W.P. 101: Choosing Your Wedding Color Palette

Your wedding color palette helps give vision as you choose your florals, decor, bridesmaids’ dresses, ties/bowties, and more!

Best of all, your wedding colors can be whatever you choose! And yet, therein lies the challenge.

Bride and groom make their way down through their bridal party who are making an arch. Their wedding color palette includes burgundy, silvery white and light pink.
Second Shot for Monica Cassell Photography

When we started looking at choosing our wedding colors, we thought it would be easy.

That was also the moment when we realized we have a bit of a different vision for what our wedding will look like. And that it is going to take some work to make our visions come together.

I like pastels and muted colors. He likes bright, vibrant, very bright and more “spice.” (Spice/Spicy has become a term I hear quite frequently – yes, it’s something I’ve been scared of and am coming to terms with)

Seasonal Trends

Choosing your wedding season, even if you haven’t landed on a wedding date yet, can be very helpful in narrowing down colors.

Spring trends go towards fresh, light and pastel colors. As the landscape turns to fresh blooms, your wedding colors can reflect the life that is popping up all around. Warm pinks, soft yellows and corals are a beautiful addition to Spring weddings.

In addition, earthy greens, whites and creams paired with pastels create a timeless atmosphere for a beautiful Spring day.

White wedding cake with gold accents is surrounded by pink and orange flowers, as well as greenery.

Summer color trends move towards bolder color schemes. Hues of golden yellows, oranges, and turquoise are paired with neutral greys and browns.

Wedding couple snuggles inside a vibrant hot air balloon.

Fall palettes trend towards rich colors and jewel tones. You can find tones like burgundy, navy, emerald and mustard. Rustic and muted colors can also show tribute to the season.

A Wedding bouquet wrapped in macramé features light pink, red and orange roses with eucalyptus and an assortment of pastel flowers for a fall wedding color palette
Second shot for Jennifer Monaghan Photography

Winter colors are often inspired by precious metals and bright accents. Here’s where you can snuggle up with colors like grayed jade, velvet, silver, royal purple, and regal red.

Pastels can also give off an icy feel and can fit in perfectly with a snowy wedding.

Wedding party poses with deep red dresses, and warm furry stoles paired with the men's navy blue tuxes.
Second shot for Kate & Co Photography

Though your options are endless! I hope this gives you a jumping off point.

Pre-Inspired Palette Pins

Pinterest is a great place for all things weddings, including lots (and lots) of color palette inspiration!

Just search (literally anything – vibe, season, color, theme) with color palette or wedding color palette and you’re golden! Or silver or pink!

A Wedding color palette example is paired with a sweet photo of a bride and groom laughing with a colorful hot air balloon in the background

In fact, here’s a great board to get you going!

Blooms

Florals can have a huge impact on the overall look and vibe of a wedding. Your florals show up in your bouquet, boutonnieres, ceremony and reception.

A wedding bouquet displays the couples wedding rings and brides necklace with a fall wedding color palette of pink and burgundy
Second Shot for Monica Cassell Photography

Also choosing colors and blooms that are in season can save you a lot of money!

Other Important Things to Consider

Taking into consideration what vibe you’d like to go for, as well as what venue(s) you’ll want to get married at.

Darker, richer colors lend themselves to a moodier vibe whereas pastels make a bright and airy vibe come to life.

When you’re touring venues, take note of the background colors your decor will be paired with and what themes your venue lends itself to.

Wide angle view of the chapel with bride and groom inside
Second Shot for Monica Cassell Photography

Our Wedding Color Palette

It took us awhile before we even began to start to settle on what our colors would be. Nearly to the point of it not being fun.

So we decided to add our own fun into it!

A few days before Thanksgiving, we went to Home Depot to pick out our Christmas tree. While we were there, we made a stop in the paint section to pick up a few paint chips and made it into a wedding planning date night!

Color chip samples

Also, fun fact, did y’all know Home Depot has this really cool color match program? It’s a little screen where you can scan a color you like or select a color family you like and it will give you palettes based on colors that go well together!

Their program was hugely helpful in picking out a variety of colors to help us have a variety to choose from.

Then we took our findings home and, over a lengthy tea session, narrowed down our chips to our final colors: Gold, “Wine Not” Burgundy, “Tuscan Herbs” Green and “Funny Face” Pink.

Then we used the rest to play a hilarious and unorthodox color family version of Go Fish (Brendan won).

Other Wedding Color Palette Inspiration

Along with Pinterest, there are some other fun resources I’ve found across the internet to help y’all make your choice easier (and fun)!

The Knot has a fairly detailed Wedding Style & Vision quiz for some inspiration! This will help you narrow down what you like and don’t like in terms of decor, vibes and colors before it gives you a color palette and some vibe inspiration (as well as some local vendors who can help this come to life)!

I got a brighter color palette and the words “eclectic and elegant with a touch of affordable.”

I have to say, that pretty much nailed what we’re going for and I didn’t even try that hard to make my vision clear!

Wedding Wire also has a step-by-step guide on Exactly How to Pick Your Wedding Colors.

Wedding Planning 101

Keep up with all of our Wedding Wednesday blog posts as I journey through planning my own wedding using my experience as a wedding photographer!

Part 1| We're All In This Together
Part 2 | The Wedding Planner
Part 3 | Wedding Venue Open House
Part 4 |The Wedding Officiant 
Bonus | Our Proposal Story

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