Your wedding is not only a significant life milestone, but it’s also an event packed with many logistical details. Not only that, it can exhibit its own set of aesthetic and thematic qualities. With that said, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the multitudinous minutiae you encounter while planning. After reading multiple articles on style trends and ideas to incorporate into your wedding, it’s understandable if you feel paralyzed by indecision. Fortunately, your celebration can be as exquisitely designed or relaxed and casual as you like. Before you make key decisions, book vendors, or spend any money, here are a few things to consider.

Your Wedding, Your Way 

Multiple wedding experts advise that your first steps should include setting your budget, picking your date, and determining your guest count. While those are all critical elements, you also need to ensure that your event fits both of your personalities. If you don’t, you could end up feeling as if you’re fashioning your special day to please someone else. For those dealing with a meddlesome family member, Offbeat Bride contributor Megan Finley Horowitz offers some sage wisdom to stay in control of your planning:

• Pay for the event yourself.
• Put that family member in charge of a wedding-related project.
• Establish and maintain boundaries in a polite but firm manner.
• Ask supportive family to advocate on your behalf.

Look Around You for Inspiration

Thankfully, you don’t have to be one of Queer Eye’s Fab Five to incorporate some distinctive style into your wedding. Additionally, it’s important not to limit yourself to Pinterest, Instagram, or wedding magazines and websites for ideas. Whether you desire a simple affair, a lavish event, or something in between, try selecting individual details that work cohesively together. Finally, match those elements to the overall look and feel of your venue.

Tips for Incorporating Wedding Trends

As you browse the internet for inspiration, you may find one writer drawing back the curtain to reveal style, thematic, and planning elements that are on-trend for next year. Meanwhile, another writer loudly decries the same things as cliché, jejune, or overdone. After reading article after article exclaiming that the hot trends of 2017 are now the tired tropes of 2018, you could find yourself anxious and worried that your wedding will appear trite or dated. How do you ease these fears as you craft your celebration?

If you do opt to incorporate fashion-forward wedding trends, remember that it’s wise to avoid giving in to the temptation of jampacking too many of them into your nuptials. Instead, choose just a few standout elements to include and make sure they blend well with your overall aesthetics. Meanwhile, don’t forget that you can always do a different take on each trend or even creatively revive older fads that have been declared dead by wedding planning experts.

Listen to Your Own Preferences

It’s often said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but that truth is especially salient when it comes to weddings. Getting the mood and aesthetics you want for your event may take some research, but you may also need to assert your preferences in the face of unsolicited suggestions from friends and family. At the same time, having a clear sense of your desires can help when confronting countless wedding advice articles, Pinterest boards, Instagram feeds, or even pushy vendors. Ultimately, styling your wedding should be fun and enjoyable as you and your future spouse collaborate to create a celebration of love that’s uniquely you.