Looking to create the most beautiful and intentional wedding flat lay photos? As a wedding photographer and videography team, we love curating all of your thoughtful details into stylish combinations to highlight your small accessories. From your something borrowed jewelry, wedding invitations, shoes, bouquet and more, it’s important to reflect back on the choices that made your day special to you.
Wedding Flat Lay Items
You might ask, what goes in my wedding flat lay?
Some of the standard wedding flat lay items to use are your stationary i.e. your custom wedding invites, with envelopes and themed stamps, save the dates and RSVP cards.
But if you hire a creative photo/video team like us, we’ll elevate it with things like:
- Single floral stems from your florist (must be requested ahead of time)
- Food!! Such as grapes, macaroons, lemons, rosemary, etc. whatever matches the aesthetic and is available.
- Your morning-of gifts to each other
- Wedding Shoes
- Aesthetic styling tools in our inventory such as ribbons, pearls, vintage jewelry trays, etc. (scroll to the bottom to see what we have!)
Creative Wedding Flat Lay Inspo we love!
As you can see in this gallery of BEAUTIFUL wedding flat lays, you can really show off your details in the most fun creative ways. Leave it up to your photo/video team to take care of this for you. Although, if you have a specific vision in mind such as, “I really want the shoes in the sink shot!” or “I really like the details captured on flash photography” definitely communicate it to them.
As far as our style goes, we love playing with light and shadows. We also love to mix tones and textures while staying cohesive to your wedding aesthetic.
All photos have the creative photographers credited!
How to Style Wedding Flat Lay Items
If you’re a wedding photographer or videographer interested in learning the basics of styling a flat lay, you’re in the right place!
First, layer your stationary.
There are 3 ways you can do this.
- Straight and spaced apart
- Straight and layered on top of each other
- Intentionally crooked
Second, grab all of the items your couples have provided for your flat lay.
If they didn’t have time to prepare this, grab the checklist here on this page and start asking around for these items. Recruit some family or bridesmaids to help find these items with you to save time if you have to.
Next, start building these items around and/or on top of the stationary. I like to use Instagram and Pinterest as inspiration for where to put certain items. Sometimes it’s both shoes laying on it’s side in the corners, sometimes it’s earrings on top of the envelope, sometimes it’s mini floral heads scattered around or a ribbon twisted below the stationary. This is the part where you have fun with it. There is no wrong way to build a wedding flat lay. It’s whatever your creative mind feels right with you and your couple’s wedding aesthetic.
Lastly, MIX. IT. UP.
You can never go wrong with starting with a simple flat lay of only a couple items, taking a few photos, adding more items, taking another round of photos, so on and so forth. Or, build a flat lay of all items and start taking items away slowly as you take pictures in between. Better to have options in my opinion! Especially if you have time to mix up the backgrounds and take the items somewhere new in the suite, take them outside, do something funky and creative before completely giving them back. This is your time as a vendor to push yourself outside the box.
Pro tip: I love incorporating full sunlight and shadows into my flat lays where I can. I think it adds such a fun editorial flair.
Scroll to see our examples of our favorite stationary flat lays we’ve styled that intentionally incorporated the wedding colors and special floor designs from the venue. Some of the styling pieces are things we bring to your wedding so you don’t have to buy these! See our inventory at the bottom of this blog.
01. Antique Inspired Flat Lay
This styled shoot is filled with unique antique items from Portland’s best thrift malls. From Coach Designer shoes, pearls, a porcelain fan ring dish and macaroons in all shades of pink, this flat lay has an abundance of old charm. Our personal favorite is the vintage veil with a pearl headpiece!
Stationary by Honest Calligraphy
02 Floral Inspired Ring Photos
When we didn’t have stationary to work with, we used what we did have which was their rings, bouquet and veil. We loved shooting this with a 1.4 aperture to capture that beautiful macro-style photography of the rings!
03 Romantic Ruins Styled Shoot
This flat lay really utilized the venue’s unique tile floors and leans heavily on the moody, romantic vintage charm theme with red roses and bows everywhere. For an extra touch, the stationary artist added bow graphics and striped borders to their stationary as well as matching custom pizza boxes! Naturally, we captured a couple different flat lays to get all of their custom details!
