Need to get those creative juices flowing while brainstorming some of your big day day details? Hairstyle options, color combinations, and fashion details are a few areas where your wedding planning decision-making would surely benefit from some visual stimulation. Or maybe you’ve just always wondered how you’d look in a fire-engine-red upsweep hairdo?
Brides.com has a few entertaining features in addition to their very helpful pictorials (also great for getting your creativity going). The tools are designed to spark ideas during your wedding planning, especially if you’re stuck in a rut. Check out their planning tools section at brides.com/myweddingplanner for a listing of interactive mini-applications that you may find helpful.
One of the more entertaining tools I came across was their Hair and Makeup Studio. You basically upload a frontal photo of your mug and then see how funny you look in different do’s. Okay, or you can take it more seriously and try to get a general feel for certain styles that work better for you, and some that definitely don’t. Short styles, long styles, up-do’s and relaxed ones…go crazy giving yourself all those different hair treatments you might never dare try in real life, and see how long it takes before you make yourself giggle. They’ve got celebrity hair in there too, so if you always wondered what you’d look like with Paris Hilton’s trademark golden wave or Beyonce’s full locks, wonder no more. Vary the colors for even more fun. And somewhere in the middle of it all, you might just find that a flash of inspiration or moment of insight strikes.
See you staring back at you...with a totally new look. Here we're adding some color to the cheeks.
Let's go for a different do, and see how that looks with some eyeshadow...
The makeup options seemed less helpful, usually just not aligning properly on the faces, at least for the photos we used. Although we did manage to make a once-pretty web designer look like a vampirish raccoon. Maybe you’ll have better luck.
There’s also the option to use their default model’s face in lieu of your own mug shot, but then…where’s the fun in that? When you’re done, you can click the “Show products applied” button to see all the expensive beauty gear that was used to turn you into your cyberstunner counterpart. And hey, you didn’t even have to go to the salon to confirm that you’d look ridiculous in Ashlee Simpson’s straight jet-black do.
Other available features on the interactive tools page include a ring designer whose strength lies in giving you an idea how diamonds of a certain cut look next to different styles of side-stones. A princess-cut rock between a pair oval-cut sidekicks has a different feel to it than a trio of brilliant round-cut stones. Vary the diamonds’ sizes and mix up the cuts to get some visual feedback, hopefully helping you settle on your own look. The app doesn’t help any for visualizing the stones in different setting styles, though, as only a simple band is provided as an option.
The Build Your Ring tool lets you see how different diamond cuts look together as a whole.
Adding to the toolkit of color tools that I discussed last week, brides.com also offers a mix-n-match designer that randomly comes up with a color scheme trio every time you click a color wheel. Again, helpful for getting a visual kickstart when the creativity just isn’t forthcoming. You can select a color family and restrict to like hues or contrasting colors. See if it helps awaken your muse.
Spin the color wheel and see if what you get jostles your wedding-planning muse
There are some other visual tools in there too, along with a suite of recently-added information management and planning tools that you may want to check out if your wedding website service doesn’t provide any. Good luck avoiding wedding planner’s block, and don’t forget to have fun!
Photo credits: All screenshots from brides.com.
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