The Tech Savvy Bride: Getting Inspired Online

by aisledash staff, Posted Aug 23rd 2010 3:00PM

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The Internet is obviously a great tool for gathering a lot of information quickly, but one of its best uses is as a source of inspiration. Unfortunately, searching for inspiration can also become an amazing time-waster. You start off looking for wedding dresses, centerpiece ideas, or wedding hairstyles and three hours later you have a stack of work to do -- and no decisions made.

Wedding blogs are addictive and you can find yourself obsessively checking back in several times a day. I divide blogs into two categories, the personal and the professional. Personal bridal blogs follow one bride's (or groom's) adventures in planning a wedding. If you have a particular interest such as DIY or wedding style in mind it can be great to follow along with a similarly inclined bride. Try doing a search for terms like DIY Bride, Offbeat Bride, Groom Advice, or Green Bride to find personal bridal blogs that work for you. Weddingbee offers a variety of "bridal bees" who all blog about their wedding planning experiences, giving you a lot of different voices and visions in one place.

Professional blogs are those like the wedding blog I write for at OneWed.com. Since professional bloggers aren't planning one specific wedding, they tend to give you a wider variety of ideas and pictures. Plus, they often have contests, giveaways and special deals.

OmniBride.com is a great blog resource. OmniBride is a wedding-specific search engine. Type in DIY and you'll only get results that have to do with DIY weddings. This is a great way to reduce your aimless surfing time.

One piece of advice, once you've made a decision, STOP LOOKING. If you know what song you want for your first dance, don't keep reading articles about choosing music. Remove yourself from e-mail lists and Twitter follows that give you more information about decisions you've already made, that way leads to madness, my friend!

Tags: onewed, wedding blog, wedding inspiration