Peach and light blue had never been our favourite colours until we picked them as our wedding colours in the early stage of our wedding planning. Well, they still aren’t David’s favourite colours, but for me, it’s very hard not to fall in love with this pastel combo. How can I not adore them when every single day I dream, think, and plan in these colours? It’s nearly like an obsession! If my brain had a default colour theme, it would undoubtedly be peach-and-blue. When I walk into a fashion store for instance, my eyes will automatically scan for peach-and-blue items and nonchalantly disregard the rest. Sometimes, I see and think so much of the colour combo that my brain can’t differentiate if a dress is pink or peach or orange, and if a bangle is turquoise or light blue or mint green. It made me wonder whether too many colours would actually turn people colour blind.
So anyway, I must say that I’m very, very glad that we’ve found what we think is the perfect colour theme for our big day despite a brief ‘colourless’ phase at the start of it all. The good thing was that we had a clear direction on our wedding monogram early in the planning process, which was exactly where I started my brainstorming about our wedding colours from. The monogram looks like a sail, so quite naturally, the colours navy blue, white and red popped up in my mind.
I looked at the colour inspiration board and realised that this colour combo was very bold and playful – something that I wasn’t sure we were ready for. I mean, David and I are not always the serious type, but I don’t think a playful wedding is what we want. Besides, it seems like it would take a full-fledged decoration dedicated to all things nautical to pull off this colour theme successfully. Well, this would be great if David was – ahem – a sailor, or if both of us were sailing enthusiasts, of if he proposed on a yacht or something like that. But let’s just face it – the closest thing we’ve ever got to being nautical is taking a ferry to Batam and that’s that. Ha!
So, I scraped that and decided to remove one colour from the combo to tone down the colour scheme a bit. Red and white would be a little too patriotic as it is very Independence Day-like, so I settled with navy blue and white instead. I visualised navy blue and white would look quite elegant, yet still maintain the nautical element.
I loved how it was much simpler and classier than the previous colour scheme. My brain went wild for I just couldn’t stop daydreaming about every little detail of our wedding in navy blue and white. The more I thought about it the more I loved it. And bam! A big ball of reality hit my head squarely and told me there wasn’t a chance for the wedding to be in those colours.
We were still very green about this wedding planning stuff, and it hadn’t occurred to me that we needed to get the folks’ approval for every decision we made about the wedding even though it was obviously our wedding. Surely, I wasn’t very pleased. And when the colours navy blue and white got double rejections, I was like a bear with a sore head. Allow me to sidetrack to cultural norms here. Apparently in Chinese customs, the colour blue, especially dark blue, is often associated with black, which signifies mourning and is used on sad occasions. And what about white? It’s worse – it’s like the official colour for mourning. With that, the navy blue and white got stricken off without question. The folks must have thought I was nuts to choose propose such depressing colours for a very joyful occasion! Though I was still a little disappointed, I tried to understand and see things from a different perspective. Just when I needed it, a graphic designer friend of mine told me something that opened up my mind. He said something along this line, “Sometimes, I can’t design according to my idealism, but that doesn’t border my creativity. I try to connect what I like with what my clients like, and reason it out.” It totally gave me a new direction in approaching the wedding colours and many other aspects of the wedding. Thank you, Romi! :) By the way, just as I was typing the quote, I got a Facebook notification from him! What a coincidence, eh?! As if he knew I was mentioning him, ha!
Anyway, it got pretty colourless for a while until that one lazy afternoon I found myself looking back at the photos we took in Tanjong Beach on the evening we got engaged. It dawned on me that the colours of the beach at sunset could be just the perfect colours for our wedding. It’d be cool to be able to relive that special moment all over again. Aside from that, come to think of it, we’ve shared a lot of memorable moments on the beach that it’s become one of our favourite places. Personally, I love everything about the beach – the infinite horizon, the waves, the breeze, the sand, the sun and the sky. And if things were different (if you know what I mean), I’d kill for a beach wedding! Oh well, since I can’t have my dream beach wedding, transferring the colours of the beach into a ballroom will have to do.
As for the colours, I thought of shades of beige, light blue and orange, which of course, were inspired by the sand, the sea and the sunset sky respectively. By now, you should’ve known what I was up to: multiple tabs of Google search on my laptop screen and endless stream of Pinterest pictures on my iPad.
Those are some of the inspiration boards of beach wedding colours that I picked from various sources. The colours range from orange, tangerine, coral and peach to blue, turquoise, teal and mint. There were just too many colours to choose from! However, I knew that coral and turquoise were out because my skin seemed to be a tone darker in them. Next, after a couple of – literally speaking – colourful hours staring at various colours combinations, I fell in love with peach and light blue combo.
I love how the colours complement each other beautifully. The softness of peach carries just the right amount of romantic feeling that is not overly sweet but still feminine, while the lightness of blue brings out refreshing and soothing effects.
We also think this pastel colour scheme is neither too girly nor too playful, and it’s quite laid-back yet still elegant for a wedding colour theme. Besides, it’s definitely on the safe zone as far as the approval is concerned ;)
The good news was that we got a green light for these colours. But what’s better is the realisation that we could still incorporate the nautical elements even with this colour theme, simply because nautical and beach weddings absolutely relate to each other. So we get to play around with anchors and wheels without being too bold and playful, and at the same time apply the colours that are not only acceptable and lovely, but also hold special meanings to us :))
We can’t wait to see how it’s all coming together on the 6th of October!! I feel so excited about wrapping up the decoration very soon. In fact, we just met our decor vendor yesterday to settle the details of the decoration. Felt so relieved to know that it’s in good hands :)
I’ll have another (shorter) post to discuss about the colour theme for the bride’s reception, and will also post some tips to choose a wedding colour theme. Stay tune! Meanwhile, if you have any decoration ideas for indoor nautical/beach theme weddings, we’d love to know :) Ahoy, mates! ;p