Colours

I had a similar dilemma in the early days of wedding planning. I'm not a very 'weddingy' minded person and I'm certainly not artistic. All I knew is I didn't want to go for one main great big bright colour all over everything (eg a purple theme or red theme!.)

in the end I decided to go for a nice muted elegant feel (at least I hope so!) with dusky pinks, ivory lace, pearls etc.

My advice would be to have a think about the sort of colours you already like ( eg pastel shades, bright colours etc) and to go on Pinterest or Google image search with some keywords and you'll find pages and pages of inspiration. For example if I type in 'dusky pink ivory lace wedding' into Google image search I get lots and lots of lovely pictures of think I would like to steal for my wedding

I found the bridesmaid dresses I loved which are teal & then planned around that.

I must say though, I don't really have a theme as such. It's just that the flowers etc compliment the teal.

I knew I wanted blue, started with navy and ended up with ocean blue. Ocean blue is my BM colour;

but all the other blues will be from the same family or palette. That way the colours blend rather than trying to match. I hope that helps.

I just pinned lots of images on pinterest until I started to see a bit of a pattern in what I was choosing and noticed some colours were coming up a lot and then looked at the other colours people were using that went well. My bm dresses are a very odd colour as in some lights they look grey/silver and is others they're like a dusky lilac. Is already picked to have sapphire blue, dark purple, dark grey and silver at this point so I've now mostly dropped the blue (save for a couple of brooches in my bouquet) and added more lighter purple shades. Nothing matches but hopefully all the colours will complement each other

This blue colour is beautiful. I've never been a pink person but my OH and I were thinking of a very loose Japanese theme as that's where we hope to be honeymooning. I think maybe we could use cherry blossom on invites etc. but I really don't want our wedding to be too pink so I've had the idea of using bonsai trees for centrepieces. So the only ideas I currently have are pink and green (from the trees!) Can I ask where you found this palette? I'm really not sure which colours are complimentary etc.

This blue colour is beautiful. I've never been a pink person but my OH and I were thinking of a very loose Japanese theme as that's where we hope to be honeymooning. I think maybe we could use cherry blossom on invites etc. but I really don't want our wedding to be too pink so I've had the idea of using bonsai trees for centrepieces. So the only ideas I currently have are pink and green (from the trees!) Can I ask where you found this palette? I'm really not sure which colours are complimentary etc.

I google everything! Your colour choice sounds lovely, here's a starter for 10 for you;

You don't need to have a "colour" :-)

When I started planning, someone posted a site that I found really useful when thinking about colours: http://www.theperfectpalette.com/ You can search the site by one colour or just browse the palettes.

I-Go-By-Many-Names, where in Japan are you honeymooning? My boyfriend and I love Japan, but we're planning to go for a long holiday before we get married (I've been dropping heavy hints about a proposal on the top of Mt Fuji lol) and then probably not have a honeymoon. He works in a school, so not having a honeymoon frees us up to look at dates outside of the "peak season" and save some money.

The colours we've been looking at were pretty much inspired by the venue - it's all done up in beautiful vintage pastels and ivory so very bright colours felt like they'd clash. For my first wedding, we ended up with red because that was the only colour which suited all of the BMs and gold, black and ivory because those colours were in my dress and the men's suits.

White, silver and baby/sky blue for mine - seemed obvious as i wanted the coours to have a wintery theme

I would sugest looking though the real weddings section on her or rock and roll bride etc... you can see other colour themes and see what goes well then just pick the one you like

Our colours are "organised chaos". Got the chaos bit down to a T, the organised bit not so much yet!

My bouquet is going to be a mixture of all flowers under the sun (in season for June), so we decided to sod the rest. Somehow, somewhere, there will be a flower in the bouquet that matches the chair / tie / accessories / bridesmaid dress etc.

Haven't even started thinking about the honeymoon as it will be spring 2017 however I'm sure Tokyo will feature and I would like to visit the Okinawa islands at some point too I hope. I too work in a school and we had issues with dates at first as we initially wanted to honeymoon straight after the wedding which would make the summer holidays the best option but Japan is apparently to be avoided at all costs during August. So this has meant we are going ahead with a summer 2016 wedding and using my Easter holidays in 2017 to visit Japan.

Still haven't decided on colours!

Ooh, spring will be lovely - very hot, but not as humid as in the summer. I was in Japan in May and it was extremely warm by 9am every day. Kyoto is an amazing place with the mix of the old Gion quarter and the more modern areas, or if you want scenery and a good view of Mount Fuji then Hakone has some stunning views and beautiful onsen. Miyajima island, off Hiroshima, is also beautiful, especially if you stay overnight when there are amazing views of the torii gate. Out of the places I've gone, I think the only place I wouldn't go back to is Kobe - unless you like designer shops, in which case it's perfect!

My OH's housemate has a Japanese girlfriend and he's gone to Japan at all times of the year. Apparently, the only bad thing about Japan in the summer is the humidity which ends up somewhere around 80-90%+, and the fact that it does get very busy. We're pretty much stuck with going in July/August, especially if we want to climb Fuji, so I'm hoping the humidity doesn't get too bad.

When I first started planning I had so many ideas about colours that I struggled to make my mind up about anything, I knew I wanted to have a colourful day and not have a single theme but found it really hard to visualise what colours they would be. Me and OH decided to take a trip to B&Q, picked up loads of paint colour cards, cut them all up and picked out our favourites (with me veto-ing a few of his more outlandish colours). Once we decided on the final colours I have stuck them down onto one piece of paper and take this with me everywhere so that I can match the colours in. It is kind of like my own version of a pantone shade card type thing. It has worked really well so far and my florist LOVES it! haha!

It really helped to get our thoughts onto a piece of paper in that way rather than just having loads of pictures on pintrest or googling.

Pink was always going to feature as it's my favourite colour. I originally liked a fucia pink and bold green, then I liked a pale pink with hessian table runners, then I found a venue that has lots of grey tones so wanted rose pink and whilst looking for bridesmaid dresses I found the perfect ones but they only do then in mint so my colours are currently rose pink and mint!

I would say don't get hung up on the colour scheme unless you want to have a purple wedding where everything is the same shade of purple, some people really love that kind of look but we don't gave to do weddings like that any more!

For me the flowers were important and I love the pink and coral bouquets but hated the pink and coral bm dresses so opted for Navy which I hope will make me in Ivory lace and the flowers more of the focus, my invites and decor again will be mainly ivory colours with lace and pearls running throughout so the flowers and the Barn itself stand out.

Hi

I'm thinking of using coral and navy too. Was originally going for all coral but I think the contrast works really well. What else will you be having navy apart from the bridesmaid dresses if you don't mind me asking? What about the chair sashes?