How to Use Instagram to Plan Your Wedding

As of 2022, burlap and lace are both out of the picture (for now). In their place, Bridgerton-inspired Empire-lines and earthy tones are decidedly in – as are pampas grass, small-scale ceremonies, and, as ever, florals. Another thing that is getting set to define wedding season this year? Instagram.

Sure, Instagram has been around for a while and, in that time, it has played a role in plenty of weddings, but mastering the social media platform for your big day is about a lot more than trawling your guests’ pages for candid snaps. Instead, it’s about utilizing every one of Instagram’s well-known (and lesser known) uses to make the very most of one of the most useful, free tools out there.

Here are our tips and tricks for reaping all the rewards of simply being on Instagram while you plan your wedding.

Before the wedding: make a mood board…

While Disneyland might be the happiest place on earth, Instagram is the most aesthetic, and there really is no better destination when it comes to gathering ideas and building your own vision from anything that nabs your eye and steals your heart.

Wedding suppliers love a good mood board. Without one, conveying your vision is a little like trying to give someone a recipe without the ingredients list.

Search by hashtag. Fancy an elegant #minimalistwedding? How about a unique #weddingbar, or a dreamy #destinationwedding?

Bookmark anything you like, and you’ll have everything you need to show to your suppliers. You can organise your saves into separate folders, which is handy if you’re still trying to decide between one theme and another, or one colour scheme and the next. 

…And find your suppliers

Just like you can’t pick out a wedding cake without eating your way through a tray of samples at the cake tasting, you can’t find a wedding photographer and videographer without looking at their portfolio – and where else is the Number 1 location for finding beautiful pictures? You guessed it. 

For this, you’ll want to get a little more location specific. Search wedding hashtags (not just for photography and videography, but for catering, stationery, clothing, and entertainment too) but make them relevant to your area. These are also known as geotags, if you wanted to get specific about it, and plenty of wedding suppliers are using them nowadays.

For the wedding: create your own hashtag

This is about as simple as it gets, but it requires a little preplanning, since you’ll want to make sure all your guests are going to use it on and after the big day.

Picking a hashtag that no one else has used (or is likely to use) means that, when you search it on Instagram, you’ll find all the photos your guests took at your wedding in one place.

Again, we can’t stress enough how important it is that you go for something unique, or you’ll end up losing your shots in a sea of strangers’ weddings. Instead of #SmithandJonesWedding, consider something a little more once-in-a-lifetime like #SmithandJonesWeddingVenice2022

It’s something we’ve written about in the past, and a great way of ensuring you can make the very most out of your wedding photo dump.

Keep in mind that, while there are purpose-built platforms out there for connecting wedding guests, not everyone is going to want to sign up. Instagram is something practically everyone has and knows how to use, so getting everything in one place is that bit easier.

After the wedding: create photobooks direct from Insta

One of the things that makes Instagram such a convenient tool for anyone planning a big event is the fact that you can get your photos printed directly from the platform.

Printing an Instagram photobook is the best way to ensure that all your candids and favourites can be curated within a beautiful photo memory book (the perfect complement to your album of professional shots).

One of the downsides to Instagram is that, after a couple of weeks, even the most important photos and milestones in life can be buried under a heap of avocado toasts, pretty sunrises, holiday snaps and throwbacks. By commemorating those pictures within physical albums, you can keep them special forever – and double your photo collection from the wedding day.

If you’ve already got an Instagram, then there’s nothing easier than utilizing its features for your wedding. A picture is worth a thousand words, whether you’re still at the ‘pre-planning’ stage, halfway there, or already basking in the post-wedding glow.