Wedding Color Trends for 2012

I’ve been away for a little bit with lots of spring wedding invitation jobs but it’s time to get to it.  It’s official: the new Pantone wedding color for 2012 is Tangerine Tango, a bright and fun shade of orange. Though orange may strike many as an unusual shade for weddings, there are many fun and cool ways to incorporate this shade into your wedding palette.

 

Curious about what to pair with tangerine? No problem. This shade is far more versatile than you would think.  One of the most popular pairings this coming year is tangerine and aqua; the contrast between warm and cool shades can offer a great balance together, especially when on a neutral backdrop like white, ivory or cream.

Aisle Say! Wedding Paper’s Serendipity invitation

Of course tone and shade play a role too; taking a super bright shade like tangerine and pairing it with an equally bright shade of aqua like cerulean or a darker turquoise can be overwhelming to the eye. If used sparingly however, bright pops of intense color can liven up your wedding decor. Try bringing a touch of  color in accents like flowers or jewelry.

 

If aqua is not necessarily your color, try pairing tangerine with other warm colors, like yellows, fuchsias and pinks or browns. For contrast, add in shades of fresh lemongrass green, navy, or purples. Take inspiration from this Pantone color board.

 

You can also keep it simple with tangerine as a single color.

Aisle Say! Wedding Paper’s Country Charm invitation

Any way you choose to use it, Tangerine Tango will bring warmth and vibrancy to any wedding celebration!

2012 Wedding Colors ~~ Winter Weddings 101

Maybe you weren’t quick enough to lock in a June wedding date, or maybe you just want to do something a little different from the rest of the pack. The colors of winter are deeper and richer, allowing you greater latitude than spring and summer brides, who traditionally stick with tried and true pastels. Here are a passel of winter themes and ideas to help you plan a spectacular winter wedding, starting with holiday themes and spanning through the most romantic of holidays—St. Valentine’s Day.
Winter weddings lend themselves to sparkle and glitz against rich, jewel-toned colors. Wedding invitations imprinted inside holiday or winter greeting cards present an alternative to the usual ivory engraved wedding invitations. You can serve non-traditional beverages such as hot mulled cider, hot buttered rum, etc., and you can probably get a discount on your favorite venue for any date except a Christmas week wedding if you reserve six to eight months in advance.

Christmas wedding
Add your Christmas wedding to next year’s Christmas calendar now to ensure that the busiest holiday schedule replete with festivities can accommodate your holiday wedding. Plan your wedding around silver, gold, ruby, emerald, amethyst, and sapphire—the jewel tones. Use rich fabrics such as velvet, satin and silk. Add brocade bows for a festive touch.

Set the mood for a Christmas wedding reception
Select a wedding hall with large gold mirrors, a fireplace and a wide curved staircase. The entire venue will glisten with holiday decorations, and the decorations will complement your own decorations.

Christmas wedding bouquet and floral displays
Give poinsettias and amaryllis the spotlight during your Christmas wedding and reception. Add white roses, gardenias, and lilies as accents, and fill in with eucalyptus, pine cones, holly, evergreen and nandina. Surround your guests with the scent of eucalyptus and pine. Small poinsettias surrounded by pine branches sprayed with snow as table centerpieces encourage your guests to talk to one another without having to lean around the centerpiece.

Christmas wedding favor ideas
• Gold or silver bell with an emerald satin ribbon
• Miniature silver salt and pepper shakers
• Gold heart-shaped basket with Christmas potpourri
• Miniature gold or silvers bells – guests can hang these on their Christmas trees at home
• One gold and one silver candy cane tied together with one green and one red intertwined ribbon.

Winter Wonderland wedding
If you prefer a non-religious wedding theme, the winter wonderland theme offers some of the options of the Christmas theme and introduces new options into the mix. Silver, sky blue and white simulate a cold, snowy winter day and offer many options for accent colors. If your wedding is an evening ceremony, consider a color scheme of midnight blue with gold accents to simulate the clear night sky and twinkling stars.

