in fourth grade. You’ve been to a slew of weddings, and there are books and Web sites to help. You can do this, no problem. Until you get into it and realize just how far over your head you really are.
Storybook weddings don’t just happen. They are the result of the harmonious coming together of hundreds of little details to create the perfect whole. Just like a symphony, one wrong note can jump out and distract the listener. At a truly great wedding, every one of those little details plays seamlessly off the next. There are so many beautiful ideas to look through that it is easy to lose focus on your wedding as a cohesive whole.
As you scan through thousands of photos looking for the right flowers or an invitation it is hard not to fall in love with something that may not fit the big picture. How do the pros keep all the little details from running off on their own? It takes a plan and a storyboard.
Storyboards are the lifesaver of a multitude of industries. From movies to advertising to interior designers, everyone uses them to keep themselves and their team on track. I’ve asked some of the top wedding planners to shed some light on how a storyboard can be used to create the wedding of your dreams. Nashville Wedding Planner Alice Hendry let us deconstruct one of her favorite weddings and Jill Cole, owner of event rental firm Southern Events in Franklin, helped us to create the storyboard for our idea of a dream wedding.
Most brides today use a binder or system of files to keep all their wedding research organized. This is a great idea when you are just starting the process and brainstorming but can get cumbersome as you start to make decisions. It can make it hard to express the vision of what you want your wedding to look like to your vendors. The good florist, caterer, or any vendor for that matter, can see the same vision as you do the better able they are to understand what you want.
What is a Storyboard?
A storyboard is just what it sounds like; a “foamcore” board that illustrates the look of your event. It contains all the bits and bobs that make up the style, feel and theme you have chosen. It’s the place where you can see in living color if all the parts play well together before you commit. It is a visual representation of the dream wedding you have envisioned. Think of it as a collage of your event.
To get started you need to find your inspiration piece. It can be a location, a gown you love, a photograph from a magazine or the description of a special memory. All that is important is that it helps you visualize your image of the wedding of your dreams. Whatever you choose will be your touchstone for the entire process.
How it works…
The two weddings I storyboarded for this article started with very different touchstones. The wedding done with consultant Alice Hendry started with the ceremony venue and the gown the bride had chosen. By digging into what had made, the bride chose those two elements Hendry was able to determine that the bride was looking for the feel of old world elegance. In addition to the look, she was now able to add the guidelines of traditional etiquette as a touchstone for the other choices … layer by layer as elements were chosen they went on the storyboard.
When they could be seen in living color final decisions became obvious. Little glitches that you might never think of solved themselves. For instance, when white tuxedo shirts were placed against the other fabrics and colors already chosen, they looked horrible, so a phone call changed them to ivory. That was easy and may not have been thought of if not for the storyboard. The same thing happened with the calligraphy. The original sample for the place cards was done in black ink, which looked far to bold for the rest of the wedding details. Using the color palette before them and the traditional etiquette books, Alice and her bride switched the ink to chocolate brown and it turned out beautifully in tune with everything else.
The farther along you get the more work the board does for you. When the board was taken to the florists, there was no question about the colors or level of elegance the bride wanted. Having a picture of the dress helped the florist determine the shape of bouquets that worked best. That was easy. The same for the invitations; one look at the board gave the invitation consultant a clear direction of what to show the bride. That saved several hours of pouring over books.
As all the pieces began to come together an almost sepia toned image emerged. Doing anything in this kind of monochromatic palette takes attention to detail, especially textures. Being able to see and touch the samples grouped together helped to give the bride and all the vendors a sense of how the layers fit.
For the garden wedding put together by Jill Cole, it started with a piece of fabric, a beautiful yellow and blue toile tablecloth. The rest of the details and even the location flowed from there. Once the tablecloth was chosen as the touchstone, it became very obvious that the whole wedding should have the shabby chic feel of a summer garden.