Stationary by Courting Design
04 Spring Styled Shoot in the Vineyards Flat Lay
This beautiful styled shoot was hosted on a rainy PNW day at Monet Vineyards. It had warm spring florals, blue ribbons and matching blue watercolor stationary as well as pearls and antique ring dishes. Our personal favorite are those vintage crane scissors!
Stationary by Trellis Creative Co
Wedding Stationary Vendors
Want to elevate your wedding stationary with high quality paper and custom calligraphy? Hire these amazing talented vendor friends of ours!
Wedding Day Checklist of Flat Lay Items
This wedding day checklist of your flat lay items is a great resource to use the night before your wedding so you can prepare ahead of time. Our couples usually set these aside in a box of some sort, ready to go for the photo/video team the morning of.
- Wedding Rings
- Ring box and/or Ring Dish
- Bride’s Shoes
- Bride’s Veil
- Bride’s Jewelry
- Bride’s Bouquet
- Bridal purse/clutch
- Bride’s perfume
- Any sentimental linens and/or handkerchiefs
- Groom’s shoes
- Groom’s boutonniere
- Groom’s watch
- Groom’s cuff links
- Groom’s tie
- Groom’s Cologne
- Groom’s cigars
- Vow Books
Print this checklist for later!
Or save to your pinterest for quick reference
Creative Wedding Flat Lay Items for your photos
We love when our couples pick sentimental details that are outside the box. Here are some of our own flat lays to kickstart some creative inspiration!
Such as, our own Thailand wedding featured a custom watercolor destination map of Phuket island as part of our stationary suite, a carved rock elephant and a gold elephant wax seal. Love the vintage purse too? We used it to store my wedding gloves on the day of, it was a perfect touch for our flat lay!
Read more about our wedding HERE.
Stationary by Courting Design
And since our bridal shower theme was “On Cloud Wine” we added feather details to our pillow soft stationary, a cloud shaped rock and Ariana Grande’s cloud perfume! Read more about our Bridal Shower HERE.
Stationary by Courting Design
Wedding Flat Lay Backgrounds
If you want your wedding flat lay photos to be traditional, we suggest a styling mat as your background.
We love ours from Chasing Stone!
If you want your wedding flat lay background to be more creative and matching to your venue, then we’ll find the most stylish spot in your space to create your wedding flat lay photos. This would usually look like the decorative tiles, hard wood floor, sandy beach, vintage rug, antique floral arm chair, a fun cocktail table, etc.
If you’re one of our upcoming couples reading this blog, PLEASE feel free to let us know if you have a background you’d like us to prioritize in your venue and/or getting ready rooms.
Venue Floor Tile
Stationary by Shelby Lynn Designs
Wood Deck
Sand
Floral print chair
We loved this vintage chaise in our bride’s getting ready room at the Mercersburg Inn! Venues full of vintage furniture and special decor can really help your wedding aesthetic bring that romantic charm. In this case, it brought all of that whimsical florals to their flat lay background!
Wedding Flat Lay Styling Inventory
Your job is to bring your sentimental details above, our job is to elevate it with luxury styling pieces that enhance their beauty! Some of these pieces are antiques we’ve scoured through giant thrift malls. If you’re one of our wedding couples reading this, feel free to ask us to bring any of these that scream a perfect match to your details.
Styling Mat
Our grey/blue styling mat from Chasing Stone
Ring/Jewelry Trays
Left: Antique Porcelain Hand Fan 4″x6″. *Unique!
Right: Antique Gold Ring Dish 4″x5″
Large Vintage Porcelain Jewelry Tray 7″x10″. *Unique!
Crescent-shaped floral ring dishes in pink and blue “4 x “7 *Unique!
Vintage Broaches
Top: Silver bow on Black. *Unique!
Left: Gold design on Red. *Unique!
Right: Gold design on Black. *Unique!
Lace Coaster + Rose Ring Box Combo
If you have a feminine garden theme, this ring box placed over this floral shaped lace doily is beautiful!
String of Pearls
Left: White
Right: Pink
Bottom: Ivory
Wood Fans
We have two of the same fans, one with a white string and one with a red string!
Ribbons
Left: Silk ribbon with natural grey toned dye
Right: Pink linen with textured edges
