How to Choose Your Wedding Colour Palette

Long gone are the days when brides would choose one colour for their wedding, pair it with white, and leave it at that. Taking their cues from home decor and fashion trends, today’s brides are leaning towards a more expanded colour palette with multiple hues and shades. A larger, while still cohesive, colour palette creates a richness, a sense of depth, and a more stylish look overall. It will evolve your wedding design from basic and ordinary to a well pulled-together aesthetic.

But, just because a bride knows she wants a larger colour palette doesn’t always mean that she knows HOW to create it. Which primary hues to choose? What shades of those hues? Do you stick with one colour for the bridesmaids’ dresses and invitations, and another colour for the bouquets?

To start with, pull out a colour wheel—most of your answers will come to you here. Consider the following colour palette options, and then see what you lean towards naturally!

Neutral: white, grey, brown, black
Monochromatic: one colour, with different tones or shades to bring depth to it
Complementary: opposites on the colour wheel
Split Complementary: one base colour, plus the 2 hues on either side of the base colour's complement
Analogous: 3 hues beside each other on the colour wheel

If you are nervous about how to incorporate colour, start with an analogous colour palette and you can’t go wrong! For example, mauves transition naturally into violets and pale pinks so you can easily combine these hues into a well-designed palette.

For myself, I know that I’m always drawn to analogous and split-complementary palettes, and many of my brides are drawn towards monochromatic palettes (often with blush pink). After you are better able to verbalize what types of palettes you’re drawn to, look outside of weddings to find inspiration on what tones and shades you like. Look to fashion, home decor, and art for ideas—I love looking at beautiful fabrics or wallpapers to see how different hues play together. I’m sure that you’ll discover some beautiful inspiration, and then you can bring that all back to more wedding-specific tasks and use it as a guide for choosing your linens, working on your stationery, and of course, planning your flowers! Still not sure? Here are some examples of each palette--give yourself a moment to glance over them and see what pops out at you!