Picking out wedding colors and the bridesmaid dress colors for our wedding has not been the quickest or easiest decision. There are so many colors that look great together and narrowing it down to the ones you will use to dress your bridesmaids or groomsmen and have accenting the reception and all the other fine ascetic details of this wonderful occasion can feel like a lot of pressure. That’s why I thought it would be helpful to put together some helpful tips and tools that Brooke and I have found helpful so far.
Websites That Come in Handy
Pinterest has been one of the most helpful places to look because you get to see pictures of an actual bridal party in the colors you are considering. What I’ve found is that many bridal dress sites show the colors or show the dresses in the color, but they rarely have an example of the bridal party alongside the bride with the option to put each bridesmaid in a color you are considering. Pinterest seems to be the closest way of being able to see if what you are picturing in your head makes sense in a photo.
Just search for “bridesmaid dresses,” “bridal wedding colors,” “wedding colors,” or even “bridal party” and you can start down the rabbit hole. This is also a good place to see what certain types of fabrics look like in a photo. Some dresses will look very different depending on how the light hits them. Remember that old, “is the dress black or gold” picture? Satin is an example of a type of fabric that can look drastically different from one angle to the next depending on the lighting.
Revelry
We ordered many swatches from Revelry with all the different types of fabrics too. Revelry is a bit pricey of a site to purchase dresses from, but it doesn’t still mean you can use their piles of swatches to help you narrow down the color pallet you want to use for your wedding. Once we got the swatches in the mail, I cut them up so we could mix and match the colors and fabrics easier and see which colors seemed to work nicely together.
Revelry also offers mega swatches to be ordered, ones that are around 2 feet long. This is a nice option to have because once you have an idea of what colors you may want to go with officially, you can order the larger swatches to get a better feel for if the colors and fabrics feel right. It can be a little harder to do this when you have three-inch square samples to work with.
Many bridal parties are now mixing and matching fabric types and this can look absolutely awesome. You want to be careful still and make sure you look at samples of those fabrics together. Because just like how some colors won’t work well together, some fabrics might look wrong together too. Test them in different lighting too. Go outside when the sun is out and see what each color and fabric looks like to you in comparison to the indoors. When you order larger fabrics, take pictures of them in both the inside and outside and with different lighting just to see if there are big changes.
Many other sites offer fabric swatches to be ordered (Typically all of them actually.) Birdy Grey, David’s Bridal, Azazie, and Mumu are just a few. I just highlighted Revelry here because we personally used this site and ordered swatches from them and found that all those swatches came in handy. Plus, we really liked that we could order larger swatches to help us narrow down our colors even further.
Seasonality
Even though there are no real rules to what colors you pick, it might be good to take seasonality into account. Although you can still use any color at any time in the year, some colors really bring a certain seasonal vibe, and if you aren’t going for that particular vibe, then you will want to see what colors produce the vibe you are going for.
Summer Wedding Colors
Many summer vibes lean toward vibrant colors. You may picture more tropical colors like aqua blue or tangerine.
Fall Wedding Colors
Warmer colors like amber, copper, pumpkin and even emerald green go nicely. Think autumn leaves colors. Those are the colors that really bring forward the fall wedding vibe.
Winter Wedding Colors
Winter weddings are beautiful and I’ve seen different color palettes used for this season. One palette is the jewel tones which are dark teal, burgundy, and dark green typically. On the contrary, I’ve also seen very light colors like soft sage, grey-blue, and a soft neutral. And moreover, I’ve seen gold and silver and red and green like Christmas.
Spring Wedding Colors
Springtime tends to get us thinking about soft pastel colors, yellows, peaches, lavenders, and sky blues. There tends to be more pops of colors as well during this time of year.
Again, those are just some thoughts to keep in mind when making a final decision. I truly feel like Pinterest is such a huge blessing when figuring out the color palette and the bridesmaid dress colors for your wedding. You can get to see what colors really make sense and what colors don’t.
As simple as it might sound, I’m finding that good old Pinterest seems to take the cake for offering me a better idea of what I want to see in my wedding. A picture says 1000 words after all. If you can even create your own Pinterest board containing items that exemplify the color and vibe you would like, you can end up using all of those pictures on that board to better understand what you actually want. Maybe you want more than just one or two colors at your wedding. Maybe you want bolder colors than you initially imagined.