Royal Steamline The Blog | Inspiration for Brides & Grooms

When I first started talking to J about our wedding colors, his initial reaction was indifference. We were having a small, non-traditional wedding and he didn’t understand the fuss. As a designer, I found choosing these colors an essential first step in planning our wedding. And as a woman who has carted more than a few bridesmaid dresses to the Goodwill, I took this task rather seriously.

It didn’t take much to get J on board. Our goal was to keep things simple. We didn’t want to drive ourselves or the wedding party crazy by trying to match swatch colors or forcing them to wear colors they loathed. Finding inspiration from the comic book series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, we agreed on a color palette of muted tones, and zeroed in from there. It made it much easier to design the centerpieces and other wedding accoutrements with the palette as our foundation and everyone seemed happy to have a range of colors to choose.

Our wedding color palette

Here are a few tips to help keep everyone involved in your wedding (including you) sane and stress-free:

1. Choose a color palette, not just a color. Rather than selecting one, two or three specific hues, try creating a color harmony by choosing a family of colors. You can even have fun naming your own color family (such as “Midnight Dreary” for a family of dark grays and off-whites).
2. The rules of color: There are no rules of color. Well, not exactly. There are no right or wrong ways to use color. Some color combos work better than others, but there are many ways to mix and match. That said, sometimes certain colors (usually the most striking, vibrant or discordant) are best in small doses as an accent or secondary color.
3. Get ye to a library (or your favorite used book store). “They just don’t make ‘em like they used to” certainly applies to books. Antique book and jacket design is an art form. You can discover color and design inspiration from a range of classics, such as 1930s H.G. Wells novels or early 1960s Mainline Mysteries with jackets by Remy Charlip and Arthur Hawkins.
4. Think like a designer. Designers have an array of books and research tools available to them to help inspire great design. Now you do, too! Websites like Kuler, Colorbe and Daily Color Scheme give you the tools to create your own color schemes or download an array of palettes to use as your own. Colr.org even allows you to upload your own images and create a palette directly from the source.

The bottom line is that it’s your wedding and your colors should match your vision of the day. If that vision involves your bridesmaids in mustard yellow dresses, then that’s what you should choose! (Just don’t fault them for making future Goodwill donations!)

Kuler

Daily Color Scheme

Colr.org