My Theory of Evolution

Once upon a time, two of my bridesmaids directed me to a color palette in this wedding on OnceWed.com, and I fell in love.

Source

It was fun and different, and I thought I could dress it up and intensify it to make it formal enough for our nighttime ballroom wedding.

I was so proud to have found a color palette that was different from the peach and blush weddings I saw all over the blogosphere, and vowed that my wedding would really stand out. But then, as you guys know, I discovered cafe au lait dahlias, in all their peach and blush glory. THEN, I found out we could have peonies and David Austin roses, despite our July wedding date. It was all downhill from there.

I remember reading in some wedding magazine that you should be very careful not to let your color palette evolve once you’ve made a decision. It said it was important to stay true to the particular shades and not let fuschia evolve into magenta, etc. I think I’ve done all right at maintaining the integrity of our main colors—sapphire, deep violet, aqua, teal/turquoise and lavender—but as for the rest … well, realistically, this is now our color palette:

Most swatches borrowed from 100 Layer Cake, some created by me

The peony and peach snuck in, the antique gold became a bigger player, the canary yellow got pushed into the “secondary color” area, and sterling snuck in there, too.

As you may recall, it used to look like this:

Of course, the peach and pink came from the damn flowers. I just couldn’t resist. And antique gold and sterling silver were always going to be part of the color palette—it’s the materials that our centerpiece containers are made of. But that canary yellow … as much as I love it, I’m just really having trouble working it in. It’s such a daytime color. Unless you’re having a contemporary-style wedding—which we’re not—it just doesn’t seem to belong in a ballroom. It made its appearance in our save the dates, and I don’t regret that. They were more casual than the rest of our correspondence, which I’ve heard is OK. It does also show up in the fabric behind our table numbers, and I may find a way to use my leftover lemon Divine Twine, but really, antique gold has replaced yellow for the time being.

The silver will be present in some of our centerpiece containers, but I tried to avoid buying silver picture frames, and it won’t be used in any stationery, jewelry or anything else.

Dude, my color palette is getting huge! Has anyone else allowed their color palette to grow and evolve? Do you think it’s a natural and necessary process, or one that should be reigned in? Anyone want to take bets on how many other colors will sneak into mine by July?