Deciding on Wedding Colors

One of the first things that brides often decide upon is the wedding colors.  Many couples will choose to go with their favorite colors, while others look to a color wheel (and color meanings) and plan very methodically.

Picture from: http://www.rewaj.com/fashion/understand-colors-with-color-wheel.html

For some brides, this may look intimidating, but I think I have a solution for you on how to pick colors that you love and still be happy with them.  Picking the colors that my fiance and I would use was easy for us.  We both share a similar favorite color that we knew we wanted included in the colors.  The slightly more difficult part was deciding on how to pick companion colors (and I knew, unfortunately, that pink was out, so this took a little research on my half).  Since I was planning on picking up bridesmaid dresses from David's Bridal, I started doing some looking on their website for the colors they had available.

Picture is cropped from: http://www.davidsbridal.com/Product_Strapless-Ruched-Satin-Ball-Gown-F13974_Bridal-Party-Bridesmaids-Long-Bridesmaid-Dresses

While their 44 color selection was a little intimidating, I used a bit of my graphic designer background to pair colors together.  We knew we wanted Clover included, but other than that, we were open to suggestions.  I "print-screened" the image and went to work in Photoshop.  Using the eyedropper, I selected the color I wanted to use and created a large square on another page to give myself enough space to see what other colors would match.  Picking red was an easy decision, but it came down to what shade we wanted to use so that it wouldn't look like Christmas (our wedding is in September, and that would have been a bad idea).  I finally decided on Apple, but then we needed a new color.  Pink was still out, so I started looking towards the blues.  It came down to two:  Marine and Horizon.  This final decision wasn't made until I went to see my bridesmaids at David's Bridal.  I knew that one of the bridesmaids was for sure wearing blue, so I made certain to see her in both colors.  The decision was made on Marine, since the color provided some nice muting to the other colors that we liked and it looked the best with the skin tone of my maid of honor.
I don't necessarily recommend this method for most couples (this took a lot of trust on behalf of my fiance), it was effective and worked.
If you find that you can't include your favorites in the main palette, don't forget that you can include them in the  bouquets and as accent colors.  That is ultimately what we had decided on the Clover color.  The Apple and Marine worked very well together, and we wanted only light touches of Clover.  This allowed us to be able to wear accents of the Clover (I'll have a Clover belt and shoes, and he'll have a Clover vest) without overwhelming everyone with the color.