Oh Purple...

When planning your wedding, color palette is going to come up a lot! In fact, it completely dictates your entire wedding aesthetic from the flowers, to your maids dress, all the way to the invitation and Save-the-Dates.

But why isn’t purple chosen more often? It’s pretty. It’s what all girls grew up wearing in various tones while our grandmothers, Aunts, and mothers dressed us. So what is it about purple that brides don’t love?

I have two reasons why I think couples shy away from purple. One, purple is like gray. There are so many varied undertones that can completely change the appearance to the naked eye making it a challenging color to match. Finding the right warm or cool undertones, and looking for those complementary colors can be challenging. You can have the exact same color painted on a swatch and place them in two separate lighting situations and they can completely change. This can be challenging to relay through an entire event. Two, purple isn’t the easiest to photograph. Go ahead, check out your favorite photographers Instagram page, scroll until you stop on a photo where the dominating color is purple…you’re going to be scrolling for awhile. Lighting plays a huge role in the allowing the actual true color purple to be seen in a lens and through a photograph.

Last year in October creating with purple was a nice refresh. It challenged me. What I realized was that even though it is not a popular color, it sure is pretty.

Here are some photos of an A La Carte wedding I created, growing all flowers except the carnations used. It was lovely and one that I will always look back on and have fond memories of. Bridging colors is my forte and I was able to bridge light lavender and bright fuchsia together using intentionally chosen ingredients such as the pansies, the brown lisianthus, and the varied shades of Dara.

So, what should you do if you want to use purple at your event? Finding a good team! You wedding planner, invitation designer, florist, linen maker, and rental companies need to know color! Not just eyeballing it, they really need to know color theory and how color works. Additionally, finding a photographer who has photographed purple before or isn’t shy to shoot purple is going to be important. Another note on photography. Be aware that ALL photographers edit their photos! You will never get raw photos. Doing your homework on their editing preferences, filter usage and lighting can really determine if they will be able to capture a true purple or if they will cover it up with unnatural editing.

All photos were taken and edited by me. I do not use a filter, ever! Because I am a farmer and a florist it is my job to relay the true colors of what the flowers are, here I edited to make the colors more true to the naked eye instead of from behind a lens.

Tell me, would you ever consider incorporating purple into your wedding color palette?