How To Create A Wedding Hashtag Everyone Will Use And Love

Wedding hashtags have stormed onto the scene as one of the most addictive new traditions in weddings. They’re one of the first things many couples start with when planning their wedding as they help you connect with your guests, see pictures from all throughout the day, document memories that you may not have even gotten to have without it, and (arguably) the best part? Get punny!

It’s hard to believe that as recently as 2008, this thing known as the wedding hashtag didn’t even exist. Now it’s practically a requirement – unless you’re having a fully unplugged wedding, that is.

But my guess is that if you’re here, you want to know how to create a wedding hashtag that’s more fun or unique than what the algorithm-based hashtag generators provide. Well never fear, we have for you a 5-step process that will get you #GoingGreen (a potential hashtag for my own nuptials!) in no time.

We’ll hold your hand step by step all the way, while providing wedding hashtag ideas and wedding hashtag examples to really get your brain going. So let’s do this!

How to create a wedding hashtag: Step 1

The first step in creating a wedding hashtag is to gather your supplies. And in the world of hashtags, words are your supplies. So let’s make a list of words to play with! On a piece of paper jot down as much of the following as you can:

• Your first name
• Your last name
• Your nickname(s)
• Your partner’s first name
• Your partner’s last name
• Your partner’s nickname(s)
• Your joint married name – if new or hyphenated
• Your wedding date
• The year of your wedding date
• Any other significant dates – when you first met, your first date, when you got engaged, etc
• The name of your venue
• The location of your venue – consider including the city, the state, or even the country if it’s a destination wedding, plus general descriptors as well, like “mountains,” “woods” or “forest,” “beach,” “trail,” etc
• Your wedding theme or style
• Anything you’re known for as a couple – your pet bulldog Frank (or can’t forget your kids!), your amazing DnD get togethers, your love of craft brewery, your joint obsession over Weird Al Yankovic, etc

It’s okay if you can’t imagine how you might use any of these elements in a wedding hashtag. Add them to the list anyway. 

How to create a wedding hashtag: Step 2 

Now that we have a list of supplies to play with, we get to play! This is the actual wedding hashtag creation process, where you brainstorm like crazy.

First, go ahead and write down any hashtags that immediately come to mind. #HoustonNagyWedding2021. #Simko2Bernier. #DempseysTieTheKnot. #BerrieSquaredIn2021. 

While you’re brainstorming don’t be scared of writing anything maybe a little silly or off-the-wall. Get everything down on paper! You never know when one of the silly ideas will lead to something really great.

So a good place to start is with your last names plus love and wedding phrases. #RosesGoToTheChapel. #FinallyAFowler (bonus alliteration there!). 

Then, when you’re ready, start playing with the following brainstorming tools:

1. Personal stories – What stories of experiences do you share as a couple together? What’s unique about your love story? This is where you can pull into play the items from your list like your hobbies and children. For a few personal story wedding hashtag ideas:

#NotGravity4Gerlachs2021 – Do you share a love of the Albert Einstein quote “Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love”, and adore referencing all things sciencey? Here’s your hashtag!

#4051Days or #4051DaysDown (or #4000DaysDown to make it easily memorable) – If my fiancé and I got married today this could be our hashtag, sharing how long we’ve been in each other’s lives. I particularly like this one for couples who have had long engagements.

#FranksParentsTogetherAtLast – Always celebrate the puppers! If you’re known for being major dog people this just might be the way to go for you. Although if you’re really major dog people can you fit all six names in the hashtag?

2. Pop culture – Pop culture is a fantastic source of inspiration for your wedding hashtag. Use movie titles, famous quotes, even actors’ names to get something awesome going. 

#CrazyBradleyInLove. #RealLifeMonicaAndChandler2021. #ShellBeMack2022.

3. Alliteration – Playing with a single consonant or vowel sound repeatedly is an almost subtle way to have fun with the words. It makes the hashtag bounce in the listener’s ear, almost sing. It’ll have a nice ring to it and that makes it memorable.

