HitchDied

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I have wedding colors.  They are sort of arbitrary.  They say nothing about me. They say nothing about Collin.  But so far, I’m glad I have them.

It’s worse than just having colors.  I have colors and I can’t describe them without at least a complete sentence.  I remember when I picked up my first wedding magazine I laughed my ass off at some editorial note about the important distinction between “tangerine” and “orange” and how one might look better with turquoise and the other might “pop” off lavender, or some such.

I have bought into that nonsense, and now I have wedding colors.  Here’s how it happened:

If I have a “signature color” it is brown, but I don’t really want brown as a wedding color, for a very stupid reason: Collin’s sister got married last summer with her bridesmaids in brown, and I want our wedding to look different.  There is that reason, and an even dumber reason, which is that I’m pretty sure if I asked The Knot they would tell me that brown is sooooooooooooooo five weddings ago.  Embarrassing, yet still influential.

So when asked, and asked, and asked and asked what colors I was thinking about for the wedding, I started to say gold.  Gold appeals to me for all the same reasons that brown does, but it has the bonus of being shiny and festive!  People would nod and say, “gold and what?”  I would try to change the subject.

Then I started to think about how I have a ton of people in the Bridal Hootenanny, and that I really want them to be identifiable as Guests of Honor, and also look good all standing near each other in the ceremony.  I figured the best way to accomplish this would be to provide a color palette.

I asked Collin about his favorite color.  “Blue.  No, wait. Green.  Mmmmm.  Blue.  But awesome blue, not lame blue.” I looked elsewhere for color guidance.

Martha Stewart told me I should love pink and gold together.  I don’t.  The Knot thinks yellow and gold are a “pretty color combo.”  I think someone with a great eye for design could make yellow and gold look good together, but my eye for design has cataracts.  Plus I suspect certain friends of mine would punch me in the face if I asked them to wear yellow.  If yellow were spiritually important to me, I would probably risk the face punch.  But I don’t care about yellow, at all, so I’m going in a different direction.

Although really, I don’t care about any colors.  And yet, I’m about to describe the color palette for my wedding in enough characters you can just barely tweet it:

Our palette is mixed metallics, with an emphasis on gold and copper, with very little silver except as accents.  Pewter is ok, as is bronze.

Do I have any emotional attachment to metallics? Nope.  Will our guests learn something about us from the color scheme of our wedding? Maybe they will learn that we’re kind of lazy.  I hope, however, that having this color scheme in mind will function as a heuristic for everything from invitations to bridesmaid/Bridal Hootenanny attire.  And I hope that it makes everything look a little bit more “together” without requiring me to have any design skills.

So, do you have colors? Were they easy to pick, or did you find yourself putting on a blindfold and pulling crayons out of a box?

19 Comments

  1. Um…. haha…. we’re using yellow. Lots of yellow. Haha!

    And pewter. Almost equal amounts of pewter.

    Hahahah… I have to laugh at myself for this, sorry!

    Oh… and we did choose brown, orange, and green at first… but my girlfriend chose those same colors and sent out her Save the Date first. So we changed them to um, yellow, and pewter.

    p.s. Love that your friends would punch you if you made them wear yellow. No one has said a word about hating the color to me, but if they did I’d have to punch them in the face.

    Seriously, you don’t know how much I laughed reading your post and writing this comment! Like really, I have tears!

  2. We have accidental colors, too. Or, more accurately, “color.”

    Blue.

    We’re using blue mostly because my dress is blue, which itself was a result of my inherent laziness. I wanted to stop agonizing and just buy a damn dress, but the wedding dress shops that I went to one day (all 2 of them) sucked. So I went to the department store and bought the first dress that made me feel pretty. It was blue, so … okay. We have blue.

    Worse yet, I think I’m in the “blush and bashful” category of blue. In my laziness, I seem to be going with various shades of blue — pale aqua, torquoise, teal and marine. It’s a ridiculous blue bonanza.

  3. Colors! Colors! Colors! I am the QUEEN of COLORS!!!!! Angie…yellow and pewter…GORGEOUS…how happy, sunny, warm..with a kick of sassy pewter!!!! I LOVE the combination!!! WITTY, HAPPY, FUN…ELEGANT…love it
    Sarah..my newest child….well I have a dash of teal in my hair!!! So what does that say??? LOVE BLUES …and I LOVE that YOU are wearing blue!!!! Spectacular!!! Edgy, COOL…and all blues to boot…like the sea…like the great big beautiful sea!!!!
    And Robby…I already expressed how I feel about your colors…..!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  4. I don’t know why it is, but the second question everyone asks after “When’s the big day?” is “What are your colors?” Like it’s some kind of rite of passage. Ah, my child. You consider yourself prepared for marriage? Then your first challenge shall be… SELECTING GORGEOUS, IN-SEASON COLORS.

    Um.