Soon pictures of the gardens at Cheekwood were added to the mix. We found the perfect invitation because we knew the overall style, a picture of those were added to the board. The flowers were an easy choice since the color palette and level of formality had been decided. Blue and yellows from the linen would mix with daisies from the invitation in a loose, fluffy arrangement. When the bride goes gown shopping, she knows the style of her gown needs to be relaxed and a little vintage. Just like the layers of an onion, one thing builds off the next so that in the end they blend beautifully.
Getting it together
To put your storyboard together, start by going through your binder or stack of stuff and pull pictures of anything you have already bought or booked. Put them on your board along with four to five words that describe them.
For Southern Event’s wedding, we came up with “shabby chic,” the colors of Provence and summer garden party. For Alice Hendry’s wedding the words were vintage, ornate, old world elegance and La Belle Époque. These elements will be used as a touchstone for everything else.
Before a final decision is made on any element, you can hold it up to the board to see if it fits. Just because something looks beautiful in a magazine doesn’t mean it will look great at your event. Say for instance you find a picture of a blue and yellow centerpiece that you think might work. When you hold it up to the board, you can immediately see if it is too formal for your other elements.
As you select each piece of your puzzle, add it to your board. You will want photos of the empty room, your dress and your flowers. You can get fabric samples of your linens and a proof of your invitation. When you have chosen the cake put a color sketch of it on the board. Bit by bit, layer by layer a stunning picture of your wedding will begin to emerge. The more details you add to your board the more helpful it will be.
The point of using a storyboard to plan your wedding is that it shows you how each element relates to the final picture. That is not so easy to do if all of your details are scattered in various folders and sheet protectors. It can also help you eliminate unnecessary items that don’t advance your vision. If you are trying to squish around different parts of your budget to make it all work, you can see if a piece can be replaced by a less expensive option or dropped all together. It is so much easier to make that kind of a decision if you can actually see the outcome.
In the shabby chic wedding, we had considered chair covers and sashes, but upon seeing how good the simple white wooden folding chair looked with everything else we were able to save a bundle in both rentals and labor. The simple chairs advanced the theme more then having them match the other linen did. Without the storyboard, we would have never known. In the vintage wedding, the invitations should have been engraved to stay perfectly in tune with the touchstone. However it was not a huge part of carrying the theme forward, and the money was better spent elsewhere. The touchstone and the storyboard are there to keep you on track, not to dictate your every choice.
The best part of ‘Storyboarding’
Your storyboard can also help you remember little details you have put in place.
It so often happens in planning something this large that you can overlook small ideas that mean so much. It is the seemingly tiny details that both make a wedding spectacular and make you crazy. Having a visual reference of something and how it works in the big picture can be a real help in staying organized.
And it will help your vendors as they set up your wedding. The more they can see your vision the better they can execute it. On the day of your wedding, your storyboard becomes a visual roadmap for those executing your plan. While you are getting yourself ready, it is there to remind everyone of the details that are important to you.
Remember that on the day of your wedding, you will have between five and 10 different companies working to put your event together. Every one of those companies will also have other events they are working on that day. No one knows the details of your wedding better then you. If there are things you want set in a specific way, be sure it is on the board for the vendors to refer back to as they set up.
I realize that some of the details I have talked about seem small and inconsequential and might even border on obsessively controlling. But, hey, we’re not talking about just any wedding. We are talking about the DREAM wedding, the one that the guests walk away from in awe of its perfection. You’ve been scanning the magazines so you know the kind of wedding I’m talking about. If you want to achieve that level of spectacular, this is the tool you are going to need to pull it off.
As you set about planning your wedding, keep the storyboard handy. It will keep you on track and make it easier to communicate your dream to the people that make it happen. It’s also a fun memento of all your hard work.
Christine Boulton has been a professional in the wedding industry for more than 20 years. She is the owner of www.thinklikeabride.com and currently serves as a marketing consultant to some of the industry’s largest vendors. Christine, who is known for her never-ending stream of research and always knowing and understanding what brides want, is published regularly in this and various other magazines and blogs.
