Thursday, November 10, 2011

Choosing Your Wedding Colors

Choosing your wedding colors can be a nerve wrecking experience. A few simple tips can take much of the angst out of this decision. Starting with your fall wedding flowers is one way to make it simpler.

This article from Nina Callaway at About.com provides some useful tips to assist in choosing your wedding colors:
Having specific wedding colors can help give a visual unity, and help your wedding seem more elegant, and even more expensive than it really is. Choosing your wedding colors may seem a bit daunting, especially if you aren’t particularly visually oriented or your partner is color-blind and absolutely no help. Yet it’s really quite easy.

Most people base their wedding colors on a favorite shade or favorite flower. You’ll want to choose one primary and one or two accents. Start off by seeing if there are any predetermined factors.

  • Does either the reception or ceremony site have strong colors?
  • Are you set on having a particular flower?
  • Have you already chosen your bridesmaid dresses?
If so, you’re halfway to finding your wedding colors. If not, start by thinking about the season when your ceremony will take place. If you’re planning beach wedding...usually pastels or brights  are good selection.

What to avoid:

  • Too much black - while sophisticated, it can end up looking like a funeral, rather than a celebration. If you love black, balance it out with a bright color, or lots of crisp white.
  • Losing your personality - Don’t just do pastels because I’ve suggested it above. Think about what you wear normally in your clothing and the shades you’ve used to decorate your home. These are probably colors you are comfortable around already.
  • Picking too many wedding colors - two are perfect, and three will still work, but any more than three wedding colors will end up looking ununified and strange. The purpose of wedding colors are to tie everything together, and the best way to do this is to have everything in one of two shades.. 
  • Consider going monochromatic; many shades of one color. A bride I worked with used blue for her ceremony by the sea. Each bridesmaid had a different shade of blue for her dress, and the bouquets.
  • Consider having related tones; ones adjacent to each other on the color wheel. A bride I’m assisting now has green bridesmaid dresses with blue sashes. You might also consider green and yellow, or red, purple and blue.
  • Consider having complementary shades- located opposite each other on the color wheel. For example, lavender and pale yellow, or forest green and burgundy.
  • If you really love one hue in particular, you might want to highlight it among neutrals. So, bridesmaid dresses might be cream with purple sashes, groomsmen might wear off-white tuxedos with purple boutonnieres, and bouquets might be stephanotis, white roses, and lavender sweet pea.
Once you have some idea of your wedding colors, try out this handy web tool to see how they will look together.

No comments:

Post a Comment