Theme Me Up, Scotty!

Theme Me Up, Scotty!

May 27th, 2011 @ 3:15 pm by Mrs. Pony
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Everything seems themed these days: American Idol, Glee, Antiques Roadshow (I might have a TV problem), hilarious family portraits, etc.

Weddings are not immune to this phenomenon. In fact, they might be the cause, but everything is wedding-centric to me, so my judgment may be a little off.

I love themes and I especially love themed weddings, but I hate feeling pressured into finding a theme for our wedding. In the world of weddings, there are two major culprits in perpetuating the idea that your wedding must have a theme to be worthy of a blog feature or TV episode:

Wedding blogs, particularly inspiration shoots, and David Tutera.

Image credit: WE TV via Facebook

I see the merit in selecting a theme: it’s an easy way to convey the aspects of your wedding in a convenient, short(ish) description. It helps potential vendors understand your style and how you want your wedding to look and feel. And it sounds cool.

As much as I love me a theme party (fun outfits! interesting foods! cake!), we are not featuring an overall theme at our wedding. We hope to have some cohesiveness with our design and continuity with our colors and important elements so that our wedding doesn’t end up looking like a hot mess, but we are skipping the theme.

I think one of the main reasons I am resisting a “theme” is that I don’t have the patience and talent to collect all the elements necessary to pull off a themed wedding. Executing a themed wedding at the level of David Tutera or the masterminds behind a beautiful blog photo shoot takes years of skill and a refined style (and more cash than I have in my account).

In short, I am not sure the Ponies are capable of properly pulling off a theme at our wedding.

We haven’t traveled together enough (yet!) to justify an awesome travel-themed wedding.

Photo by Nelwin Uy via Ruffled

We aren’t cool enough to pull off a carnival-themed wedding. (Oh, how I wish we were.)

Photos by Gabriel Ryan Photographers via Brides

And we don’t love any one thing enough to make it a theme for our entire wedding.

Sunflower wedding by Wedding Flowers via Marriage Bouquets

We love many splendid things, just nothing enough to have our wedding revolve around it. Although if we were to pick one thing, it would probably be wine since we are getting married at a winery and we plan on having a lot of wine at the reception. But we still don’t love wine enough to make it our theme.

But, we do love each other. Which I think will be just enough theme for us to handle.

What do you think of wedding themes? Are they right up your alley (and if so, please share your theme!), or are you relying on love to get you through your decor decisions? What else have you noticed is themed lately?

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23 Responses to “Theme Me Up, Scotty!”

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Member

ajayler86 (message) 28 posts, Newbee

When I asked my future hubby what our theme should be, he replied “getting married?”

We decided that the only theme that we need is getting married and having fun. This makes me a little nervous that the wedding won’t look cohesive, but like you, I think the colors and decor will pull everything together.

I’m glad I’m not the only one without a real theme!

5/27/11 @ 3:47 pm (reply)

Member

MrsShamrock (message) 11 posts, Newbee

I felt the same way… so much so that when we were designing the invitations, I really liked this cute lovebird clip art thing the designer had… but I was nervous if I used it, it would have to show up in other places. They assured me that wasn’t the case, and I’m glad they’re on the invites but not really anywhere else. I even had trouble when people would ask “what are your colors?”… I’d say Ummmm wellll pinks and blues and violets and fuchsias You make a good point, your love is the theme, and you can sprinkle in whatever you like, as it’s your wedding day and its about you as a couple!

5/27/11 @ 3:49 pm (reply)

Member

TheFutureMcBride (message) 4,479 posts, Honey bee

We didn’t have a theme either. It was just us getting married which was enough for both of us.

5/27/11 @ 3:49 pm (reply)

Member

Ryna (message) 4,207 posts, Honey bee

@ajayler86: LOL! My FI said the same thing! Then we came up with our “fantasy” theme.

I’d be going totally bonkers if I didn’t have an actual theme and since all our friends are nuts about fantasy of one sort or another, it works perfectly.

I see a mixture of fairy tale (think Tinker Bell, princess, pirate, etc), Anime, movie characters, goth, and anything found under “fantasy/fiction”.

Themes are great for those whose brains can’t function any other way (like mine, lol). I’d be ALL OVER the place if I didn’t have a theme and it would be questionable if it would even look good together, lol.

5/27/11 @ 4:02 pm (reply)

Bee

Miss Funnel Cake (message) 690 posts, Busy bee

I’m with you on this one. We’re trying to add in Swiss and Brazilian bits where we can and keep everything classy, but we’re not going to be serving funnel cakes at the wedding. (As cool as that would be!!) And it’s a botanical conservatory with tons of flowers and foliage, so it’s not like we have to dress up the place.

Like you, I/we don’t have enough time to DIY/collect everything from Swiss land and secure it in the states.

I am sure we will both have a splendid, lovely affair none-the-less. I do love and appreciate a good themed wedding though!

