It’s wedding season and love is in the air, along with high levels of pollen and just a whiff of existential dread. One bride-to-be I know has been putting off her wedding for more than a year, stuck between the uncertainty of what our shifting economy will bring and the demands of her everyday life with a growing toddler and aging parent in her care.
Choosing your wedding theme – the colors, style and general vibe of your big day – can either be a laborious exercise, fraught with emotional and financial pitfalls, or a sublime opportunity to express your style as a newly formed family.
I put Google Gemini, the AI chatbot integrated into my Chrome browser, to the test and posed as a bride on the fence about their wedding theme.
Here’s how AI can help you discover your perfect wedding theme whether you kind of know what you want, definitely know what you don’t, or have no clue at all.
Set the stage for success with AI prompts
My prompt included some very specific parameters, like the wedding had to be LA-based, with film elements, and the groom wanted a dry wedding. I also peppered in a few out-of-the-ordinary must-haves, like the inclusion of puppets in the decor and fried rice as a must for one of the food options.
It’s not enough to give the AI tool you’re using a lot of details about your blessed event. I recommend you provide direction on what you want to get out of the results from your prompt.
Use phrases like, «I’d like both the bride and groom’s preferences to be considered equally,» and «I am explicitly uninterested in themes around fairytales and barnyards» to help refine the results.
Let the AI chatbot guide you through it
Another great way to discover which wedding theme is perfect for you is to let the tool take the reins. I told Gemini I had no idea what theme a theoretical bride and groom might want, and it gave me a great list of starting points in numbered phases for brainstorms and assisted decision making.
It suggested discussing preferences on things like colors, seasons, hobbies, music, books, TV shows and movies, foods, drinks, nature, art, travel and «vibes»:
It also suggested cross-referencing our likes and don’t-likes with practical considerations like budget, venue, season and whether it «feels like us.»
Gemini then said we should develop that theme with an overarching color palette, decor elements, stationery, clothing, menu and music.
Build on the elements you like most
Gemini’s suggestion for my request to incorporate the bride’s love of puppets was to include illuminated marionettes in boxes as decor. But the image rendering turned out as projections of puppets that looked ghastly instead of gallery-worthy.
A quick suggestion that the puppets be incorporated «in a chic way,» which is absurd, actually yielded very positive results, taking the presentation from Haunted Mansion to MoMA.
Minimalist shadow puppets displayed on marionette strings and used as table settings got me a lot closer to decor worthy of a wedding.
One final note on using AI as a wedding planner companion
Gemini was decent at this task, and provided a range of themes which fit the criteria given with refinement and back and forth. It managed to incorporate all the elements the bride and groom wanted for the wedding day while maintaining focus on the task and not suggesting themes that would be better suited for birthday parties or simple get togethers.
The bad news is, the prompt I used was engineered to provide a theme suggestion that would have worked great for both the bride and groom, and could have taken into account all their proclivities and provisos, but Gemini completely missed the reference.
LA-based nuptials, the bride’s love of film, the groom’s favorite food being fried rice, and one of them wanting a dry reception? The opportunity to suggest a Chinatown-themed wedding was right there!
So don’t expect any AI integrated tool to take the place of a real wedding planner. No one puts two and two together like a human.
