Weddingbee Blog

Alternate title: How we picked our date

When I was younger, all the way up until just before Mr. Aardvark and I got engaged, I had always imagined a fall wedding. The rich jewel tones are romantic and bold and whimsical without being too feminine and frilly. Don’t get me wrong, I love pastels, and pink in all (OKmost) of its shades, but that was just not what I wanted for our wedding.

Photo from via Buckley Photography on The Knot

Photo from Rodney Baily on The Knot

 Images like these filled my imagination. Not to mention the potential for swirling leaves! Michigan puts on quite a color show in the autumn months.

Photo by Jason Martinez

How dreamy is that!? However, it was not to be. You see, Mr. Aardvark popped the question on May 28th. and the Catholic church requires a minimum of six months in order to prepare for marriage. So, lets count: June, July, August, September, October, November. While technically November is still fall, it is not pretty fall like the pictures above, it is a cold, grey fall. Plus the holiday season would add another whole planning dimension that I was not ready for. And no, waiting a for the next fall to roll around was just not an option. We were (are) ready to make this thing official now!

So it was back to the calendar for me. Summer was not an option due to the fact that I work in the bicycle industry (as does my father). It is the most hectic time of the year and taking a few weeks off to do something like “get married” just wasn’t in the cards. Plus its hot. Neither Mr. A nor I do very well in the heat.

Fall is out. Summer is out. That leaves winter or spring. About half of winter is out because of the afore mentioned holiday season. Also, you know, the weather. I love snow. Mr. A loves snow. But we were not willing to risk losing large chunks of our guest list due to impassible snow covered roads.

So, spring it was. The earlier the better due to the whole “bike industry busy season”-deal. Being Catholic, we can’t marry during Lent, so we booked the first available post-Easter date. Easy peasy! (Plus free flowers in the church! SCORE!) This also happens to be Mr. Aardvark’s brother’s and sister-in-law’s anniversary. They were more than happy to share!

Now that we had a season it was back to colors. Since I wanted to avoid pastels, I had to think outside the box a bit. I was this close to choosing light blue and red:

Photo from Marisa Holms on The Knot

But then I found something I loved even more!

Photo from Weddingbee Classifieds

NAVY & LEAF GREEN! I adore this combination! The navy is serious and sophisticated. The green is bright and playful! and together they are Magic! AND, they lend themselves nicely to small pops of other colors!

Personal image

This is our color board. Yes, we may have gotten a bit color-crazy… but I wanted to account for most of the colors that would actually show up. The yellow, poppy, light blue and pink are pretty much exclusively for flowers. The grey and brown are for the guys’ suits and shoes. The main players as still the navy and green.

What do you think? Too many colors? Did you use the seasons to dictate your palette?