Wedding Blog
Washington, DC is a magical place when its cherry blossoms are in bloom. Every year at the end of March or beginning of April, just when winter has ended and we’re feeling most desperate for spring, this ordinarily somber city comes alive for one precious week, maybe two.
So when I started to think about planning our wedding, I immediately thought of a cherry blossom theme in hope of capturing some of that magic.
We actually began casual wedding planning a few months before the official engagement, so we couldn’t begin with the normal activities like finding a venue. Instead I turned to the most natural activity for a shop-a-holic … shopping! Knowing that I would eventually make our invitations, and that those invitations would need paper, I became obsessed with paper options and immediately started sending away for paper samples. This fabulous cherry blossom paper from The Paper Studio turned out to be the winner in the decorative paper department:
(Snow & Graham Chinois Cherry Wrapping Paper Sheet, 20 x 30″; $2.75/sheet; full S&G line also available at Luxe Paperie)
I also knew that I wanted pocket-fold folders for the invitations. Cards and Pockets was having a sale of a discontinued style for around 75 cents each, and I was in!
(The Retangolo, a similar style from Cards & Pockets; $1.00 each)
I ordered samples of all the sale colors and let Mr. T choose which folder he liked best in conjunction with the cherry blossom paper (which he also helped to choose). He’s a fan of blue, so blue it was. But red and blue seemed a bit … Independence Day … so it evolved slightly to red and turquoise. The invites are close enough. (And the cherry blossom idea also wound up evolving, but again — the invites are close enough!)
And there you have it (drumroll, please): Red and Turquoise!! I’d like to say it was a thoughtful process involving specially designed color-schemes or colors I’ve dreamed of my whole life or whatever, but … not so much.
How about you? How did you (or will you) choose the color scheme for your wedding??
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Share this post: How We Chose Our Wedding Colors
For the bridesmaid dresses, I couldn’t do pink red or orange because it would blend too much with the pink granite where we took our pics. And I couldn’t do green or brown because it would blend with the trees and grass of our reception. And black wouldn’t show up in our candlelit chapel. Yellow doesn’t look good on many people. So it was purple or blue. And who really goes for purple any more? So it was blue (peacock really) by process of elimination. Add coral because I love it, and gold because it’s rich, and there you go!
Miss Tulip, have you seen Mrs. Lime’s colors? She did an amazing job incorporating that same Red & Aqua color scheme. I almost went with those same colors myself, but got lured into a Orange, Fuchsia, and Chartreuse frenzy.
I love how you picked your colors. Turquoise and red go together great. Very pretty.
Our colors come straight from the robe of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. For our website we took an image of HHDL and picked areas of pixels off his clothes to get a match and have stuck with those codes for our digital designs. IRL choices have been basically saffron, merlot, and royal blue.
I couldn’t decide! I was fortunate that my location lent itself to a bright and and happy color scheme. I just couldn’t see picking a color scheme of one or two colors, so I chose all of my favorites and used them together (there are currenlty pictures on my blog). I think it is important to be consitent in what you use, but I also feel that no colors are off limits. Too often I have brides who love a color but choose not to use it because it doesn’t totally work with their theme or location. If you love pink, you should have pink! If you love orange, you should have orange. I live by the rule that if you always use what you love, it will always come together amazingly!
I’m just in the beginning stages of planning, but my fiancee and I have naturally gravitated toward a beautiful mango color that I saw in a bouquet of mango colored calla lillies. The book I’ve been obsessed with (and where I saw the bouquet) is ‘Simple Stunning Weddings’; it’s full of amazing, stylish ideas, and realistic on the budget! What a coincidence that we both love mangoes too (and we got engaged in Maui- delicious mangoes, and I’m from Peru- world renowned mangoes!).
What to coordinate the mango color with… i don’t know yet, probably something neutral!? I’m going for a modern, sophisticated tropical look, but not too tropical if you know what I mean, nothing cliche!
My engagement ring actually has a Peruvian Opal in it which is this amazing light blue color, so that might just look absolutely perfect with the mango. There it is: Peruvian Mango and Peruvian Opal Blue!
OMG!!! I found those same envelope for like 1.50 each from My Gatsby… I AM SOOOOO HAPPY you put those on here! Now I can save like $75 on my invitations! OMG THANK YOU!
My color scheme was dictated by the bridesmaid dresses I picked (well, my sis found it, thank goodness!). I originally thought I wanted deep burnt oranges and coppers…now looking back, soooo cliche for a fall wedding! Then we found THE dress for the girls, but it didn’t come in any of those colors. But we both loved the dress so much that we worked with the available colors, and voila. Now my color scheme is very deep, with a deep eggplant/plum for the girls’ dresses, and splashes of magenta and apple green.
Turquoise & Red are such a great couple! They’re fabulous together. (just ask mrs. lime!) 
and I second the fabulous-ness of cherry blossoms. we were very swayed by them..(& still are). i love that paper!! can’t wait to see how your pocketfolds come out!
We were going to do the Red and Aqua but we just recently decided that were going to get married here in LA. So I let her pick the colors and she chose Black Cherry and Cream.
We are lazy. Basically our “colors” are our favorite colors. Well, my favorite colors. Black and red are my favorite colors. But, I didn’t want bright red, so technically our colors are burgundy and black with ivory and silver elements.
whoooooo! i’m doing aqua and red too! congrats on picking out a great color scheme!
[...] we had colors for the wedding, I tried creating a mood board. Sadly it’s nothing I can share here, as it’s a [...]
There was a great spread in a recent wedding magazine….Martha Stewart I think about hat color combo. I can’t wait to see pictures of everything!
Paper shopping is so much fun. And it’s a great way to see what colors look good together.
We didn’t really choose…it just sort of fell into place when we had to make decisions. Red flowers…sure. Green dresses…they look nice etc.
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Mrs. Tulip, DC
Age and Occupation: 36, Retired
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 33, Counsel/DOO for Small Gov't Contractor
Engagement Date: August 8, 2007
Wedding Date: March, 2008
Venue: Still Looking!
About Me: In all my dreams of the man I'd someday marry, I never pictured anyone as perfect for me as Mr. Tulip. So now we just have to make it through the craziness of the wedding and the moving in together! I love crafts, sewing, jewelry making, and photography, so am looking forward to this chance for DIY fun. When not wedding planning, I'm playing with our dog and 4 cats, Ebay shopping, or watching too much TV (often simultaneously!).
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