Color me confused

I tend to have trouble making decisions about 95% of the time — big or small, serious or trivial. When I eat out, I will sometimes agonize over the menu for quite a while before making a decision, only to change my mind about it the moment the server walks away to place my order. Not wanting to be a pain, I will not change my order; instead I will just sit and pout and scold myself for my poor decision, and once my food comes I will become painfully aware that it isn't *really* what I wanted. Totally mature, right?

So, when it comes to a color palette for my wedding, I have not, to say the least, strayed from my indecisiveness.

From the very beginning of the planning extravaganza, I thought I'd like to incorporate a lavender or purple of some sort into our colors. I also always liked the unpredictability and punch of purple and red together, so for a little while, I thought this would be a great color scheme. Until, that is, my BFF/MatronOH pointed out that my wedding could resemble a gathering of these ladies:

photo via http://www.rsc.org/

photo via http://www.clevelandwomen.com/resources/redhat.htm

Now don't get me wrong -- I have nothing against the lovely ladies of the Red Hat Society. But, well, it's just that I don't really want my wedding resembling one of their tea parties.

Back to the drawing board I went...

I have always had a penchant for a lovely shade of celery green, and started to think that this could be a very pretty accent to my lavender-tone. But of course I can't settle on just two colors — I have to throw in a third to spice it up a bit. So how about a blue?

I love love love teal, but I also love love love light blue. What about something kind of in-between? Does robin's egg blue do the trick?

So into my trusty QuarkXPress I journeyed, with my handy dandy Pantone swatch book by my side. Here, ladies and gentlemen, is the progression of where I ended up:

I liked this for a while.... I was thinking of a purple-tone for bridesmaid's dresses, and I thought I'd focus on the celery green color for our save-the-dates (maybe even making it a little brighter), since I feel like they can be a bit more fun, and then toning things down for a more formal invitation.

After a little while, though, my indecisiveness started to get the best of me, and I started to wonder if this palette was still just a little too Easter-y. Then, I came across this lovely palette in Martha Stewart Weddings (Fall 2007):


Hmm. Emerald and aqua. Still not exactly what I want, but I became a little obsessed with the unpredictability of this palette. It's fresh, unexpected and not too season-specific. And really, if Martha says it's okay, well then so do I. This palette does not involve any bit of lavender or purple, though, so essentially my whole original palette could be going out the window.

I knew that the bridesmaid's dress color could very largely dictate my color palette... but I had yet to pick a bridesmaid's dress and didn't know what colors were out there. So, I kept this pretty palette in the back of my mind; I made plans to venture out and start looking around to not only pick a dress for my maids, but to also *hopefully* get a bit more of a concrete color palette nailed down.

Stay tuned for my decision!!