#KickingItWithTheKays. #WeddedWallaces. #CallUsTheClarksons. #SmithSoulmates.

4. Idioms – Idioms are at the heart and soul of wedding hashtags. They’re well-known phrases that when put together mean something different than the individual words of the phrase. Basically they’re not literal. Like raining cats and dogs. 

Or floating on cloud nine, which can become #FloatingOnCloudHinz. We’ll come back to these in a moment.

5. Rhymes – This is my top secret tool (it’s how I named my own personal business, I Do Beaucoup!). Pop open RhymeZone and start plugging in each word on your supply list from the beginning.

Note that it’s okay if you can’t find perfect rhymes for your last names or your venues or whatever you’re plugging in. Words that sound sort of similar can work too, up to a point.

So this is where the magic begins. Take the rhymes you’re getting out of RhymeZone, and plug them into The Free Dictionary’s Idiom Dictionary. When you read each result, plug in the original word that went into RhymeZone (your last name or whichever word it was on your list) and read the result using that word in place of the rhyme to create your potential hashtag.

Here, let’s work through a couple. First, one that will probably easily pull up some examples: Moore.

Select rhymes to try in the idiom dictionary: door, for, fore, more, pour, score, soar, your. 

“Beat a path to the door” becomes #HinzBeatAPathToTheMoore. See how it works? 

Swap your word (in this case the last name) for the rhyme (door) and if it sounds good, turn it into a hashtag! 

Other potential winners: #NoMooreFishInTheSea #MooreYourHeartOutToHinz #HinzMooresHisHeart #TheMooreWillMarryHer

Let’s do a slightly more difficult one now. Mayfield. Rhymes include left field. Bingo, I can see where that one can go. #CaughtLyonsOutInMayfield. Not all of them are going to be winners but write down everything you come up with, as you never know when it will spur on something greater.

6. Puns – Puns are the granddaddy of all wedding hashtags. The rhymes plus idioms above create puns, but that’s just one way to make them. Your brain can think a lot more expansively than some generators.

Whether you consider yourself good at punning or not, you can try your shot at this with a handy pun generator. Just try not to curl over from groaning so hard! Here are some punny wedding hashtag ideas:

#McGarityGetsTheGreenLight. #SarahsCupOfJoe2021. #DadeForEachOther.

7. Your friends and family – Reach out to those who know you best (and have a greater knack for wordplay) for some help on your wedding hashtag. Maybe consider sharing your list from Step 1 (or even this article, too) on facebook to crowdsource the project. 

How to create a wedding hashtag: Step 3

By now you should have a nice long list of options. You might notice that in my wedding hashtag examples above, some of them had numbers and some of them didn’t. Well here’s what’s up with that…

Step 3 is to take your favorites and consider adding numbers. There’s a couple of different ways you can do this.

The most obvious way to add numbers from the examples above is to add your wedding date year onto the end. I feel this is most useful when the rest of the hashtag is potentially basic enough that another couple may come up with the same hashtag. 

One of the cardinal rules of wedding hashtags is to make one that’s unique to your wedding alone, so if there’s a chance someone else might come up with the same hashtag (like if you only use common first names, for example), it’s a good idea to throw your wedding year on there too in order to make it just a little more unique.

A way to use numbers that helps shorten the hashtag is to swap “2” for “to”/”too” and “4” for “for”. One super simple hashtag with this swap is #Marvin2Barker2022. 

Another simple way of using numbers is to create a hashtag that shows where you came from and where you are now. The year you met to the year you’re getting married, so it might look like #FromCross2018toVazquez2021. 

How to create a wedding hashtag: Step 4

Alright, we’re almost done with creating your wedding hashtag! Do you have your list of favorites now? Step 4 is where we narrow them down and choose our winner!

Take each favorite through the following checklist. If it gets more than one “no” answer, try to rework it with the suggestions mentioned. If you can’t rework it until there’s one or fewer “no”s, cross it off your list.

