Finding the Perfect Theme for Your Wedding

Obviously new wedding trends are created every day and each new wedding season. Some trends fade away as quickly as they come, some are so bad they never should have been created but stick around anyway, and some are so good that we keep seeing them over and over even after new trends have come in to replace them.

In this srticle I want to talk about some of the biggest wedding trends we've seen over the years, and how to tailor them to your wedding for a unique look and feel. Just because we've seen some of the same words, the same colors, and the same styles many times, doesn't mean that they don't still have something valuable to give to new brides planning their weddings.

Trends like environmentally-friendly weddings and the popular do-it-yourself fad will be around for a long while. I want to give you a great number of unique ideas for these, as well as a dozen other trends, that you can utilize in your wedding without having the same old ideas as every other bride getting married this year.

Remember though that your wedding is not about finding the right shade of pink for every detail, or whether or not you get those peonies in your bridal bouquet. It’s not about having the bench in that picture on Pinterest, or even nailing down the most desired wedding venue in town.

Throughout the excitement of planning a wedding, it’s easy to get distracted. With all of the decisions to make, colors and flavors to choose from, and all of the little details to decide on and buy, it’s hard to focus on anything but that picture you have in your head of the wedding day and what you want it to look like.

I’ve been there myself, and have done it with many, many brides before. However, as exciting as all of this is, there is one hardy piece of advice I can give you to truly get the wedding day you desire. Communication.

Make sure you are talking to your soon-to-be-spouse. Talk about your happiness and excitement and you’ll have someone to share it all with. Talk about your stress and you won’t notice it anymore. And talk about the other person’s desires for the big day.

By staying connected, and focusing on someone’s desires other than your own, you will be able to stay a little more grounded, less emotionally attached to unimportant details, and you never know . . . you may create some trends of your own without even trying!

Vegan/Vegetarian/Organic

Being vegan or vegetarian it's not just a food choice, but a lifestyle. These individuals are striving not just to eat healthier, but to live healthier and to take a stand against the cruelty of animals.

Individuals choose this way of life for ethical reasons. Although many feel as though they get an amazing health and spiritual uplift from the diet and lifestyle, which only reinforce their beliefs.

Although the majority of individuals engaging in this lifestyle are interested in aiding the human race towards evolving into a more compassionate future regarding the cruelty of animals, many are just trying to eat healthier and be healthier.

Planning a vegan/vegetarian wedding that supports your beliefs does not have to be difficult. Once you decide on a theme and color scheme, you can start planning the rest of the décor. There are many fabrics, centerpieces, and accessories you can use that are elegant and animal-friendly.

Consider materials such as cotton, linen and lace for animal-free alternatives. Choose real flowers over silk varieties, and soy candles over traditional wax ones.

And of course, the most important part of any vegan/vegetarian wedding is going to be the food!

Almost all of these weddings will have omnivorous wedding guests, many of whom might be skeptical about vegan/vegetarian food. Most people believe that they will be eating nothing but tofu and vegetables and might be turned off.

This is a great chance to show them that all vegan/vegetarian meals can be every bit as delicious as ones with animal products in them. And you are certainly not limited to vegetables and tofu! But you know this already.

Vegan catering is a great way to spare animals and introduce your loved ones to food that can keep them healthier! Most caterers will be happy to cater to your dietary choices. Just be up front about what you want and don't want, and get involved. Offer to provide vegan recipes and make suggestions, if needed.

You can take food to a whole new level by printing out recipes or information about what you're serving and including it with place settings or favors, to let people know what they're eating, and to give them a chance to learn about all the benefits of a cruelty-free diet.

To wrap up the perfect celebration, consider a cruelty-free honeymoon at one of the many location around the world offering vegan, organic, and ethically sourced products, and amenities supported by companies supportive of cruelty-free goals.

Vegan/Vegetarianism is about more than food, of course. It is good to think about ways to reduce the waste that is typically involved in weddings. The wedding ceremony is at its heart a spiritual ritual and honoring the earth by being conscious of your consumption will enhance the good feelings had by all.

Steampunk

This theme is about being transported to another world. It is the perfect avenue to create the elegant, fantastical and imaginative wedding that many brides and grooms are seeking.

Steampunk weddings really take the cake when it comes to doing weddings in ambitious and unconventional ways. Steampunk merges the idea of Victorian art and fashion with a science fiction flare; Ray-guns and cowboys, Steam Engines and Airships, Gibson Girl and Princess Leia.

