Kickstart Your Wedding Design: Choose the Perfect Color Palette 🎨

Last week we talked a little bit about wedding themes (see here), but maybe you’re feeling like you have no idea where to start with your wedding design and the thought of deciding on a theme is just too much for you right now.

That’s okay, I totally get it. Wedding planning overwhelm is REAL!

As a former DIY bride myself, I know exactly how stressful wedding design can be (especially if you’ve never done it before). If you’re newly engaged and just starting your wedding design journey, I have 2 things to say:

1. CONGRATULATIONS! This is such an exciting moment in your love story and I encourage you and your partner to take time to celebrate your engagement. There’s no rule (and even if there was, I would encourage you to break it) saying you have to start designing and planning your wedding the second you get engaged. Take your time and enjoy this magical time.

2. If you are ready to start designing your wedding and landing on a theme is too overwhelming (see here for some wedding theme inspo) - I encourage you to start with wedding colors.

Choosing wedding colors is easier than you may think. There are a lot of clues in your surrounding environment that will help point to your ideal wedding color palette. Once you choose your wedding colors, it will help serve as a creative foundation for all aspects of your wedding design. From invitations to decor, attire to florals, your chosen palette becomes the invisible string that ties every element together.

I love me some momentum, especially when it comes to making decisions. You’ll soon find once you get that wedding planning momentum going, you’ll want to keep going.

Here's why selecting wedding colors is so important and how it can help jumpstart your wedding design process:

Wedding Colors Define the Mood and Style

Your wedding colors are more than just a combination of shades you love; they reflect the mood and style you want to convey. Are you dreaming of a romantic and elegant celebration? Soft pastels or muted tones like blush pink, sage green, and ivory can evoke that feeling. Prefer something bold and modern? Jewel tones like emerald, burgundy, or navy can make a powerful statement. By choosing your colors, you’re creating the first building block of the atmosphere you want to create for your big day.

A Guide for Design Decisions

With so many choices to make, having a color palette in place simplifies decision-making. Whether you're selecting linens, centerpieces, wedding party attire, or even the icing color for your cake, your chosen colors will guide you. Without a defined palette, it’s easy to feel lost in a sea of options. Your colors act as an anchor, streamlining the process and ensuring all elements of your wedding feel cohesive. One of my favorite mood boards I’ve made tonight was a fictional wedding between Avril Lavigne and Elle Woods (see below).

Inspiration for Theme and Decor

Choosing your colors can also inspire the overall theme or aesthetic of your wedding. For example, a palette of soft blues, greens, and neutrals might inspire a coastal theme, while shades of burnt orange, rust, and terracotta are perfect for a fall or bohemian vibe. Once you’ve nailed down your colors, it’s easier to build a cohesive look and determine an overall theme that reflects your vision as a couple.

A Personal Touch to Your Day

Your wedding colors are a reflection of your personal taste and relationship. Maybe you’ve chosen hues that remind you of your favorite season, the flowers from your first date, your favorite travel destination as a couple, or even your home decor. Adding this personal touch not only makes your wedding feel more meaningful (no cookie cutter weddings here!) but also makes the design process more enjoyable.

If you’re feeling stuck with color selection, take the FREE GHD Wedding Color Quiz to help jumpstart your wedding color palette decision. 

Take the wedding color quiz

Tips for Choosing the Perfect Colors

1. Start with Inspiration: Look for inspiration in your everyday life. What colors make you happy? Are there tones in your wardrobe, home, or favorite artwork that you’re naturally drawn to?

2. Consider Your Venue: Your wedding venue plays a huge role in determining what colors will work best. A rustic barn might pair beautifully with earth tones, while a modern ballroom might call for sleek neutrals or metallics.

3. Seasonal Palette: Let the time of year guide you. Pastels are great for spring, vibrant shades work well for summer, earthy tones shine in fall, and rich, deep colors suit winter weddings.

4. Test Combinations: Play around with color swatches and mood boards to see how different shades work together. Get the FREE GHD mood board guide with templates here. For more color inspo, check out this GHD Pinterest (purple wedding, jewel toned wedding, red and pink wedding).

How Wedding Colors Drive Your Design Journey

Once your colors are chosen, you’ll find that many other wedding design decisions will become easier. Your floral arrangements, table settings, invitations, and even lighting can all be designed with your palette in mind. It’s like creating a roadmap for your wedding—giving you a clear direction to follow as you progress in your journey of making your wedding vision a reality.

By starting with your wedding colors, you’re setting the stage for a cohesive and memorable event. It’s a fun and creative way to kickstart your wedding planning journey and ensures that your celebration truly reflects your style and story as a couple. So, grab those swatches, open up that mood board template, raid your closet and home for favorite items, get inspired, and let your wedding colors lead the way!

The Ultimate Wedding Planning Checklist

If you’ve found your way here, you’re likely on your way to getting married. Congratulations! Being newly engaged is such an exciting time, especially at the start of the New Year. I love beginnings. The beginning of a relationship, the beginning of the year, the beginning of a marriage. I think starts are the best!

I hope you’re deep in the starry-eyed phase of your engagement. I love to encourage couples to enjoy this phase. Take all the time you want to celebrate your engagement with family, friends, and each other before jumping into all the wedding details.

If you’re like most newly engaged couples, the second you tell others you’re engaged it’s a tsunami of questions such as,

“Let me see the ring!”

“When are you getting married?”

“Where are you getting married?”

“Are you having a big wedding?”