    So, for us, we never really picked anything specific. We still get shocked faces when we admit this. But then it came time to choose what to wear, and I realized I felt more comfortable selecting a general theme for the wedding party rather than just letting them choose whichever arbitrary hue they felt like donning that day. So I basically sent out a palette that ranged between sea blue to teal to green to, like, yellow, and said: choose something to wear that sort of fits in this spectrum. My basis for selecting these colors was: I like them.

    There you are. The most boring comment ever.

  5. We have sort of a big color palette, because we couldn’t pick just two or three colors. Sorry, I like variety, sue me. We’re going with black, white, green, purple, and light grey.

    I think your metallic mixture will look lovely and will help pull things together with minimal effort. Things that are easy are a big plus in my book.

  6. I can’t imagine anyone will see your colors and think yuoare lazy! Thewhole color thing is weird. I ahev way too many colors. I thought picking a color would narrow my ideas down but it sorta didn’t work that way. Also, I think not wanting colors from others’ weddings is completely valid!

    ours were yellow and have become some kind of rainbow thing (yellow, deep pink, greens, blues…)

  7. I think the colors reflect an aesthetic and that’s about it. Mixed metallics sounds awesome!

  8. omg, colors! What a weird part of the wedding industry, huh? So our colors…and here is my sentence long description…. are granny smith green, robin’s egg blue, and some color that is extremely hard to find but is kinda like magenta/fuscia but that I call ‘berry’. yup.

    And then I’ve kinda been wanting to throw some more random colors in there. Just cuz I love them all and I hate being restricted and just because when people ask about colors and I say *GASP* THREE colors everyone is like “WHA!?” and thinks I’m crazy. So that in itself makes me want to go, “Oh, yeah!? You think thats CRAZY!? LOOK AT THIS!” And then just have every color I can possibly throw in without looking like vomit.

  9. What is it with people and wedding colors? I randomly picked some and our colors change throughout. Ceremony is pinks and greens because people asked me what they should wear and the florist asked me what colors people were wearing and my dress has subtle pinks and greens in the accents, so I figured it’d be thematic. And tropical, since it’s outside on the beach in Islamorada. but any hue of green and any hue of pink will do.

    Inside, for the dinner and reception, things are brown, blue and white with some pink accents. Our invites came out brown and blue, our bedroom is brown and blue (a cool brown a blue, not lame ones ;) ) and it that color combo sort of calms me down.

    so yea, arbitrary. and mostly because i sort of had to start designing the aesthetic aspects of the day, and that’s what popped out.

  10. “My eye for design has cataracts” is my new favorite line. I thought we weren’t going to bother with colors until I realized we’re probably using papel picado streamers everywhere because we have 10 leftover from my birthday, they suit the location, and they’re fun and bold and springlike. Those things are seeped in color, and I now feel the need to emphasize just one or two elsewhere in the linens, flowers, and non-succulent centerpiece items so it doesn’t feel like a pinata exploded all over the reception hall. The question of which colors to emphasize is now affecting my thoughts about tablecloths, men’s ties, and bridesmaids dresses (I have two maids. They can buy whatever they want, but I’ll give them a color option. Sigh.)

    I swore I wouldn’t bother with this sh*t. And I’m still telling everyone that it’s a So Cal Modern Fiesta color scheme, but we all know I have a palette messing with my bridebrain now.

    • “so it doesn’t feel like a pinata exploded all over the reception hall”

      This is my fear. Our decorations aren’t just Crayola colorful, they’re actually made by the under-7 set. I have this feeling that our wedding is going to look like a kindergarten classroom.

    • lol, thats what I’m concerned about too! too much concentrated color equally pinata vomit. Especially since we got some table runners and they are kinda shinny…
      OMG, is it going to look ‘tacky’!? AAH!

  11. I’m here to call bullshit on your design eyeball infirmity! Mitchosaurus, I have seen you design website backgrounds and your old school paintings and also your wardrobe palette. Those things spring from a spry design eye! You were probably going for the yuks with knocking your talent, but I’m here to tell you it exists and is boss!

    That being said, I love metallics (although you did nib my favorite variety). I think bronze is my second favorite and I will be able to find fun bronze shoes. Wootsicles.

  12. I’ve always wondered about this. My big fear would be picking a color that would make the wedding seem outdated (looking back at photos, you know?).

    Metallics are not only safe, but stunning. Good choice!

  13. Oh…. don’t get me started on colours. My mother has been at me from day one about this.

    I am going to choose our colours based on the dresses that my two bridesmaids choose.

    So there.

  14. Our colours are ‘warm’. Brown, orange, red, yellow, gold, ivory… The flowers will be shades of yellow through red. The bridesmaids in yellow, groom and his men in brown. I’m sure it will look fantastic and happy!

  15. Our colors are “moss green, navy, with cranberry accents and a splash of champagne.”. Except somewhere along the way it became lime green, navy, burgundy, and orange. Oh well. I bought green shoes so eff the rest of it.

  16. I’m with Collin. Blue (awesome, though, not lame).

    This helps so much to explain his fascination of my awesome blue shirt over the weekend…

  17. Pingback: NateKat · Wedding Colors

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