 

Winter Wonderland wedding bouquet and floral displays
Replace the traditional floral display for the reception buffet table with an ice sculpture surrounded by pine branches with pinecones and evergreen branches with berries. Spray the pinecones gold or silver and add a huge gold or silver metallic bow. Use winter foliage and branches in place of delicate baby’s breath for greenery, and use masses of large, white flowers such as amaryllis tinged with yellow, pure white lilies with a hint of yellow center and white hydrangeas. Oversized white flowers with a touch of accent color work particularly well against a backdrop of winter branches and foliage. As an alternative to floral centerpieces, small sleigh ice sculptures amid winter branches, foliage and snow add seasonal authenticity to your reception tables. Huge white magnolia blossoms floating in water in crystal bowls offer yet another dramatic alternative. Magnolia leaves painted with gold paint add to the drama.

Winter Wonderland wedding favor ideas
• Crystal bell
• Star-shaped white tealight candles
• Miniature silver champagne bucket filled with candies
• Antique miniature boxes filled with pine-scented potpourri

Valentine’s Day wedding
If you’re getting married on the most romantic day of the year, your wedding calls for a red and white color scheme: roses, roses, and more roses everywhere! You can play up the hearts theme in a number of ways from a stacked heart-shaped cake to heart-shaped tealight candles adding a twinkle to the centerpieces. Anything heart-shaped or red and white add to the overall ambience of a wedding on this special day. Wear a Swarovski Austrian heart crystal around your neck, and top your bridal gown with a white shawl fringed in simulated white fur to complete your bridal ensemble.

Valentine’s Day wedding bouquet and floral displays
Bi-colored red and white roses with either color as the predominant color add variety to the bridal bouquet and floral arrangements. Complement the variegated look of the bi-colored roses with variegated greenery. If you use other flowers, you’ll want to make sure that they are a true red, not the orange-red that’s more common in flowers. Consider small arrangements of clear and red crystal roses in crystal vases with crystal marbles as your table centerpieces.

Valentine’s Day wedding favor ideas
• Antique silver heart keepsake box
• Chocolate kisses in a red or white mesh bag, tied with a red ribbon.
• White chocolate truffles
• Heart-shaped ornament – your guests can use it on the Christmas tree next year
• Single long-stemmed red rose.
Winter offers many opportunities for unusual wedding ideas. There are few opportunities to attend formal occasions between the New Year and Valentine’s Day. If you’re having trouble setting a winter date, consider setting your date during the winter lull. Your guests will remember the highlight of the winter season for many years to come—and so will you.

 

2012 Color Series – January Wedding

As we ring in each new year, we also invite a host of new trends. Wanting your wedding to be the perfect day, with the latest trends in wedding colors is only natural. How can you make sure that you know what is the hottest new look is for your dream wedding. When you decide on your wedding, you must make a choice to the type of season. Making the choice of season will determine what color palette you will use.

Although spring and early summer are more popular times for weddings, there are many advantages to a winter wedding, especially in January. Since that month is after the winter holidays, and before what is considered the rush of the bridal “season,” you may find the venue of your choice more available and have your pick of dates and times. You also have a wonderful variety of themes to choose from that work well with a wedding taking place in this month, no matter what climate you are in.

JanuaryLight Sophisticated Palete

January Wedding Colors

 Dark, elegant colors are perfect for bridesmaids in January.

A January wedding works well with many colors. Any shade of blue, silver, and white are gorgeous choices for a winter wedding in this month. Although pastel shades are largely reserved for spring weddings, several pastel shades, such as ice blue or baby blue, lavender, or dusty rose are perfect “icy” options. Rich, deep, elegant colors such as the following also work well for a January or winter wedding:

• Navy
• Midnight Blue
• Plum
• Burgundy
• Garnet
• Emerald
• Hunter Green
• Gold
• Deep Aqua/Turquoise

Khaki Pink and Sage

Black and White Weddings
Wonderfully elegant, a black and white wedding can be an excellent choice for a January wedding. Black and white can add class and drama to any wedding. To add a bit more depth to the color scheme, choose to accents of red or burgundy to go with the black and white motif; or, for a modern feel, choose pink or chartreuse accents. For another twist, couples may choose a rich chocolate or deep brown and ivory or cream.

