Why Your Wedding Color Palette Matters and How to Create One
Whenever you think of what makes a wedding beautiful you probably think of things like the venue, wedding attire, and florals. However one often overlooked influence on the look of your wedding is the color palette. The color palette of a wedding plays into every visual aspect of a wedding, influencing guests hearts and emotions just as much as their eyes. It sets the tone and mood of your wedding from the second you step into the venue, and having cohesion in color throughout your day keeps your guests immersed in the dream wedding that you’ve crafted.
I truly believe that figuring out a wedding color palette should be one of the first steps in the planning process because of how much it influences almost every other aspect of a wedding. So I know what you’re probably thinking, how do you create a wedding color palette?
1. What’s the tone/theme?
Well first things first lets start big picture, what’s the theme and tone of your wedding? Is it high class and elegant? Cozy and intimate? Fun and wild? The theme and tone of your wedding will usually point you in a general direction of what your color palette should be. Below I’ve listen common tones of weddings and matching color themes to help give you some ideas.
Cozy and intimate - greens, browns, oranges, warm tones
high class and elegant - white, black, rose gold, minimalist
fun and wild - red, blue, green, vibrant colors
dreamy - pink, green, white, pastel colors
bohemian - creme, yellow, teal, light colors
garden - green, orange, purple, pink
traditional - white, gold, navy, black
romantic - pink, ivory, lavender, green
For this example I’m going to go with cozy and intimate, so I’ll be looking at primarily greens, browns, oranges, and warm tones overall
2. create a moodboard
I am a huge proponent in creating moodboards when making any visual or creative decisions because it helps you be inspired by other people’s work and lets you pick your favorite ideas from a variety of sources.
So what you’re going to want to do is go on pinterest and you’re going to make 3 searches:
“(your wedding theme) wedding”
“(your wedding theme) wedding graphic design
“(your wedding theme) color palette”
Scroll through all of these searches and whatever images stand out to you, copy and paste them onto a powerpoint slide. Keep finding images that you love until you have about 15-20 on your slide. Now you have your color palette moodboard!
Here's my moodboard after searching with the keywords "cozy" and "intimate". Already you can start to see where the color palette is heading.
3. Create your color palette
Now that you have your color palette moodboard it’s time for you to create your very own color palette. Feel free to take your time on this step and play around with it for a few days or weeks because it is a very big choice.
Go to https://coolors.co/ (you can just create a free account) and start a new color board. On this new color board you can press the space bar and it’ll generate matching colors for you, depending on what colors are already on the board. You can also upload images to pull the color from an image (which you have a bunch of from your moodboard).
Once you have each color that you want to go with just click the lock icon on each color and it’ll keep the color from changing when you click the space bar.
I usually recommend starting with a neutral color or main color that you want to be the primary color at your wedding and locking it first, then experimenting with colors that match it from the moodboard as well as generated colors.
Here's my final color palette!
Now you have your wedding color palette!
Congrats! You’ve now made your very own wedding color palette, be sure to note down all the hex code numbers or take a screenshot with all the colors so you don’t lose them. While looking for vendors for decor, and even your photographer and videographer, mention that you have a color palette selected and that will help them incorporate or compliment those colors.
Looking for a wedding videographer?
Speaking of wedding videographers, if you’re looking for a videographer to capture your wedding day, I would love to talk with you!
I’m Jason and I’m a wedding videographer in Salt Lake City, UT (I do travel) who specializes in vintage filmic wedding films. My goal with every wedding film is to capture all of the emotion and nostalgia of your day and turn it into a beautiful cinematic film that tells your story. Feel free to check out some of the films on and learn more about me and my process on this website!
Feel free to checkout one of my films below as well as reach out with the contact form!
Fill out the form below to reach out and I’ll get back to you within an hour or two!
