Color Inspiration Board

Here are some pics that inspired my color scheme. I found these using a website I learned about on one of the many wedding blogs I follow --I can't remember which one at the moment :( . The site is by idee labs (click here to visit it!) You can pick a combination of colors and the site will search flicker and alamy to find pictures that match those colors. Cool!

The Venue -- Part 1

One of the hardest decisions thus far has been choosing the venue for our wedding. We have been to many weddings in the last couple of years... most have been destination. While we love traveling, at times, the destination theme has been a bit financially draining. When it came time to choose our venue one thing we did not want was to plan an elaborate destination that would cost our friends and family to be with us. We did, however, want to have the wedding outside of our city proper. Luckily, we live in beautiful Colorado, so we didn't think this would be much of a challenge.

We figured that in the summer the ski resorts (Vail, Beaver Creek, Winter Park etc...) would offer a great place for our pending nuptials. Guess everyone else figured that too because the price tag on these wonderful towns was completely out of our budget for the number of guests we will have. At one resort (I won't mention any names) we were thrilled to find that we actually could afford to get married on the top of the mountain and have a great Saturday evening reception!! As I spoke to their event coordinator I was in complete shock that we could actually do this until she mentioned at the end of the convo one little fee that we should consider. "You'll need to know that you'll have to pay to run the gondola for the event. It's just a little fee -- $900 per hour -- and it's a minimum of 6 hours." (what?!? you've gotta be kidding me. I knew it was too good to be true. For our event that would be over $5000. A third of our entire budget first of all, and I can think of a million things I'd rather spend five grand on rather than a gondola --letterpress anyone?).

So, whereas the ski resorts are beautiful and I'm insanely jealous of all the brides that can come up with the dough to host their events on the mountain, for this CO couple we had to get creative. Enter Taos...

Colors!

I have been through about 4 or 5 variations of colors and themes for our wedding. I keep changing my mind! Our event will take place at a wonderful spa/resort in New Mexico (I'll tell you how we picked it in another post). I really want to keep costs down by picking colors that work with the venue. However, this is not such an easy process!

At first I wanted to have blues-- all shades of blue -- with blue dresses, blue and white hydrangeas dark blue suits, and ivory. I was thinking monochromatic, very elegant and traditional. (Mom and MOH want chocolate brown. I have a strange aversion to the color.)

Then I saw photos from a beautiful wedding done in pinks and grays. I thought this is it! these are the colors I want! That color combo swirled in my head for about 2 weeks. I was thinking gray bridesmaid dresses, fluffly pink peonies, and accents of silver. It seemed very light, airy and girly. (Again Mom and MOH --you should add chocolate brown too! That looks good with pink! -- Seriously, what's with the brown?)

On May 18th I turned 29. J gave me a cool pair of light aqua earrings and my friend S gave me a really fabulous coral scarf. I saw those two colors together and finally became inspired! I knew this had to be the combination. I thought about black bridesmaid dresses (b/c then it would be so easy) aqua jewelry and coral flowers. The only problem -- I tell my mom my new color inspiration and she hates it!! (She likes the blues with brown -- what about aqua and brown? Seriously!!)

What are the colors at this moment you ask? Well -- I found a really great "save-the-date" card with a mehndi peacock in light aqua and brown (ugh - maybe they can make them with black instead). I'm thinking since mom hates coral I can move to a red-raspberry shade. (Hints of raspberry, hints!) I still want black dresses but other bridesmaids, light aqua (tbd). White flowers, raspberry ribbons. Really cool patterned ties for the guys with black suits from toybreaker on etsy.

I think I've done it! (And I changed the blog to match my vision). And what's great is all of the colors give a nod to the New Mexico location!