This year’s hottest wedding trend: fighting back against “Pinterest-perfection”

Once a week or so, I'll get an interview request from a journalist — and inevitably one of the questions they want to ask is “What are your wedding trend predictions for next year?” I usually hedge these questions with a positive spin like, “Hopefully, a reduction in fear-based marketing” or “Less body-shaming directed at brides under the guise of beauty,” but this year I have a bigger prediction:

Couples are going to start fighting back against the idea of “Pinterest-perfect” weddings.

Don't misunderstand me here: I don't think people are going to stop using Pinterest. This isn't actually about Pinterest at all, which is a wonderful tool for visually collecting inspiration. Pinterest is great! I don't think we're going to be seeing a reaction against Pinterest itself, but rather a reaction against the kind of visual uniformity that Pinterest has unwittingly enabled.

This issue absolutely pre-dates Pinterest. I've been writing posts since way back in 2009 about how couples need to know when to stop looking at wedding inspo. There's a time for gathering inspiration, and then there's a time for being confident in the vision you've got, and moving forward with it.

This was true before the internet, when people were just gorging on overpriced wedding magazines and making collages with scissors and glue. This was true five years ago, when people were doing things like saving image files to their hard drives. (I once got an email from an Offbeat Bride Tribe member informing that she had over 10,000 images cataloged on her hard drive, and was there a way for me to host this massive image database for her? Needless to say, the answer was no — and I am endlessly thankful that Pinterest solved that problem.)

The power of Pinterest is that it makes it really easy to see the ubiquity of certain wedding trends. When it's page after page of visual tiles, it's super easy to spot the patterns, and then also super easy to get fatigued by them. I'm not just talking about more “mainstream” accessible wedding trends like rustic chic barn weddings, burlap, succulents, or photo booths — I'm also talking about more Offbeat trends like steampunk influences, Doctor Who references, and ring-warming ceremonies. All these things are FUCKING AWESOME, but when you're on Pinterest scrolling through page after page after page of them, it's understandably all-too-easy to start noticing the trends, and then start feeling fatigued.

Again: I love Pinterest, and really this isn't especially about Pinterest. It's about the internet making it easy to see and share and binge on visual inspiration… and then find yourself bent over the toilet bowl of your own patience. Your stomach is basically like, “I cannot digest any more cute and creative authentic expressions of anyone's love — HORK.” You hold back your hair, and hope that the glitter and burlap threads don't splash back into your face.

I sympathize with all sides here. I'm a wedding blogger and if I didn't love looking at weddings, I wouldn't still be doing this after eight years. But I also have a deep sympathy with the wedding inspiration exhaustion that Pinterest can accelerate.

That's why I foresee that this may be the year that couples start finding ways to reestablish their own sense of what matters to them, separate from the pages of tiles of adorable spray painted animals and glitter-encrusted escort cards.

I'm not totally sure what this reaction will look like — will wedding photographers go minimal? Will more couples decide to go for cake and punch receptions? Will “retro weddings” start to mean “getting married in a church basement like it's 1978” instead of “create a photo-realistic replica of an alternate rockabilly reality?” Will it mean more people saying “DIY is too exhausting; I want the simplest wedding factory wedding I can get?”

I honestly have no idea. I don't actually have a crystal ball to know how this shift will look, but based on what I hear about Pinterest fatigue, a shift is coming.