There’s one crucial step to starting a wedding business (or any business at that), and that step is branding. Your business’ brand identity is what sets you apart from other businesses, and it allows you to eventually become recognizable to your audience when showing up across multiple platforms.

This step in starting a business can be overwhelming, especially if you have no design experience. However, not everyone is able to hire a graphic designer right off the bat, which is why we want to show you some tips and tricks to help you DIY your own branding for your wedding business.

Step 1: Pick Your Colors

Your branding colors are what will visually help distinguish your brand from others. These colors will be used basically every platform your business shows up on– your website, social media profiles, business cards, etc.

Before you start choosing colors, keep in mind that they should reflect your brand personality while also aiming to invoke certain feelings in your audience. Has there been a time where you’ve glanced at a business’ branding and it made you think that the brand was luxurious or affordable? Youthful or mature? Playful or serious? Feminine or masculine? Believe it or not, what invoked that impression was likely their colors.

For example, if you want your brand to have a sophisticated, elegant, and mature look, you may go for softer, more neutral colors. If you’re going for a loud and outgoing feel, bright colors may suit your business best.

Now, you can have anywhere from 4-8 brand colors, but there should always be a base color, accent color, and neutral color(s). These are the colors you will use the most, and any other colors should be complementary to those. Your base color will be the “main” color in your brand and will be used more often, the accent will be something that complements your base and is used second often, and your neutral tons should work as a medium and become background tons to your branding. All other colors should be softer than your base and accent.

Where do you find colors?

If you’re truly stuck on what colors to go with, there are a couple of options that will make it super simple. First, there are color palette generator sites, like Coolors, that will randomly pick colors for you and give you the hex codes, which is what you’ll need for virtually any place you use your branding colors. All you have to do is press the space bar to keep changing the 5 colors. If you come across a color that you like, you can lock it in place so it keeps it while you continue flipping through the other 4.

The second option is to source colors from images. Maybe you really enjoy sunsets and the feelings they invoke, for example. You can upload an image of a sunset onto a website like ImageColorPicker, and then pick colors from the image.

Step 2: Pick Your Fonts

There are at least three types of fonts you’ll need: heading, subheading, and body text. Optional, you can also have a script font to use sparingly. Usually, you want your heading and subheading fonts to be serif fonts, and your body font to be a sans serif font.

Be sure that your fonts are easily readable. Usually, script fonts can be a little harder to read, which is why they should be used less often, and, if they are used, it should only be for bold statements that are larger than your other text to help with readability.

Your fonts will also help distinguish your brand personality. Just like with colors, there are more mature fonts and more youthful fonts, feminine and masculine, etc. Google has loads of free fonts, and there also sites like Dafont, Fontspace, 1001Fonts, and many more. Creative Market also has fonts made by creators that you can pay for.

Step 3: Create Your Logo(s)

This can be the one step that shys many people away from DIYing their own brand. Logos typically seem like the piece of the puzzle that needs to be done professionally, though that isn’t entirely true. It’s perfectly fine to create a simple logo yourself until you’ve brought in enough profit that you can outsource to a graphic designer.

The popular, user-friendly graphic design website, Canva, has logo templates that you can use to start off with. All you have to do is pick one, change the colors to your own, change any fonts used to your own fonts, and you can also remove or adjust the placement of certain elements to make it your own.

A more advanced option if you’re familiar with the Adobe Suites is to purchase a logo template from Creative Market. There are even creators who offer packs of logo templates, so you can choose one that you like. Then, you carry it over into Adobe Illustrator and adjust it from there. This is a great option because you’re able to save your logo as a vector file, meaning the quality is unchanged no matter what size you use it as later on your website and print.

There are three types of logos that you would typically need: a primary logo, secondary logo, and submark. The primary logo is, as the name suggests, your main logo that will be used most often. It includes the full business name, the icon, symbol, or graphic that represents your business, and it can also include your tagline.

The secondary logo is similar to the primary logo, but its purpose is to be used at smaller sizes. It can have the full business name and icon, but it’s laid out in a way that’s easier to read when it’s smaller.

The submark consists of only the graphic or icon of your logo. It includes no text at all, and is great for smaller spaces, such as a social media profile photo.

The reason these variations are important is because it’s rare that your primary logo will be able to fit in all places needed. It helps your brand identity translate well across all platforms and mediums. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, try to start with a primary logo and submark.

Step 3: Create Your Brand Kit

This should be your favorite step because it’s the easiest! Once you have your colors, fonts, and logos, all you have to do is put them all together in a brand kit, which is basically a graphic of all of your branding elements. The reason this is important is simply because it’s helpful to see your brand identity in one place, and you can easily have all of your branding pieces in one place.

We recommend saving your brand kit as a PDF, so that you can easily copy your color hex codes when needed. If you have a Canva Pro account, they also have a Brand Kit section where you can upload your fonts, logos, and colors to use in your graphic design creations.

We hope this basic guide to DIYing your own branding was helpful! Remember that even if you aren’t totally happy with the final piece, you can always have a professional rebrand for you down the road. However, we recommend doing so as soon as possible so you won’t disrupt your recognizability across platforms. Plus, it’s always easier to switch all of your assets over to a new brand when you don’t have as many out there in the world!

Have you ever created your own brand for your wedding business? Do you have any tips or tricks that made it easier for you? We’d love to hear about it in our DMs on Instagram @theabundancegroup!