The Wedding You Want vs The Wedding Everyone Expects

Your parents have an opinion, your friends have an opinion, someone has sent you a wedding TikTok, someone else thinks you absolutely need a particular tradition. Suddenly, somewhere between choosing your venue and deciding what you actually like, your wedding has accumulated a lot of other people’s ideas.

My first instinct is simple, it’s your wedding, have the wedding you want, but I also understand that reality isn’t always quite so simple.
Families can have very different views on family, hierarchy, tradition and whose opinions should carry weight when it comes to important occasions. In some families, particularly those with strong cultural traditions, keeping parents and older relatives happy can feel less like a preference and more like an expectation, sometimes even something that feels almost taboo to challenge.

So, this may sound strange but I don’t think the answer is to simply ignore everyone. Stay with me…

I think it is to understand that it really isn’t your job to keep everyone happy to have a beautiful wedding. You are allowed to say no. There is a misconception that saying no has to be confrontational or even rude. It doesn’t. You can listen to someone’s opinion. You can appreciate why something matters to them. You can compromise if you’re genuinely happy to do so, but if there is something you truly don’t want and it would make you unhappy to include it, you are allowed to say  no, gracefully, respectfully. and without feeling guilty.

A good family member should ultimately want you to enjoy your wedding, even if they would have made a different choice themselves. There is a difference between considering someone’s feelings and allowing their preferences to become your decisions.

That distinction is important.

Tradition doesn’t have to dissapear, I’m certainly not against tradition. There are elements of traditional etiquette and wedding customs that I think are timeless and beautiful, but I also don’t believe there is one correct way to plan a wedding anymore.
You can keep a tradition because it has meaning to you, you can adapt it, you can combine traditions from different cultures, you can create an entirely new tradition between the two of you. Or you can leave something behind because it simply doesn’t feel relevant to your relationship.

There is something quite wonderful about creating something beautifully new. A wedding doesn’t need to follow a formula to feel considered.
Stop looking only at weddings for inspiration. I love Pinterest, I love scrolling, saving, creating a mood board and falling down a rabbit hole of beautiful things as much as anyone. So I’m not about to tell you to delete the app. But inspiration is everywhere, it might be the architecture of the city you live in, a gallery you visited, a painting you couldn’t stop looking at, a hotel you stayed in on holiday, a restaurant you love, a film, your grandmother’s China,, the way your mother dresses, a childhood memory, a garden you walked through, even your partner’s completely different taste.

I recently created a styled shoot at St James’s Hotel & Club in Mayfair, and the venue itself became such an important part of the visual story. Its history, architecture and atmosphere gave me a starting point. From there came a moody, romantic aesthetic with elements of draping, classical references, rich textures and an almost cinematic quality.

I’ve been particularly drawn to Greek mythology, Roman-inspired details, fruit on tables, architectural references and that slightly moody romantic energy, and it didn’t start with “what is everyone else doing” It started with looking at the world around me and asking: What feels beautiful? What feels interesting? What feels like a story? Your inspiration doesn’t have to come from another wedding. In fact, it is better when it doesn’t.

Sometimes what you need isn’t more inspiration, you need clarity. A good planner can look at all those seemingly unrelated ideas and find the common thread the things you are consistently drawn to and turn that into a cohesive vision, but that is a topic for another day.

Another misconception I would love to retire is that an elevated wedding requires an enormous budget. It doesn’t, your Wedding doesn’t need to be expensive to feel elevated. Money can certainly give you more options, but it cannot buy taste, you can have all the money in the world and still spend it in areas that don’t improve the experience or design. Equally, you can have a more considered budget and create something incredibly beautiful by knowing where to place it.
A smaller venue, for example, may already have beautiful interiors, considered lighting, character and atmosphere. There may be far less need to transform the space, allowing you to place your budget elsewhere. Perhaps on beautiful stationery, perhaps exceptional food, photography, perhaps a really thoughtful piece of entertainment.

Doing things with intention.

The questions to ask yourselves:
What makes sense for you? Sometimes the smallest change can completely refine a space. You don’t need everything
There are so many things we’re told a wedding needs, you just need a wedding that tells your story.

So, How Do You Actually Make It Your Own?
Start with your story, so before you choose the colour palette, ask yourselves:

What do we want this wedding to say about you both? What do you love doing together? Where have you travelled? What places mean something to you? What do you want your guests to feel? What do you both naturally gravitate towards? What parts of your cultures or families do you want to bring into the day? What traditions genuinely mean something? 

Making your wedding your own doesn’t mean disregarding everyone around you. It means knowing where other people’s opinions end and yours begin. You can honour your family without handing them the reins, you can embrace tradition without being restricted by it. You can take inspiration from trends without becoming a copy of them and you can create something extravagant or something incredibly restrained. You can spend a fortune or be incredibly selective with your budget and you can most certainly change your mind, no explanations needed.

There are no longer as many rules around what a wedding should look like and I think that is something to celebrate, your wedding should feel like an extension of the two people getting married. So take inspiration from everywhere, keep what has meaning and then be unapologetically comfortable with your choices.

Because perhaps the most sophisticated wedding is not the one that impresses everyone in the room.

It is the one that feels unmistakably like you.