Will you marry me? I imagine after hearing those words (providing they came from someone I actually wanted to marry of course) I’ll cry, grin massively, hug tightly, and kiss heavily, question-asker and then my brain would be filled with ideas of wedding venues and wedding colours and what kind of dress should I wear!
When (or if, but I prefer when) it happens I’m going to try and not start planning the wedding that very night. It would be nice to just enjoy the moment. But, of course, at some point there will be a wedding to plan. At some point all the newly-engaged have a wedding to plan. Even if you enlist the help of a wedding planner it is likely you will want input into your important day and so today’s post is going to try and tackle that crucial issue… the wedding theme.
Colourful
Colour is one of the easier themes to pull off. Just pick your wedding colours and match your details to it! You don’t need to stick to just one colour there are many colours that go beautifully together. You can have any combinations you like such as lemon and grey (a particular favourite of mine), red and aqua, orange and purple, navy and yellow, black and hot pink (see Monday’s wedding for inspiration with this one)…
Awesome image courtesy of Victor Sizemore
If you’re stuck for colour inspiration head to your local hardware store and visit the paint chip section, pick loads of paint chips that you like, take them home and play match up. You could end up finding a beautiful colour combo that you’ve never even seen before.
To add a bit of interest to a colour theme you can also use different shades of a colour. When you’ve selected your colours you can use paint chips again to give to your bridesmaids. These cards feature a range of shades of a colour and by allowing the bridesmaid to choose her own dress in one of these shades you will achieve several things: added interest with a range of shades & styles of bridesmaid dresses, happy bridesmaids being in a dress they feel comfortable in and will most likely wear again, uber-modern wedding by not sticking to the one-maid-in-same-dress rule!
Awesome images courtesy of Austin Gros
Vintage pretty
Vintage is big! There are numerous companies out there to help you with a vintage big day if that’s what you decide on. First up would be to decide what type of vintage wedding is for you; deciding on a particular era will make planning your day much easier. You could go for a 1920s wedding with a drop-waisted dress, vintage mismatched china (hired, borrowed, or found in flea markets) with a gramophone in the corner playing jazz classics. Or maybe a fifties wedding wearing a tea-length dress and coloured petticoat, turning up in a Cadillac and feasting on diner grub is the wedding for you?
Awesome image courtesy of Ben Blood
Location, location, location
Where your wedding is taking place can influence your wedding decor. If you decide that your venue is beside the seaside then a beach-themed wedding would be perfect; sea shells and buckets filled with flowers for table centres, perhaps a stick of rock as a wedding favour. A wedding in a barn will work nicely with a rustic theme; you could serve up sweet and savoury pies rather than a fancy wedding cake, have burlap table runners and guests sitting on hay stacks! Likewise, a stately home venue would work well with a vintage or traditional theme: floral candelabras, crisp table linens and an intricately iced cake.
Awesome images courtesy of Mathieu Photography
Seasonal start
The season you are marrying in can be a good place to start with your theme. Different seasons lend themselves to different colours; spring and summer weddings suit bright, fresh hues whilst autumn fits more rustic hues with oranges, reds and browns coming to mind. Winter weddings work really well with Christmas colours such as red or gold or going for something completely white with a bit of sparkle thrown in. The season can stretch to more than just the colours of your wedding though. Spring and summer weddings, for example, work well with an English tea party as the reception; you could serve up Pimms & scones! An autumn wedding would be gorgeous in a barn with cosy candle light and spiced hot cider. A winter wedding could have mulled wine, gingerbread favours and a Christmas tree in the corner!
Awesome image courtesy of Corbin Gurkin
Personalised
A theme I’m a particular fan of is a personalised one. Think about you and your partner, what you like, perhaps even what brought you together as a couple. A love of music would be fantastically expressed with vinyl wedding stationery, album covers as table numbers and a mix CD for wedding favours. You could theme it around a particular country where you holidayed or you could base it around your first date: even serve up the meal you ate that night. Photographs can feature heavily in a personalised wedding; string up photos of your romance around the venue, have a big portrait of the two of you printed with a border big enough for guests to sign in, you can even use different photos as table numbers. A theme that is personalised will be exciting for your guests as they’ll get a real insight into your relationship on a day that is, quite rightly, all about you!
Awesome images courtesy of Sarah Yates
Research but relax
When you’ve picked a theme a little research will help massively. Perhaps research is a bad word reminding you of seeking out info for essays at school but his is fun research, for pretty things, so enjoy it! There are tons of wedding blogs out there that, most likely, will be featuring a wedding in the theme of your choice. Whilst you could just go ahead and design your entire wedding around one it’s nicer to simply take inspiration, change a few things and make it your own. You don’t just need to see existing weddings though. Why not put your theme into Google images (I know there are other search engines but I’m a Google girl!) and see what it comes up with, it could offer up something unusual that you’d never thought of that would work really well. If you’re going for an era-based wedding the internet will be home to countless articles on the era of your choice that you can use to incorporate ideas into your big day.
Awesome images courtesy of a Google image search for ‘red aqua wedding inspiration’
Sans theme
Of course, you don’t even have to have a theme at all! Themes are great to help you easily tie a look together but I’ve seen some great weddings that didn’t have any theme in particular; the bride and groom had just picked what they liked and it still works as it’s what the bride and groom liked which, at the end of the day, is the most important thing to accomplish with a wedding.
Similarly, there are no rules. If you want a 1920s wedding with a 1950s styled dress or an entirely yellow and blue wedding with a stand-out pink cake then do it!
As long as you and your partner are happy that’s all that matters. You could theme your wedding around dinosaurs or hamburgers if you like. True, the mother-in-law may frown upon dinosaurs or hamburgers but it does not matter. All that matters is that whatever you decide, theme or no theme, it is the wedding of your dreams.
Debs
P.S. Out of interest, after writing that last paragraph, I decided to Google ‘dinosaur wedding’ and found this! How awesome is that cake?!
