Yay! You are engaged! That moment you have been dreaming of for half of your life is finally here, and it is time to launch into wedding planning at last!
Many brides like to start the planning process by picking out their color palette. These are the “theme” colors you will focus on when you are doing your wedding planning and making decisions when it comes to ordering flowers or other items similar to that. While there are no ironclad “right” or “wrong” colors to pick, it can be helpful to know the mistakes other brides have made before you pick out your own color palette!
These five guidelines will help you pick out a color palette that reflects YOU well and is still versatile enough to carry over into every facet of your wedding planning process.
1. Choose colors that can work well together.
Perhaps your two most favorite colors are orange and black. Unless your wedding date is on Halloween (or you have picked an “Orange is the New Black” wedding theme), you may want to take a step back and rethink how well those two colors are going to work together as you design all the elements in your wedding.
This can be an especially beneficial guideline to consider if you still don’t have a firm commitment from a venue or a set date. You want to give yourself enough flexibility in your color palette choice to change your mind on these important details without having to start your planning over from scratch!
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2. Choose colors that work well with your venues.
If you have your heart set on a specific venue for the wedding ceremony, the reception, or both for that matter, and those venues have very specific color themes already in place, you may want to try to incorporate those colors into your own wedding palette.
In many cases, and especially in today’s fun and edgy fashion culture, it can be fun to clash colors a bit. But you also don’t want it to appear as if your wedding party is at war with your event space. Here, balance is going to be key!
3. Choose only one “dominant” color in your palette.
In the traditional understanding of a color wheel, there are primary, secondary, and tertiary colors that you should most definitely keep in mind:
Primary colors are red, blue and yellow. These colors can create other colors when any two primary colors are mixed together (for instance, mix blue and yellow together and you get green).
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Secondary colors are green, orange and purple. These colors are created by combining any two primary colors together.
Tertiary colors are made from primary and secondary colors. You get a tertiary color by blending any one primary and one secondary color together.
The deeper into the color spectrum you go, the more subtle colors you will discover. For example, “analogous” colors are complementary colors located near more dominant colors (primary, secondary, tertiary) on the color wheel.
Painters like to build their color palette by choosing one primary color, one supporting color, and one accent color. This can be a great strategy for choosing your wedding color palette!
Reason being: it gives you a bit of extra flash and flexibility in your basic color palette while also allowing you to more easily balance the strength of the dominant color with sufficient quantities of your supporting and accent colors.
4. Choose colors that make you happy!
YOU are at the very center of your wedding. You can think of yourself as if you are the heartbeat of your wedding. These are your personal precious memories you are creating, and they are memories that will be with you for your whole life.
What colors make you smile? What colors lift your heart on a grey day? Do you have a lifelong or current “favorite” color? Are you known for decorating your house in a certain color?
If you are not sure what your personal “happy” colors are, you can do some experiments to find them:
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• Go to the florist and pick out your favorite color of rose (or other multi-color flower).
• Try on the outfits in your closet and see which ones make you feel the lightest and most playful (or go to the store and do the same thing).
• Flip through a color palette book and try to match an emotion with that color.
• Think back to when you were a little girl – what color(s) were you passionate about?
You will be all smiles on your wedding day, and it will surely be displayed through your radiant smile. So if you can find out what colors make you smile spontaneously, it is a safe bet you are on the right track to finding your perfect wedding palette colors!
5. Choose colors that give you room to play.
Some brides unknowingly box themselves in by choosing two strict colors and attempting to match everything from bridesmaid dresses to flowers to those colors. Every so often this is possible, but most of the time, it only leads to frustration.
When you choose colors that work well with seasonal shifts and different textures, you will achieve a more visually lovely final color palette and a less frustrating one too!
It is easy to get so excited about planning your wedding that you begin to over-focus on details such as achieving color palette precision. But when your enjoyment of the planning process overflows into frustration, this is your sign to return to the True North of what all this planning represents: the start of a lifetime of love and friendship between you and your partner-to-be.
By keeping an open mind, a light heart and a spirit of adventure, you can enjoy your planning as the prelude it is to a priceless and special day!