• Is it memorable or catchy in some way? If you used one of the tools listed above (alliteration, rhyme, pop culture, etc), you’re good to go.
• Are there any avoidable double letters? In other words, if you have a word that starts with the same letter as what the word before it ended with, you have an avoidable double letter. These lead to common spelling errors, which means those photos won’t show up in your hashtag photostream.
  • An easy way to catch these double letters is to write out your hashtag in all lowercase letters. If you find avoidable double letters you’ll want to rework them or avoid it. One way to rework it: switch #LauraAndMark to #MarkAndLaura – see the double A between “Laura” and “And” disappear!
• Are there any words that are hard to spell? This includes last names now! If you’ve got a hard-to-spell last name, here are some of your options:
• • Shorten or abbreviate the hard-to-spell last name. For example, Szepietowski can become Zippy.
  • Get rid of the hard-to-spell last name and just use the other one. For example, #MarieBecomesJohnson doesn’t use Marie’s last name at all.
  • Don’t use last names at all. For example, #BrionnaPlusMarkInNYC2021 focuses on the first names plus their venue location.
  • Focus on the date, the venue, the theme, or something else that is specific to you as a couple. For example, #Nautical50sWedding061222
• Look at it with no spaces and all letters lowercase: Does it look funny or inadvertently spell anything inappropriate? We don’t need any Celebrity Jeopardy “let it snow” hashtags happening! That may be part of your own flavor of punniness, but I would venture a guess that you’ll have some guests – perhaps elderly relatives? – that may disapprove.
• Does the length feel comfortable to you? You don’t necessarily have to worry if it’s long. After it’s typed once, Instagram auto-fills it so the only reason you’d have to nix it for being too long is if you don’t think you can fit it on the signs.
• Has this hashtag already been used? Log onto Facebook and Instagram and search the hashtag to double-check! You definitely don’t want to crash another couple’s wedding, and you don’t want other photos getting mixed in with yours.
• Does it seem unique enough that another couple won’t try to use it? If you’re not sure, try adding your date to it.

How many do you have left? At this point, you get to pick your favorite of the remaining options! If you don’t have any left, keep trying to rework the ones you did have, or go back to the previous steps to come up with more options.

How to create a wedding hashtag: Step 5

Step 5 in creating your wedding hashtag is to finalize it and then spread the word like crazy!

First: Capitalize the first letter of each word. The hashtag will work whether they capitalize the first letters or not, but this makes the hashtag easily readable so everyone will get what you’re trying to say and will catch any joke you have in there. It will also ensure they read it correctly and thus know what words to type so photos don’t get lost in the internet ether. 

Now it’s time to let the world know about your wedding hashtag so they can use it liberally! Use it in as many of the following places as your heart desires:

• Tell your wedding party
• Put it on your wedding website
• Spread it on your social media posts
• Print it on your Save The Dates
• Encourage its use on social media during pre-wedding events like beach parties and showers
• Have it printed on the invitations
• Put it on the ceremony programs
• Place it on the menus 
• Have it on cocktail napkins
• Print it on photo booth props
• Make it a part of the wedding favors
• Spell it out in letter balloons against a long wall
• Put it on signage everywhere 
  • (entrance, program sign, guestbook table, photo booth, bar, table numbers, selfie station sign, etc)
  • (chalkboard signs, wood signs, glass/window signs, framed print signs, etc)
  • (on the bottom of other signs, on its own dedicated signs, etc)
  • (make signs by hand, create them on the computer, purchase them on Etsy, etc)

Still, having trouble creating a wedding hashtag?

If you’ve gone through all the steps above and you’re still struggling, you don’t need to stress it. There are still options!

For one, there are plenty of wedding hashtag generators floating around that you can try. Some of them get a little more creative than others, so it might take a little digging but I bet you’ll find something you like.

If you definitely want something with more of a creative flair, try a professional! There are people out there who offer hashtag writing services for a fee (believe it!) and some even provide more than one option for you to choose from. 

Keep calm and #hashtag on

So how do you like your nice shiny new wedding hashtag? We’d love to see the fruits of your creativity! Share your new hashtag with us in the comments below.

 

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