Themes and Schemes

Wedding and Bridal Shower Themes

A popular trend is to plan a wedding reception or bridal shower around a theme. The theme can be anything, so use your imagination. The best themes are those that reflect your personal style and cultural background. It is a great way to share something about yourself with your guests and to make your wedding day a truly memorable occasion.

Choosing Your Wedding Colors
(Excerpts from About.com by Nina Callaway)

Wedding Color Schemes Will Add Visual Unity

“Trying to choose 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 really is 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, such as:  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.  Spring and summer affairs usually include pastels or bright colors.  Winter suggests deep purples, burgundies, grey-greens and silvers.  Fall brings harvest tones in orange, reds and yellows.

What to Avoid:

Too much black – While sophisticated, it can end up looking like a funeral, rather than a celebration…just a personal opinion.

Losing your personality – Don’t just do pastels because someone suggests it.  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.

Reminding Your Guests of the Holidays – Avoid the red, white and blue look, or the red and green look.  The celebration today is your love, not the tidings of the season.  If you want to celebrate a holiday, do so by using wine and forest green rather than bright red and green, or use red and white near the Fourth of July, but hold off on the blue…again, just a personal suggestion.

If you have a favorite shade, but don’t know what else will go with it, try consulting a simple color wheel as artists and designers have used this tool for years as a design principal.

Other Ideas:

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 included irises, lilies and delphinium, along with several white varieties of flowers.

Consider having related tones; ones adjacent to each other on the color wheel.  One bride chose green bridesmaids 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, bridesmaids’ 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…”

For related topics and suggested reading, go to http://weddings.about.com