Inspirations for Wedding Color Schemes, Planning Advice from OurWeddingDay.com

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Color Scheme Inspiration

As different as every couple, wedding color schemes have become another way to distinguish and personalize your special event. Once you pin down your wedding date (or at least the season) and look into venues, tackle this topic to bring more clarity to your vision. Your wedding color scheme not only enhances your best look on your big day, but will add richness to your wedding theme. The following wedding color schemes tips do not spell out trendy color combos—since words hardly give justice to a hue—but they do suggest where to go for inspiration before the infinite color wheel saturates you.

Nature and Time’s Influence
Embrace the season in which you’ll wed to give your day natural radiance. This may limit your color palette, but it will expand the reach of your budget. Plus, details will come together more easily when your chosen colors appear readily and abundantly during that time of year. Getting married in autumn? Stick with the classic cornucopia of harvest colors found in changing maple leaves. These colors can even appear on wedding cakes.

Seasonal choices also coincide with eco-conscious wedding planning. A “green” wedding to some may mean chartreuse napkins, jade vases, a pistachio wedding cake or olive-green bridesmaid dresses, but color schemes from an environmentally friendly point of view stem from what nature provides, found in many shades. Find products that use natural dyes, not artificial ones.

Influence of Your Appearance
Select wedding color schemes that will complement the skin and hair tones of your whole wedding party, particularly you and your bridesmaids. For a diverse group of lovely ladies, incorporate a second color option like a black and white wedding theme into the bridesmaid dresses and have stunning, two-toned groomsmen usher them down the aisle. Develop a composition of colors that will surely cast a lovely light around you, ensuring your beautiful photographs will capture your day for all time.

Influence of Location or Destination
Pick colors that will accentuate the natural beauty of your wedding's setting. The venue, whether it’s a beach them wedding or banquet room views, may inform your color scheme. You may also let your wedding theme and color scheme ideas come from your honeymoon destination—be it an earthy palette harking at your rustic mountain getaway or a vivid rainbow preparing your eyes for tropical scuba dives.

Cultural, Holiday or Playful Theme Inspirations
Part of the fun and challenge of wedding planning is to balance ceremonial tradition with personal flare. What does a Scottish wedding have in common with a Christmas wedding? Answer: the likelihood of reds, whites and greens showing up in the color scheme. Be confident and allow the easy familiarity of cultural cues be your guide. Want a riot of color at your wedding? Perhaps it coincides with your Greatest Musical Hit theme—turn up the volume on “Yellow Submarine,” “Little Red Corvette,” “Purple Haze,” or “Blue Suede Shoes” and find your color scheme groove. Are you avid chess players? Ebony and ivory decor will align the pieces for your “checkmate” black and white wedding theme.

Inspired Artistic Instinct
Let your artistic hunch guide your wedding color schemes. Start by making an inspirational collage or collection of items. Gather items that have sentimental value and others at random that attract your eye. This visual tool will communicate your ideas and style more than words could to your friends, hired assistants, designers and/or wedding planner. Out of the pile, your wedding theme ideas will begin to emerge and so will the trend of your favorite colors, textures and forms.

In general, don’t be afraid to let one known element inform the rest of your details, especially with regards to color scheme. If you have always dreamed of daffodils and daisies blooming on your big day, then certainly go with a bouquet of yellows, oranges, creams and greens and carry the wedding color schemes throughout your decor and even onto your wedding cake. It also hints that your wedding date should be in early spring!