As many of our readers will know I attended Wedding MBA at the beginning of this month as saw a couple of speakers who inspired me. One in particular was Wayne Gurnick of Moments by Wayne, who talked about inspiration, vision and emotion being the essence of wedding design and that it is the emotions we are trying to evoke from people as emotions are what memories are made of.
People talk about using the 5 senses in the design of weddings in a very liberal way but don’t often explain what this means, so over the next 5 weeks I want to take you on a journey of inspiration, vision and emotion. Emotion is what we are trying to create when we set out to design a wedding, after all emotions are what memories are made of and memories are what we want the guests to leave a wedding with. We’re starting off this series with the sense that is commonly the most thought about, sight.
So if sight is the look of a wedding what can we do to ensure that it is visually appealing? Well apart from structure and form it is the use of colour. Colour is probably one of the most important tools in a wedding designer’s toolbox — the proverbial equivalent of a dressmaker’s sewing machine.
Colour creates an emotion and each colour will make the guest feel differently and this needs to be considered when putting together the design of a wedding. Obviously colour can be incorporated in many different ways but the easiest way to pull any colour scheme together is by using lighting. So how do different colours make a guest feel?
Red is a strong, powerful and energetic colour and is great when used to encourage movement throughout a wedding where guests are moving from one space to another. It is also stimulates appetite so bare that in mind too. Green is the colour of nature and promotes a calming affect and whilst blue can also do this it is also a more refreshing colour, which can help to cool things down. Orange and yellow are both cheery and bright communicating a healthy vibe, but be careful because their lighter counterparts such as peach or buttercup can have a very different affect.
Other factors such as cultural traditions, especially in weddings, add to this along with jewel tones and other shades of the basic colour choices. Quite often your client may tell you they don’t like a certain colour, but remember it is all about the delivery. There are many ways to describe the colour green such as apple, grass, lime, mint, evergreen etc. Everything in design is about perception and colour choice is no different. By using different colours at different intensities, you can really move guests around the wedding.
In our Level 4 NVQ Event Design Course we go in-depth with our colour analysis and look at exactly how we can utilise colour psychology within design. So be sure to check out this course if you’re looking to increase your design knowledge. Click here for unit details.
Next week we’re going to talk about the sense of smell and using it within the design of weddings.