French Black and White Classic

Color Trends and Choosing Your 2012 Colors

Choosing your wedding colors is key to the rest of the details for your wedding. Your colors will dictate your invitation style, your flowers, and even your centerpieces and other minor decorations for your big day. If you want to have a truly fashionable wedding, you need to stay on top of wedding color trends that are coming in for 2012 weddings.

As is usually the case, there are all sorts of trends coming around right now. Some are for fun, funky weddings, often with a beach or getaway theme even if they aren’t actual destination weddings. Others are toned down and have a more sophisticated feel. Depending on the look you want to create with your wedding, there are trendy colors out there to help you do it.

Fun and Funky Colors

Some of the hottest new colors for 2012 weddings are, well, hot. Bright, bold, saturated tones are really in right now. Look for colors like hot pink, bright orange, and Kelly green as you’re planning your wedding. You can often balance the visual impact of these choices with deep jewel tones, such as purple, navy, and even the chocolate brown that has been and will remain popular. Of course, one of the best ways to make your colors look fun and funky is to pair up colors that don’t necessarily ‘go’ together. Try hot pink and navy or turquoise and purple for an interesting pop.

Sophisticated Colors

For brides who want a more sophisticated and elegant feel, the colors are dusty and almost a bit old-fashioned. Think dusty pear green, light tangerine, light aqua, and gold. These colors can be paired with interesting new accent colors like grey, chestnut, and beige. Colors like these tend to work well with traditional wedding colors like ivory and can add an interesting element to invitations and decorations.

Pairing Colors

One of the latest and greatest trends for wedding colors is, again, the pairing of colors you wouldn’t normally think of together. In 2009 and 2010, this took the form of chocolate brown or black paired with bright jewel tones, turquoises, and pinks. This trend of dark and light colors together won’t be going away in 2011 or 2012.

Time for a new monthly series on wedding colors by the month….. see you back here for those!!

Bridal Shower Invitation Etiquette

Lately, I’ve been asked about Save the Dates and Bridal Shower Invitation frequently and thought I’d put a little information about etiquette on both.  I found this great article and thought I would re-post it because it was so interesting.

Are you hosting a bridal shower and wondering about the do’s and don’ts in bridal shower invitation etiquette?  After scanning dozens more articles than showers I will ever attend, I’ve compiled a list of top hints on the subject.  Hope it helps!

The most important data elements to include on a bridal shower invitation are of course the date, time, location, and any special instructions such as a bridal shower theme or specific planned activity.  As many guests will likely have a GPS or access to online directions, including driving directions is not as critical as in the past.  But if you do not include them be sure to include the exact street address of the chosen shower location.

Who to invite?  Couples bridal showers are becoming quite popular.  But for a traditional female-only bridal shower, you do not need to invite every female wedding guest to the bridal shower.  Guests usually include relatives and close friends of the bride and groom, and occasionally close work colleagues.  All shower invitees should also be invited to the wedding. If there is someone close to the bride who you know won’t be able to attend, do still send her an invitation – a close friend will see this as a welcome gesture rather than a solicitation for gifts!

OK to include registry details?  Let’s face it; the point of a bridal shower is to shower the bride with gifts to start her married life. To that end, it is perfectly appropriate to include the bride’s registry information on the invitation.  I researched this point quite a bit and while a few sources preferred not to include this info, the majority agreed it was perfectly appropriate (but NOT on the wedding invitation).

When to send?  Send invitations between four and six weeks before the event, particularly if it’s during those busy summer months.  If multiple people are hosting the shower, ask guests to RSVP to a single person for easier attendance tracking.

And finally, remember to reserve an invitation for the bride herself, it will be a great keepsake for her wedding album!

It’s Theme Time Again!! – The Halloween Wedding

What could possibly be more fun than planning a Halloween themed wedding? Keep in mind that a Halloween themed wedding does not have to be held on Halloween. You can have the ceremony the weekend before or the weekend after. The best thing about planning a spooktacular wedding is all the fun choices available for planning your wedding. Here are just a few fun tips for getting you Halloween wedding planning started.

• First decide how far you want to go with the Halloween theme. You can either go all out with all the Halloween trimmings, such as jack-o’-lanterns, bubbling cauldrons and costumes or you can have an elegant Harvest wedding with beautiful fall colors, pumpkin, gourds and leafy décor.