This romantic, Victorian-esque aesthetic appeals to Jules Verne readers and corset-lovers alike. Every year more and more people are deciding that poofy skirts, sleek top hats, shiny goggles, and neat bow ties make for a beautiful escapist non-traditional wedding theme.

Because Steampunk is so heavy on the artistic, visual qualities of its world, you both should look the part. Copper is a huge part in Steampunk design. You can certainly have a Steampunk wedding without forsaking the white wedding dress, but the aesthetic does give you freedom to choose a more colorful dress, too.

Consider a copper or gold colored ensemble for your wedding attire or at least incorporate it into your hair decor and other wedding decorations.

Steampunk-themed weddings often incorporate clock gears and antique clock hands into their designs, drawing on the industrialism of the turn of last century. Bits of clockwork make great cake accents, and look very pretty on luxe hats.

You could give everyone a surprise during the wedding ceremony by having a ring-bearing robot, or even having your rings delivered in test tubes. In fact, test tubes can be used throughout your event, especially in your candy bar and your guest table centerpieces.

Consider also a striped wedding cake with octopi instead of figurines at the top, mini monorail table settings, and a Mad Scientist-themed candy table with jelly-filled gummy brains, gummy fingers, sugar rats, and many other sweet and creepy treats.

Most Steampunk weddings create an alternate, sci-fi-ish universe exclusive to that event. Find elements that reflect you as a couple. You may have to scour junkyards, flea markets and strange stores to find everything you need to create your ultimate Steampunk wedding theme. But don't give up.

With a little creativity, persistence, and ingenuity, you'll have the Steampunk wedding of the century.

Undead

If you and your honey are huge fans of popular scary movies like "Shaun of the Dead," "Night of the Living Dead," and “Zombieland,” when it comes to your wedding, you may want to ditch conventional wedding traditions and let your inner zombie emerge.

Zombies are all the rage in a world where couples are trying to be original and put their stamp on their special days. Zombie attacks are being used for fancy proposals, birthday parties, declarations of love, and even for fun as millions around the world participate in zombie walks through their cities.

Check out this amazing zombie attack proposal for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elX8IqQ2Res

Whether you want to add just a few undead touches to your event or you want to plan a full blown, post-apocalyptic zombiefest for your nuptials, there are many creative options you can consider.

Consider getting married at a super creepy location perfect for finding zombies, like a cemetery, an abandoned motel, a creepy club, a funeral home, or a haunted house. Send “blood-soaked” invitations, possibly torn or burnt at the edges for authenticity.

Suggest that your guests get in on the fun by requesting that the dress code be zombie-wear. Your pictures will look more authentic if your guests come dressed as zombies.

You'll want to shop at thrift stores for used attire you can destroy to give it the undead look. Use costume makeup for blood, slash artful gashes in the fabric, and consider slighting burning the edges for more authenticity.

Since you and your bridal party are basically dead and seeking brains for sustenance, you’ll have more of a green pallor to your face. Consider visiting the local art school for students willing to help.

Of course dead flowers would be appropriate for a zombie affair. Consider funeral wreaths instead of altar arrangements, spiderwebs and gravestones for your wedding decor, and candles, candles, and more candles.

The wedding fare is the perfect place to have a lot of fun during a zombie wedding. Witches fingers, mummy dogs, and watermelon brains . . . graham cracker band-aids, marshmallow ghosts, and chocolate spider melts.

Finally, no authentic zombie-themed wedding would be complete without a rendition of “Thriller.” During mid-reception, bust out on the dance floor with your entire bridal party and give your guests your version of “Thriller” that they won’t soon forget.

It can be easy to have a zombie wedding, whether you want just a touch of undead ambiance or a full-fledged post-apocalyptic nightmare as your dream day. From simple decorative accents to themed vows, specialized music, and deadly delicious food, your zombie wedding day can be an event to die for!

Hero/Villian

What groom doesn’t want to be a superhero and save the day for his family and his bride? Let out that inner superhero and express yourselves in a day packed with magic, mayhem, and a heck of a lot of fun.

There’s nothing that says the women can’t also be superheroes, or maybe you want to be the villain/arch nemesis! You can make your day anything you want it to be.

Choose an empty warehouse as your secret lair for the wedding day. Think a cave or underground location, the top floor of a high rise building with windows all around, or the rooftop of a skyscraper for this special event.

Design your invitations as comic strips or maybe even a movie poster, and ask all of your guests to come in costume. Offer everyone a cape as they enter and bright colorful drinks with flags on straws saying Wham! Pow! Ka-blam! And Kablooey!