5/27/11 @ 4:16 pm (reply)

Member

Melanie11 (message) 560 posts, Busy bee

Like you, I don’t think either of us likes any one thing enough to make it THE theme of our wedding. I want everything to look cohesive and represent who we are, but I don’t want it to just look like a more dressed-up version of a themed birthday party.

For example, we live in Southern California and we both like the beach. We’d like the wedding to be somewhat near the beach because it makes more sense to us than doing something country club or rustic. But when I say, “We like the beach,” what I mean is we like to sit on a beach restaurant patio drinking beer and looking at the ocean. Neither of us surfs, scuba dives, sails, plays beach volleyball, etc. So I’m not going to have a beach explosion at my wedding, because how does that make sense?

I also want to throw some nods to our alma mater in there, because we met in college, but I’m not going to go as far as making it look like a pre-game rally. Thinking of using some of our school colors and/or naming tables after campus landmarks…

5/27/11 @ 4:46 pm (reply)

Guest

Dragonlover

I’m not sure why It won’t allow me to log in…

For us, a theme was a logical and simple choice. One of the reasons we met, and our favorite activities together include renaissance faires, the SCA and reading fantasy fiction.

So we’re going with the theme “modern medieval” and have worked out some details - like we want to name tables after towns/kingdoms - Camelot, Avalon, etc

Doing medical colors for a spring wedding is driving me nutz though

5/27/11 @ 5:02 pm (reply)

Member

MissTurtle27 (message) 92 posts, Worker bee

I have the same problem. I just keep telling people our theme is “things I like”. My mom is always pressuring me to define that a little more but then again, she’s always more “put together” than I am. I’m not matchy matchy in real life so I don’t need my wedding to have that painstakingly put together vibe

5/27/11 @ 5:13 pm (reply)

Member

afuturemrsl (message) 728 posts, Busy bee

We have . . . a motif - Trees! Plus some English teacher touches from myself. It is a good combo since he is a carpenter who loves wood and I love books!

5/27/11 @ 5:46 pm (reply)

10.

Member

colleewoggs (message) 356 posts, Helper bee

I’m not thinking of it so much as a ‘them’ but more of a ’style’ which is rustic country little bitty western, but am trying to my hardest to not make it seem “theme-y”…so far it seems to be working out.

5/27/11 @ 7:58 pm (reply)

11.

Member

dreamocracy (message) 176 posts, Blushing bee

Yeah themes never even crossed my mind when planning. I just had an idea in mind and chose deep red & white with black accents as the colors. Everything else was just.. romance themed? Haha

5/27/11 @ 9:39 pm (reply)

12.

Member

Caizn (message) 707 posts, Busy bee

We are doing a “vintage birds and blooms” type of theme. I figure thats fairly broad but not too all-encompassing.

5/27/11 @ 9:59 pm (reply)

13.

Member

UMakeMeSoSoSo (message) 2 posts, Wannabee

Lol-this is exactly how I feel. Our theme is basically $#&% We Like. If we like it-let’s do it. If not-why waste the cash? Which is why we have goats on our invitations and not really anywhere else and a rainbow palette.

5/27/11 @ 10:45 pm (reply)

14.

Guest

Heather

My fiance for the longest time wanted a theme so he could feel more structured, organized, put together? I don’t know all of the above I guess. But I hate themed weddings! There is a theme, it’s a wedding! I think certain elements should tie it all together without the cheesiness (colors, fonts, pearls/rhinestones/feathers, fabrics, etc.)

5/28/11 @ 12:04 am (reply)

15.

Member

occhiblu (message) 210 posts, Helper bee

I don’t really understand themes for weddings. Styles, as colleewoggs says, make sense to me, but not themes so much.

5/28/11 @ 1:14 am (reply)

16.

Guest

Corporate Party

love the photo. something about big trees that are spectacular and breath taking!

5/28/11 @ 7:43 am (reply)

17.

Member

RainStorm (message) 420 posts, Helper bee

We have too many hobbies to pick one, although we might try to add some “theatre” details as that’s where we met. And we’re going to have a motif to tie together all the stationary details…

5/28/11 @ 11:07 am (reply)

18.

Member

billyburgette (message) 43 posts, Newbee

I’m not a fan of themed weddings. As Miss Manners says, “The theme of your wedding is matrimony.”

5/28/11 @ 12:47 pm (reply)

19.

Bee

Miss Snow Cone (message) 1,026 posts, Bumble bee

someone once told me their favorite theme party is “beer and music,” so I’m rolling with that and saying our wedding theme is “fun, love, and people.” I’m really keeping my fingers crossed I can pull that one off

5/30/11 @ 8:34 am (reply)

20.

Guest

Viviana

Our theme is “key to my heart” but my fiance doesn’t know it…haha! I just started implementing vintage keys in things like the table numbers, on our invitation envelope, as little charms on our bouquets. It’s just a little touch to keep the overall look cohesive I guess. I’m a designer so I don’t think I could function without one.

5/31/11 @ 2:53 pm (reply)

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