So it’s okay to keep it to yourself for a bit and savor the moment. Need inspiration? Example of starry-eyed lovers below:

via GIPHY

Now once you are ready to start your wedding planning, it can feel a bit overwhelming. With so many details to consider, it’s easy to wonder, “Where do I even start?” That’s exactly where I come in!

As a former DIY bride myself, I know how stressful it is to sit amongst piles of wedding magazines and how-to articles trying to decipher what the plan should be for you and your partner’s wedding. If you don’t know where you’re going, it’s easy to get lost.

via GIPHY

To help make the beginning of your wedding planning easier, I created the Ultimate Wedding Planning Checklist. This guide provides an easy timeline to reference along your wedding planning journey. From 12 months out to the month before your big day, I’ve detailed it all for you and your fiancé in an effort to spare you both from hours and hours of wasted time scouring the internet for this info.

Once you download the checklist, you can go back to enjoying your newly engaged love bubble because you’ll know exactly what wedding planning tasks to focus on at what time in your wedding planning journey.

Wishing you a joyful engagement and a Happy New Year🥂

via GIPHY

The one thing you can’t buy and MUST have at your wedding

I recently ventured down to southern California to celebrate my cousin’s wedding. 

Yes, I am one of THOSE people who take pictures out the plane window.

As a wedding designer, you would think I would have taken a million photos of the wedding decor to share with you…

Ironically, I took exactly ZERO photos of the wedding design. Wait! I found one photo of the decor (see below). So while I completely failed at capturing the design of the wedding and I can’t quite show you what the wedding looked like, I can tell you what it felt like. 

My one photo of the wedding decor

I walked away from this wedding full of so much joy, that it got me thinking about how the experience of a wedding and the feeling created by a wedding means so much more than a wedding  color palette ever will. 

My mom, sister, I pre-wedding day rain showers

The thing is you can plan and plan and plan some more, curating every last design detail of your event, but if you guests walk away with a lackluster experience then what does it matter if the satin ribbons on your reception chairs were tied a certain way?

What matters most is the feeling, the vibe, the experience your wedding creates. Sure, design can help bolster these things, but in order to do that you have to get REALLY clear on the kind of experience you want your guests to have at your wedding. How do you do that? Allow me to expand…

• Pick 3 words

• Write down 3 words you want your wedding to feel like or 3 emotions you want your guests to experience at your wedding

• Have your partner do the same thing and write down 3 words they want the wedding to feel like

• Come together to share your words, explain why you chose them, and work together to create a final list of 3 words you both agree on for your wedding

• As you make decisions on your wedding (from flowers to music at the reception), keep these 3 words in mind and make sure the decisions you make align with those key feelings you’re wanting for your event

• Connect

• There are a lot of ways to connect with your guests throughout your wedding, there were a couple things at my cousin’s wedding I really loved that provided connection

• Sharing “the why” of the location - the reception was held in my Aunt and Uncle’s house. It was shared in the reception speeches that it had been my cousin’s dream to get married in their backyard. I loved this subtle and sweet connection made to why the location was chosen.

• Introducing the wedding party - I have been to A LOT of weddings in my day and I think this is only the 2nd time I’ve seen a couple do this. During the reception the couple took time to introduce each member of the wedding party to all the attendees. Sharing short and sweet things about how they’ve known each other, where they met, etc. I love this idea and it helps guests better connect with who is at the wedding.

• Spend time “making the rounds” to each table. This is something fairly common at weddings and I feel guests appreciate the gesture. The wedding couple makes time (usually during dinner) to visit each table and talk to their guests. The trick is not to get stuck at any one table too long, otherwise you’ll spend the whole night chatting and it leaves little time for dancing.

• Personalize

• By personalize I don’t mean monogram your dinner napkins (though you can do that if you want), but really find ways to infuse your personality and interest into your event. Here’s a couple of ways I love to do this:

• Party favors - choose something that represents you both. Love cats and wine? Create custom cat wine charms for your guests to take home (yes, this is a thing and yes, I suggested this for a past client who loved cats and wine). Wild about nature? Send your guests home with a seedling packet or pine sapling (yes, I’ve done this too!).Want to go deeper? Pick a charity or cause you are both passionate about and have a QR code for donations to that charity in lieu of favors.

Loved this party favor from a previous styled shoot I did

• Centerpieces - One of my favorite (and most time consuming) pieces of my own wedding design was the centerpieces. Every table featured black and white photos related to the guests seated at that table. For some tables there were pictures of my spouse in his marching days, for other tables it was me in my cheerleading days. It was a great way to honor the moments in our lives shared with the people at that table and also created a great conversation piece for guests.

Centerpieces from my wedding

Each selection of photos was customized to those at that assigned table

These are just a few ideas to help get your wheels turning on how your wedding can go beyond good color coordination. This is really a moment in time to express who you are as a couple and as individuals, it’s an opportunity to connect with those you love, and it’s of course a time for joy and celebration.

The wedding I went to could have easily gone awry. It was cold, it rained, the reception was outside. An outdoor spring wedding comes with its risks. Despite the weather,  the experience was magic. We danced the night away in the rain with family, with friends, and with complete strangers - we were there for the same reason to celebrate in love. 

Dancing so fast we’re blurry

My mom and I (and one of my uncles in the background #photobomb) - all completely drenched by the end of the night from the rain (note I did not wear waterproof mascara - rookie mistake)

And even though I’m still recovering from getting sick (see previous point about dancing all night in the rain), the wedding was pure joy and that’s a feeling now amount of wedding design can buy.

Congratulations Heather + Daniel - I had a BLAST dancing in the rain with you!