Choosing Wedding Colors

With so many choices how do you know what wedding colors to choose? Should you choose based on season, on trend, on what you love or what someone else tells you that you should love?

My answer will always be to choose what you love. Yes, it can be cool to be on trend with the color of the year (the choice for 2012 is lovely by the way) and it is nice to choose something that suits the season. However, if you don't love the "it" color or if your chosen wedding date doesn't match your favorite season should you be committed to settling for something that is less than perfect for you? I say absolutely not!

Choose combinations of color that you love, that reflect your own personal style. Keep in mind that there are different ways to bring in accents of color. The color palette can have subtle or even slightly more drastic changes from one element of your wedding design to the next. I agree that there should be some consistency throughout, but this doesn't mean you won't have an opportunity to creatively weave your chosen color palette throughout the entire design.

Still unsure of what direction to go? Check out Design Seeds where Jessica creates amazing color palettes that will surely give you the inspiration that you are looking for.


Leave a comment and share some of your favorite color palettes!

Japan Bloom Show at New York's Japan Society

I took a quick trip to the Japan Society earlier this week to see some of the most beautiful flower specimens. More varieties of sweet peas than I could count and amazing displays throughout. Here are some of my favorites.

 

 Gloriosa Lilies for the main entrance.

 Chocolate Cosmos and yes they actually smell like chocolate!

 

Scabiosa japonica "Pretty Pearl"

 Over 100 varieties of sweet peas, you could smell them the minute you entered the building. 

My "favor" when I left the show was a bunch of these intoxicating sweet peas, lucky me!! 

 The entire structure is covered using a combination of sweet peas and scabiosa.

 I LOVE these leaves and I'm so happy to finally know the proper name!

 Peony (Paeonia suffructicosa, the pink is "Fukujuden" and the white is "Godaishu".

A combination of blue tweedia with accents of the "crispy wave" leaves shown above.

 Test tubes with single orchid and accent of smilax. This could be a perfect accent for a wedding design, hanging from ceiling or used to accent the chuppuh or ceremony area.

 The arch was made entirely of sweet peas with just a few accents of lisianthus. Wouldn't this make a spectacular entrance to the aisle for a wedding ceremony?

 The image on the left is a structure of made of yellow gloriosa lilies...amazing! 

The simplicity of the smilax hanging from the ceiling in the second picture was perfect and again I can see so many uses for these in the design of a wedding ceremony or reception.

Behind the scenes: Shopping for flowers

Back in April we took part in the Modern Tablescape Challenge over at Brooklyn Bride. While this end up being the final submission we did have a few designs that we played around with before choosing. I'll post those over the next few days but today I thought I would give you a little peek into the behind the scenes process of shopping for the flowers.
Sara Wasilausky was my teammate on the challenge and took some beautiful images of everything.

A view of the flower market early Saturday morning.

Vibrant pin cushion protea - we ended up choosing the yellow variety.

Thought about using this amazing palm leaf as a vessel but decided to go in another direction. Pretty common to start with one idea in mind and then be swayed in another direction by all the amazing options to choose from.

Rows and rows of tulips, hyacinth, ranunculus and other seasonal beauties.

Here I am choosing the final bunch of pin cushions.

These amazing open cut white calla lilies are not always available so I couldn't resist grabbing some for at least one of the table set-ups. My hands are also full with craspedia and waxflower as I make the final choices.

Nicky from Associated Cut Flowers and I catch up on the happenings in the market and new flower arrivals as he writes up our invoice.

Just another day for Fat Cat at Gpage.

A visit to the flower market can really give you a new perspective on your original design and help you better define the direction it will take. It's a great experience and I always welcome couples to take a trip with me to explore all the options available for their wedding flowers.

Stay tuned for our other table set-up options that we didn't end up using for the challenge.