After choosing your wedding venue, it’s time to get creative!
To ensure that every aspect of the wedding follows your color scheme – from the invite to the flowers to the wedding cake – it is important to tackle this task early in the planning stage. Selecting your colors will not only determine the type of flowers you will have; it will also determine your wedding costs.
Here are a few tips to consider:
1) What kind of wedding are you envisioning? Do you want a vintage or retro wedding? Do you want a modern or glamorous wedding? This is important to consider because this will determine the type of colors that can work best with your vision. More modern, vibrant colors create a glamorous feel and more of a wow factor whereas softer colors provide a more romantic feel.
2) Sit down with your fiancé and choose a favorite color. Ensure that it is a color that you both love – for example, if pink has been your favorite color since you were 5, but your fiancé absolutely detests, it pick a color that works well for the both of you! Create a mood and inspiration board to see how it works and how you can accent it with complementary colors. But don’t overdo it, limit the main colors to two or three for a harmonious look.
3) Consider how the selected color fits with your venue. Take a look at the color of the venue’s walls, the interiors and exteriors, the drapery, the flooring – and pick flattering colors. Stay away from colors that will clash with the venue. The ideal setting is a clean canvas to work with, so if you have a whitewashed building then that’s great, because everything will work but, if not, make sure that the colors that you have chosen for your wedding will look great together with the venue’s interiors and exteriors.
4) Use your favorite flower as inspiration and place it together with your other colors to see how it can work. You can even make it your predominant color – for example, if yellow tulips are your favorite flowers, choose yellow as your main color and discuss the options with your fiancé to see what colors can with work well with that color yellow.
5) Let the season inspire you! See what colors are predominant during your wedding month and use that as a guide (without feeling obligated to use those colors, of course) Also, beware of colors that are representative of a holiday, such as orange and black (Halloween), red and green (Christmas). Make sure that, unless your wedding is going to take place close to those dates, you stay away from colors that are already representative of holidays.
5a) Consider variations of the colors that are in-season: rather than having to use a soft pink for a March wedding, use a hot pink which can also work really well during that time of year.
6) Think of your bridesmaids! If your idea is to have the predominant wedding color as the color of the bridesmaids’ dresses, consider if the wedding color that you have chosen is a color that’s going to look flattering on most women. Let’s be honest, not everyone can pull off yellow, so ensure that the choice you have made as the wedding color will work great on the bridesmaids. If not, you can always opt to have the bridesmaids wear complementary colors since you will have to three colors to choose from. You can always use the secondary or tertiary wedding color as the bridesmaids’ dresses.
7) What does each color represent in your cultures? A color can have a very different meaning in two different cultures – for example, if you’re going to marry an Asian man its important to bear in mind that white is the color of mourning so a white wedding will probably not sit very well with his family members. Before making a decision, consider all cultural attributes that each color can signify in your cultures.
Where should you incorporate your wedding colors so as not to overdo it? You can put your wedding colors on really anything that you like:
- Stationary (the invitations, save-the-dates, menu cards, ceremony programs and place cards)
- You can incorporate them into the flower arrangements
- In the cake stand and your wedding cake – without overdoing it because a lot of people are wary about eating vibrantly colored food!
- You can also incorporate your wedding colors into the sable settings. For example, if your wedding color is red and yellow and you can’t find a not remembering a red and yellow tablecloth, why not use a yellow table runner or tablecloth with a red napkin ring?
These are all great tips that will help you now down your choices, but don’t feel compelled to follow every step on this list! Consider what works well for you and consult websites such as the pantone color institute where you can see the latest trends and how your specific wedding colors will work together. Who knows? Maybe YOU will create the latest wedding color trend!