Choose What's Right for You
When it comes to narrowing down wedding options, there's one piece of advice that works 99 percent of the time — get out there and see what you like and then fit it to your budget. However, when it comes to choosing flowers for the bride, you have to look beyond what your best friend carried down the aisle when she got married — you have to consider what's going to flatter your complexion, dress, and body type the most.
All-white bouquets are popular in some areas. While they're extremely pretty (and minimalist, something that destination brides are often looking for), they can be very hard for a fair-skinned woman to carry off. If your skin color can best be described as alabaster, these flowers are likely going to make you look washed out and pale in the wedding pictures, and that's obviously not the look you're going for.
Stick with Your Palette
It's easy enough to find out which colors work best with your skin tone. There are two major color groupings in the world of beauty — warm and cool. Women who fall into the warm tones have more olive-colored skin, while the cool tones tend to more fair skinned. (One supposedly sure way to tell: Look at the veins in your wrist. If they look greenish, you're a warm color; if they're blue, you're cool.) Women whose skin is warm-toned look good in certain colors; those with cool tones look better in others.
E~Fact
Warm and cool color groupings used to be referred to as seasons. Your mom and her friends used to sit around and talk about whether they were autumn-, winter-, spring- or summer-colored, as in, “What color are you, Betty Sue?” To which Betty Sue would reply, “Oh, I'm a winter!”
So which colors work best for each group? Warm colors should lean toward earthy tones, including orange, yellow, deep green, dark red, rich browns, and off-white. What does this mean for your bouquet? Well, if you're getting married in the tropics, where the flowers are often orange and red, you'll look right at home!
Cool colors, meanwhile, look better in pinks, purples, and blues. Since many beautiful flowers come in these colors, too, there's no reason to envy your warmer sisters.
What Body Type Has to Do with It
If you're a short bride, a good florist will talk you out of a two-foot cascading bouquet. It's just too overpowering and will only serve to make you look shorter. On the other hand, if you're up around the six-foot mark, you need a substantial bouquet to see you down the aisle in style.
If you're round-ish, don't go with the biggest, roundest bouquet you can find; if you're lanky and have a long face, avoid drawing yourself into an even straighter line with a cascading bouquet. Tied calla lilies are very popular right now, and for good reason: They look good with almost any body type.
When you're working with a florist and choosing your wedding flowers, ask her about your complexion and body type. She should have some answers ready to go (and better yet, she should broach the issue before you do). If you think something won't look right on you, then it probably won't. And if you don't trust your own instinct, get a second opinion from a brutally honest source, like your mom, who isn't about to keep mum and let you look bad on your wedding day.
