Excited To Wed: Teens begin planning their future wedding days

Most teen girls who use Pinterest today downloaded the app in elementary school. Some of them used it to pin anything from style inspiration to their next baking escapade. Others created the infamous “My Wedding” board to save their favorite bridesmaid dresses, color schemes, cake decorations and flower arrangements – despite being a fifth grader with no relationship in sight. 

At the age of eight, now sophomore Bella Wolfe started saving her favorite wedding concepts to her only board, “Bella’s Board,” on her mom’s account – she was too young to have her own. Although it was cluttered with every waterfall braid tutorial and back to school necessity you could imagine, it was the first glimpse at wedding conceptualizing for Wolfe. 

If you fast forward to today, Wolfe has switched from a family desktop to her own iPhone, but she is still picking out engagement rings, wedding dress silhouettes and invitation designs, this time with her own account, of course. Even though she’s years away from a wedding, she’s still excited about the perfect glass church she plans to exchange vows in and the live band’s setlist for her reception. 

Wolfe is one of the whopping 70% of Pinterest users who have created wedding-inspired boards pre-engagement, and for some, even pre-relationship, according to Bustle. Teens and adults across the nation spend hours of their days sifting through the millions of wedding pictures to gather ideas and visualize their wedding dreams. 

Despite only being a high schooler, Wolfe thinks it’s something fun to do and even to look back on as she gets older. Continuing to dream of a perfect wedding, with full intent to execute, fulfills her childhood girl cliché of the perfect day with the perfect person. 

“For me, it’s always been my princess fantasy,” Wolfe said. “I think that a lot of times it can be intimidating like people are always asking ‘You’ve started planning your wedding?’ and I always tell them it’s nothing that I am super serious about. It is something I do for fun. It’s just always been a dream of mine to have my perfect wedding.”

Wolfe isn’t alone at East in exploring the wedding world. Senior Katie Drake and sophomore Sydney Bounds click on the wedding topic page as they scroll through Pinterest. And they’re not alone either — in an Instagram poll, 47 of 300 students responded that they had thought about their future weddings. 

Like Wolfe, Drake uses Pinterest to store her wedding must-haves and maybes. She’s gathered ideas about photo editing aesthetics to someday share with her photographer and determined the majority of her budget is going to be dedicated to buying an abundant amount of flowers. 

Drake started her board freshman year, believing it’s never too young to start thinking about it. Although, she does think it’s important to not get wrapped up in the superficial plans. 

“I don’t constantly obsess over it,” Drake said. “But I don’t think there is anything wrong with starting to look as long as you keep other goals like career goals and dreams first over what type of flowers you want.”

Bounds, who also has the customary wedding board, likes to gather ideas, but doesn’t attach to them too easily. As an intern for two ‘Day-Of’ wedding planners, planners who show up the day of the wedding to make everything run smoothly, Bounds has experienced the bumps of a wedding day before like a torn dress and has learned Pinterest can set unrealistic expectations sometimes. 

“Pinterest is such a perfect place,” Bounds said. “Everything always looks really nice on there, but that’s not what most people’s weddings look like. That is what a Pinterest wedding looks like so it’s important to remember that when it comes to actually planning your wedding.”

But the realistic understanding doesn’t stop her from soaking up fun budget-friendly wedding DIYs or dreaming about the perfect altar set-up. 

To Bounds, a “perfect wedding” comes with a detailed schedule so that the event runs smoothly. For Drake, it’s a canopy of flowers and light strands over her as she walks towards her future husband. For Wolfe, it’s a pair of louboutins to walk down the aisle in, like her mother, and a female officiant to merge her political and religious beliefs. 

However, they acknowledge nothing is set in stone. Every pin can be deleted, and new ideas can be added. Wolfe’s mom reminds her that her dreams may change, but she knows that gathering her thoughts in one place will better serve her in the future. 

“My mom always tells me when I’m showing her dresses and [wedding ideas] ‘You know your preferences may change,’” Wolfe said. “And I am like ‘I know that,’ but I think it will be fun and useful when I actually am planning my wedding to go back and look at the ideas I had.”