10 Wedding Color Mistakes.

Wedding Color Mistake: Using Too Many Colors

When choosing your wedding colors, event designer Carissa of JL Designs says simplicity is key. Pick three to four colors total to keep your bouquets and centerpieces from looking too messy. If you prefer an undone look, opt for a few slightly varied shades of the same color. This will add depth without looking too chaotic. Or, for an especially striking look, go monochromatic with a bold shade like vivid purple or creamy white. The idea is to keep the look tailored for maximum impact.

Wedding Color Mistake: Choosing Trendy Colors

It's easy to let the magazines tell you the hottest new color combos, but consider this: Your palette should be one that you won't mind living with for a long time since you will be framing photos and filling albums featuring those colors. Stationery designer Kristy Rice of Momental Designs tells her clients to think about the colors and patterns they surround themselves with daily. So look around! Ask yourself what colors make you happy? What color is your favorite room or sweater? Some of the prettiest weddings we've seen were inspired by the simplest meaningful objects, like a dress or even a pillow.

Wedding Color Mistake: Choosing an Oversaturated Color Combo

One of the biggest pitfalls in color selection is not considering the eye's need for rest and calm. The key is balance. If you love bright orange, pick a more muted secondary color like pale blue or khaki. The resulting contrast will let your favorite color take center stage. If bold contrast isn't your thing, you can easily soften the look with an accent color. Rice recommends picking an "in-between" shade, like silvery sage green with black and white or pale blue with navy and butter yellow. The third color will tone down the starkness and add extra visual interest. If you're worried the look will be too bland, punch it up with details in a complementary metallic color like pewter or bronze or something bold like scarlet.

Wedding Color Mistake: Choosing Predictable Colors

Certain color combos come with certain connotations. (Think: red, white, and blue or red and green.) Keep your colors from reminding guests of their favorite holiday by subtly tweaking your hues. The trick is choosing a more fashionable shade. Bandana-red, faded denim, and eggshell will banish any Fourth of July memories and forest green and pale pink are anything but Christmas-y. Or try adding another color to break up a combo. Yellow dresses with red bouquets might conjure images of popular fast food restaurants, but mixing in white details (like lace or pearls) can add elegance in a snap.

Wedding Color Mistake: Ignoring Texture

Instead of simply relying on colors, bring multiple textures into your wedding day to give the room some depth and dimension. Mixing textures in the same hue can add more drama and depth to your wedding than simply combining multiple colors. Do this with your flowers, tablecloths, or bridesmaid dresses -- varying patterns and surfaces can play a huge role as your wedding palette evolves. To avoid overload, try outfitting just one of your maids (like your maid of honor) in a patterned dress or simply rely on textured flowers to give the look some shape.

Wedding Color Mistake: Ignoring Your Venue Colors

When deciding on a scheme, consider the reception space or choose a space without decor or color. If you've chosen a country club with navy and maroon carpets, a color scheme of lime green and hot pink will clash, and there's really no way around it. (Try to pull it off anyway and you'll end up spending twice what you would normally in decor to cover it up than you would if you had chosen a more complementary color palette.) That's not to say you have to choose a color that perfectly matches the floors. Use the venue's decor more as a guide when picking out tones and hues. Love pink but have harsh dark colors to work around? Work with a soft blush instead of fuchsia.

Wedding Color Mistake: Limiting Yourself To Two Colors

We’re so over the idea of the strict "color combo." Many gorgeous weddings feature a variety of colors, sometimes up to five, that work together to create a specific sensibility -- like an "English garden" with green, yellow, pink, red and brown, or "Fall in New England" with orange, red, brown and gold. Need ideas? Browse our classic wedding colors slideshow.

Wedding Color Mistake: Not Coordinating Your Paper Elements

Your invitations set the stage for the event, so let them introduce your wedding colors and evoke the right tone from the start. Coordinating the invitation colors with those of the wedding can be as easy as choosing a colored font, ribbon or monogram, or as elaborate as layering colorful cards. Keep in mind, too, that your invites are a dress code cue to your guests. You wouldn't send out ivory and formal black calligraphy unless you're expecting guests to dress to the nines for your wedding.

Wedding Color Mistake: Trying to Color-Match the Flowers

If your primary wedding color doesn't come in many flower forms, don't force it. For example, very few flowers come in blue naturally, and the ones that do are extremely seasonal (like hydrangeas). Instead of insisting your floral bouquets and centerpieces match, ask your florist to choose complementary neutral flowers that will soften (not compete with) the color scheme. Then let your nonfloral elements (like the centerpiece vases and bouquet ribbon wraps) show off your color.

Wedding Color Mistake: Insisting the Bridal Party Wear Your Colors

When it comes to your bridal party, come up with the most flattering color in your palette and use it. In other words, feature your table linen overlays, dinner plates and glassware in the unwearable colors, and let your bridesmaids rock their looks in a flattering color like eggplant, navy, blush, dark brown or black. Not only will they look better -- so will your wedding photos!