• Selecting your color scheme allows for many choices. Of course black and orange is one choice but you can also use red, yellow, copper or green, the options are endless. Have your groom and his attendants wear black tuxedos with tails to add mystery to their attire. Your bridesmaids can wear black and carry blood red roses for their bouquets. Brides should look for gothic style wedding dress with long flowing sleeves and tight bodices.

• For a dramatic Halloween centerpiece you could use wrought iron candelabras or Black Mini Lantern Tea Light Candle Holders with small gourds and pumpkins around the base. If you want to keep the mood truly Halloween add spider weds with plastic spiders to your centerpieces. Pumpkins are my favorite and they are very versatile. Buy some small pumpkins and stencils and carve your table numbers into the pumpkins.

• Everyone associates Halloween with candy, so a candy buffet is a must. Use all the fun candies of the season such as candy corn and taffy. You could also include caramel apples and sugar cookie cut-outs shaped as ghost and pumpkins. Don’t forget to add dry ice to the punch bowl to add the bubbling cauldron effect.

• Now it’s time to get into your scary groove. Have your DJ play plenty of fun Halloween songs through-out the evening like Monster Mash and Thriller. The sound track from the movie The Nightmare before Christmas also has some great music for a Halloween themed wedding.

Halloween is the holiday that allows us to be anything we want to be, so make you Halloween themed wedding the wedding of a lifetime. A Halloween wedding is a wedding that won’t soon be forgotten.

Pros + Cons to Wedding Programs

Deciding on a whether or not to include a wedding program in the items you give your guests?  Here is a list of pros and cons to this stationery piece to help you choose whether this is an extra something nice to have but that you can skip or something you really should include in the budget.

Pros to Having a Wedding Program

*If you are having a ceremony that incorporates a lot of religious or cultural traditions (such as Catholic, Jewish, Hindu, etc) that many of your guests may not be familiar with, having a program that outlines the ceremony, lets guests know when to stand, kneel, respond back to readings, etc is super helpful for allowing guests to follow along and not feel awkwardly out of place or embarrassed that they aren’t familiar with a certain aspect of your ceremony.  Your Catholic ceremony may seem common sense to you, but to someone who has never stepped foot in a liturgical church, it can be pretty foreign.

*Wedding programs allow you to honor your bridal party and other attendants by showing off their names and wedding roles in print.

*The programs can also multitask stylishly.  If your reception venue is at a different location than your ceremony site, directions and a map can be included on one of the pages for the guests who inevitably forget to bring the original reception card from the wedding invitation.

*Wedding programs give your guests something to do with their hands during the ceremony.  Granted, this should not be your top concern, but there is definitely a psychological plus to having something to hold or fidget with, especially with the emotion and sometimes nervous energy that can accompany weddings.

Cons to Having a Wedding Program

*The cost can be significantly higher than your wedding invitations depending on what you need to include and how many pages that information will take up.  This may be an area that you can skip and funnel those dollars into another portion of your budget.

*While some of your guests will keep the wedding programs for all of eternity (come on now, I know I am not the only one who does this), many will get tossed by the end of the night.  Weddings can produce a great deal of waste, and if your ceremony is straightforward and doesn’t require guest participation or unfamiliar elements, you may opt to offer them a welcome glass of Prosecco as they take their seats instead.

Tips for Having a Wedding Program

*Include all pertinent information your guests should know: ceremony outline, when they should respond to a reading, specific practices regarding communion or other religious rites (is it open to everybody? just church members? etc), when they should stand, sit, kneel, and so on and so forth.

*Plan for one program per couple and one per single guest.  This will help stretch your budget a bit, reduce waste, and most people don’t mind sharing.  Be sure to let your hostesses or ushers know about these numbers so that they don’t hand one to everybody and run out towards the end.

*Have your wedding coordinator set a program on the seats of family members who may be included in the processional, such as mothers, grandmothers, other honored guests, etc before the ceremony begins.  This ensures that they have the program for the ceremony, but they don’t have to worry about carrying it and it isn’t visible in any photos of them coming down the aisle.

Are you including a ceremony program in your wedding?  Why or why not?