So, I wanted to share some of the wedding design inspiration/ideas that were a part of the planning process leading up to November 5th! I clearly have an obsession with making palettes, and so initially I just played around with a variety of colors -- keeping in mind colors both Tim and I like, as well as the fall season and what would be appropriate for our general tone for the day. We knew right away we wanted to use gray in the bridal party for the men's suits, but were less settled on an idea for bridesmaids. Gray was essential because it's kind of Tim's favorite color :)

We knew we were having the reception in a renovated barn, and I had an obsession (from following a ton of wedding blogs) with the aqua blue Ball jars they don't make anymore because it fit perfectly with my aquamarine engagement ring. Also, it was important to us to feature local food and have a sustainability-conscious (and nature-conscious) wedding. So, all of this put together ended up with the above palette/inspiration board.

In terms of selecting wedding colors, I had a couple issues to resolve (with Tim's help, since he has a keen design eye):

(1) I really love color and so toyed with the idea of each bridesmaid in a unique color, sticking with a mismatched theme (or even keeping it mismatched-but-monochromatic);

(2) For the color palette, I struggled to narrow it down -- Tim wanted us to pick just 2 colors (3 if you include the gray), but I wanted like at minimum 5. Tim and I differ in that I like "busy" designs with lots going on and he likes simple, clean ones. After discussion and much Photoshopping, I think we found a good balance;

(3) I love flowers. LOVE FLOWERS. I really just want to be a Hobbit and grow plants all day and stare and them and smell them and photograph them. My wedding flowers were SUPER important to me. I had this idea in my head that the bouquets needed to be complex, multi-colored, lots of texture and visual interest. I'm just not a monochrome kind of girl --- I love it and appreciate it aesthetically, but when it's my choice: GIMME ME MANY COLORS. I blame that technicolor dream coat musical I saw 4 times as a kid when it was in Chicago and the fact that I memorized all the colors. So, given that the flowers had to be multi-colored, I decided having a neutral bridesmaid dress would work best with that if I still wanted them all to be mismatched dresses;

(4) I be honest. I didn't really want "fall colors" to be our wedding colors. I struggled to even really want red. I guess it's because I have this need to be different and not do the same ol' thing. But ... since we were going with aqua blue, we thought it would be best to incorporate some color that would make it more fall-like. So, red it was --- and I like a really deep red, probably because I bleed Cream & Crimson... or, something. So, long story short: Tim and I disagreed on what color "burgundy" is, and eventually decided that, no matter what color we call it (burgundy, crimson, maroon, wine, etc. etc.), at least in terms of design elements (created in Adobe), it needed to be more red than purple to better contrast our aqua blue in designs and dress. I initially had a more purple in mind, but Tim sold me on more of a red and I am quite pleased he's smarter than me :)
So, reconciling some of these issues took a bit of time, but we decided upon:

(1) Color palette: aqua blue, burgundy red, and gray.

(2) Groomsmen: gray pants and vest, aqua blue ties, with mismatched alternating colored boutonnieres.

(3) Bridesmaids: mismatched gray dresses (they got to pick their own), with burgundy red shoes (picking their own again), aqua blue earrings, mismatched pocket watch necklaces, and aqua blue pashminas (all the same to have some consistency). I'll probably post all the individual palettes later.

(4) Flowers: burgundy red dahlias, coral orange ranunculas, yellow billy balls, lavender scabiosa, etc. ((I wanted deep red, golden yellows, and coral orange to be the main focus, with lavender and plant-light-green as accents)). Really, as I said before, I considered the flowers to be an essential part of the "dress" for the bridal party, not just an afterthought or accent.

Here's my Instagram of my dried bouquet. I'm kind of obsessed. Andrea at Peppertree Floral did an amazing job with colors, variety and textures! The burgundy dahlias are hard to pick up in this photo, but they're there:

Oh and in the wedding palette at the top of the post, I actually did try on that Priscilla of Boston wedding dress and totally loved it when I tried it on ... but, then, I found my actual dress and was happy with that choice. It's better than the PoB one by a million degrees. And, it was $4,000 cheaper!

Also, it should be known that I basically made a bunch of wedding palettes before I was engaged. There, I said it.

And, here are some wedding blogs I followed for ideas:

Snippet & Ink
Style Me Pretty
100 layer cake
Green Wedding Shoes
Magnolia Rouge
Once Wed
Ruffled Blog