Helpful Hacks to visualize a Montana Wedding (Using Canva)
Rowan & Larch’s tips for using Canva.
So you’re engaged and planning your wedding! So exciting!
Until you realize how many decisions are ahead of you. Suddenly you’re choosing vendors, defining a feeling, and trying to create an experience for guests that reflects your personalities. Maybe you feel pressure to make it different from your best friend’s wedding last year. Or your sister’s three years ago. It can get overwhelming quickly—especially when you can’t quite visualize what you’re building.
If you have room in your budget, my top recommendation for planning a Montana wedding is to hire the coordinator who vibes best with you. Full-service planning — especially for weddings in Bozeman, Big Sky, Paradise Valley or the greater Gallatin Valley — takes dozens of decisions off your plate and leaves you with the meaningful ones.
But whether or not you hire a planner, here are some simple ways to use Canva to make decision-making feel calmer and clearer.
1. Start with a template.
Choose something so you’re not staring at a blank page. Neutral templates are handy if your wedding leans soft and organic or colorful. Structured if your style is more modern. Don’t get hung up on fonts — you’re not branding your wedding. You’re building clarity. You can brand it later if you’re that type of couple!
Try to choose a template that includes editable color swatches so you can plug in the colors you’re considering for your decor, Montana wedding flowers, linens, or overall palette. Canva’s color selector tool makes it easy to pull tones directly from a Pinterest image if you have one.
2. Create a loose inspiration collage.
Add a new page and upload your top 15 favorite images. Arrange them without overthinking it. This becomes your visual anchor — something tangible to react to instead of abstract ideas floating around.
You’ll quickly start seeing patterns: softer tones, bold contrast, garden-inspired shapes, minimal lines. That awareness alone helps guide decisions.
3. Layer in your rentals and elements.
Upload screenshots of the tables, chairs, soft seating, ceremony structures, and tabletop pieces you’re considering. Seeing them together often reveals whether your vision feels cohesive — especially for a Montana wedding where indoor and outdoor spaces blend.
4. Test linens alongside florals.
Linens are often the hardest to visualize, particularly next to seasonal wedding flowers. Add screenshots of napkins, runners, and tablecloths beside your floral inspiration. It becomes much easier to see what feels harmonious and what feels too busy.
Example Photo
This is an actual screenshot of a page of my Canva board I made when I was planning a backyard (Hobbit-themed) party for my family. I was trying to choose linens that went with the napkins I already owned because I had a jumble of them. (That’s why they’re so wrinkly!) I wanted a “thrown-together” feel for the linens but I didn’t want it to feel like WAY too much.
A few small Canva tricks that make a big difference:
Learn how to screenshot smaller areas on your device. (Command + shift + 4 on my macbook selects a smaller area of the screen)
Hold Shift to select multiple elements.
Use Group so items move together.
Duplicate pages to test variations.
Lock elements once you like their placement.
Use a computer or iPad if you can — it’s much easier than a phone.
You can share the board link with your planner, bridesmaids, or family for feedback, or export it as a PDF to send to vendors. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to help you see.
And one bonus suggestion for couples planning a wedding in Montana: create one extra page that’s just mood. A page for poetry. Not logistics. Not rentals. Just light, landscape, texture, and feeling. Our mountains and sky already carry so much character—let your board reflect the emotional tone of your day, not just the objects in it.
When you can see your wedding coming together visually, decisions feel less overwhelming and more intentional. And intentional almost always feels calmer.
If you’re planning a wedding in Bozeman, Big Sky, or the Gallatin Valley and want guidance on how seasonal, locally grown wedding flowers might fit into your vision, I’d love to help you refine it. I’ll be creating your seasonal floral mood board in Canva as well, so your vision and mine will already be speaking the same language.
This is how the jumbled linens came together.
Local flowers in ikebana, multiple patterns, mushrooms and taper candlesticks with a jumble of mismatched chairs. Could be overwhelming but because I had a Canva board in advance, I was able to see that it was just the casual, bright vibe I wanted to go for.