Choosing Your Wedding Colors | Wedding Wednesday
Choosing your wedding colors is a lot like putting an outfit together. When you put an outfit together you don’t match everything perfectly. If you did you’d be monochromatic! Instead, you coordinate your outfit, which gives it a more styled look. Either you put complimentary colors together or or you mix and match patterns, like stripes and dots.
Your wedding colors play a role in almost every facet of your wedding, from the invitations to the floral arrangements, table linens, attire, cake design, and sometimes even unexpected details, like your wedding favors or signature drinks.
Choosing the right wedding color colors is key to having a clean and cohesive look. Your wedding colors should serve as a baseline for the feel of your wedding day. If you want a romantic, airy feel, you’ll want to use pastels and neutral colors. Desiring a more regal and dramatic tone. Rich jewel tones or black and white are the way to go.
If you’re not sure how to coordinate your wedding colors, begin with a color family such as light shades of blue or neutrals. This will be a baseline for your color scheme. Layer colors, patterns, and textures to your baseline to add interest.
Here are some tips for choosing your wedding colors:
Consider Your Wedding Venue
When choosing your wedding colors, think about your venue. If you’re having your wedding in a grand ballroom, bolder, richer tones may work better than soft pastels, which fit better in an outdoor garden setting. The good news? You can often have both, especially when you consider certain types of settings. Use the surroundings at your venue to help you choose which wedding colors will work best for you. Take into consideration the drapes, carpet, paint colors, gardens, etc.
What are your Wedding Must-Haves?
Though your wedding venue influences the wedding colors you choose, you should also consider your non negotiables. For example, if you’ve always dreamed of having floral arrangements with bright sunflowers, you’ll need to incorporate yellow. Think about your must-haves and use them as a starting point. You don’t want to finalize your wedding colors only to find that a must-have detail looks out of place or gets lost in the rest of the decor.
Wedding Seasons
Using the same clothing analogy, your outfits are planned according to the season. Your wedding colors should reflect the season of your wedding. Jewel tones can feel out of place if used for a spring wedding. If pink is your ideal wedding color there are ways to incorporate it no matter when your wedding is. A soft dusty rose is perfect for spring, while bright coral works well for a summer wedding. For fall, a dusty mauve would be a good option. And for a winter wedding, a hot pink or burgundy would be stunning! You can lighten or darken your color scheme by adding accent colors.
Set the Tone
Your wedding colors set the tone for your wedding day. If you want a fun, lively atmosphere, consider including eye-catching colors, like bright pink, turquoise, red, or yellow. Wanting something more timeless and romantic? Classic tones like navy blue, black, ivory and metallic silver or gold will look stunning. Think about the tone and vibe you want your wedding to have. When choosing your palette, choose colors that put you in the right mindset, whether it’s relaxed, glamorous or something in between.
What are you Drawn to?
Look at the colors you surround yourself with, from your closet to home decor. Which colors appear most often? These are the colors you’ll be happy with for a long time, so when choosing your wedding colors, think about what you want to see in your wedding images, framed photos, and album for all the years to come. Choose a palette you love. An extra perk is some of your wedding decorations can be repurposed as decor in your home, for example, vases and linens, if the colors fit with your home colors. Look through Pinterest to see which wedding color combinations you draw you in.
Use the Color Wheel
Do what artists do and use a color wheel to determine coordinating or contrasting colors. Colors that coordinate well together are typically across from each other on the color wheel. They pair cool and warm tones together (for example, terracotta orange and sky blue). Other color pairings that work well together are side-by-side on the color wheel. They’re similar to each other and share a primary color For example, peacock blue and sage green, or lilac and blush.
Don’t Overthink It
If you’re feeling the pressure to pick the right wedding colors, remember that your wedding palette isn’t the end-all-be-all. While your wedding colors will inform many of your other decisions, like your flowers and decor, you should use them as a guideline, not a rule. Just as you don’t want your outfit to match perfectly, your wedding colors don’t need to match perfectly. A complimentary color palette looks more sophisticated than a matchy-matchy one, so don’t stress about getting every color detail just right.
Remember, there are no hard and fast rules for choosing your wedding colors. Your wedding should be a reflection of you and what you love. Use these tips as a guideline, not a rule!
Looking for a wedding photographer? Fill out the contact form.
Create your wedding color palette.