The most obvious idea would be for everyone in the wedding party to dress as a different superhero.

The groomsmen could dress in suits and simply reveal their superhero outfits underneath them at some point in ceremony. Or you could be less dramatic and always provide superhero boutonnieres or belt buckles with superheroes on them.

Make a grand entrance into the ceremony by reenacting one of your favorite scenes from your particular themed cartoon or movie.

Pass out cards (with your program printed on the back) with superhero themed fight words on the back that they could hold up throughout the wedding.

Provide a guest book that is a comic version of your theme, and escort cards in popular sayings or characters. Each table could be a different character, location, scene, or saying (Pow! Bang!).

Your wedding décor could be items from your theme like pixelated boxes, characters, trees, or familiar items from your video game/movie.

Provide superhero themed food in bright colors and characters and a “Pick Your Poison” bar with steaming, bubbling drinks served in beakers representing different characters.

Consider a background scene for your dinner buffet and candy bar a scene in video game/movie theme.

You could spice cookies in a way that will take guests off guard, and include pop-rocks, hot tamales, butterscotch, sour candies, and any other candy in bright colors or alarming flavors on your candy buffet.

Superheroes are all about excitement, drama, anticipation, performance, adventure, thrills, and fun. With bold colors, fun costumes, and all the pizzazz your favorite superhero movie provides, you’ll have just the right atmosphere to make your guests feel like they’re in the middle of the adventure with you.

Great Gatsby

The era of the "Roaring Twenties," in which The Great Gatsby took place, was a time of freedoms, rebellion, and fun. An unusual streak of prosperity was seen at this time as this was the decade before the Great Depression. Money was seen as no object and was spent freely.

Immortalized in movies and magazine covers, young women's fashion of the 1920’s was both a trend and a social statement, as women refused to wear the corset and stockings of the stuffy Victorian era and broke all the rules cutting their hair, wearing makeup and wearing slinky dresses that showed their arms and legs.

As these were the years of Prohibition, banning the manufacture, import and sale of all alcohol, drinking was popular as it went with the trend of rebellion against The Man.

Speakeasies, secret bars where people could drink, listen to music and dance, became popular and numerous as the Prohibition years progressed and led to the rise of gangsters such as Lucky Luciano, Al Capone, and Bugs Moran.

Jazz music blossomed, the "flapper" look redefined modern womanhood, and an Art Deco decor style peaked. A wedding filled with alcohol, hip jazz tunes, partying, and dancing would suit this style very well.

Get the party off to the right beat by sending your guests gold leaf invites in black, white, and gold. The era was all about extravagance, and so feathers, tuxes and fancy dresses, and sparkle should be the dress code.

Consider throwing your bash at large mansion, fancy hotel, or other location that would exude the elegant but expensive look you're going for. You could even look for a more modern speakeasy for a smaller wedding.

And it wouldn't be a proper 1920’s wedding without champagne and scotch in abundance. Start your event by putting a drink in everyone's hand.

The groom and his men would look stunning in black tuxes, and black bow ties, dressed to the nines. Flasks and pocket watches would make amazing groomsmen gifts to carry at the wedding, as only the proper gentleman in the era wouldn't leave home without them.

While the bride and her girls in flapper dresses and finger waves in their hair. Consider giving the girls feather boas, beaded headbands, and loads of jewelry as a bonus to really sell the part.

Chandeliers and shimmering sequined table linens, a gold studded wedding cake, and a black and white candy bar would be the perfect look with a vintage/art deco decor theme. Pearls, airplanes, and black and white photos would also be great additions to this theme.

Take pictures of the bride and groom, the bridal party and even the guests in black and white film, and dance the night away with a jazz band and maybe even a fireworks display.

Just like trying to choose your wedding colors, some brides know right away what they want for their wedding days, and some don’t have a clue. There are so many different places to get inspiration for your wedding theme, only some of them your colors, the season, your venue, your setting, the months of the year, a favorite flower or food, a favorite sports team, or even your proposal. (See my article on Choosing Your Perfect Wedding Colors for more ideas on finding inspiration.)

You can even go to Google and search for wedding themes and find all kinds of great pictures, some of which may inspire you. Talk to your significant other, talk to friends and family members, visit a craft store, and don’t forget those wonderful wedding magazines. Whatever you choose, make sure that you make it your own. For more great theme ideas, check out my book 300 plus Ways to Make Your Wedding Your Own.