Today we speak to to Intricate Creations, a luxury laser-cut stationery brand  to find out, when it comes to wedding stationery should you choose your colours carefully?

Choosing your wedding colours can be a much more complicated decision than first meets the eye. When it comes to cultural meanings behind colours, they can be extremely important and picking the right colour for a couple isn’t always easy.

Intricate Creations have one of the widest colour palettes around (over 170 different colours and card types). This has given them great insight into some of the reasons their clients make the choices that they do. Kay Patel, Managing Director of Intricate Creations states, “With clients from countries all around the world, we’ve seen first-hand the interesting backstories to the colours chosen. After all, with the freedom to have any colour combination (up to a whopping 80,4440 potential colour combinations) there has to be a real thought process behind narrowing it down to between one and three colours!”

 “We recently had an order from a lovely Chinese couple. The first thing they loved was the design and secondly, the fact that they could incorporate traditional Chinese colours, red, gold and black. Not only did they have twelve different shades of reds to choose from, but seven shades of gold too. Another client wanted her invitations to match a Spanish flower she was having at her wedding. We chose a combination of Cadbury’s purple, mandarin and lavender. Initially I was concerned they would clash, but when the final piece came together we remembered why we offer so many colours. It looked great and it really meant something to the bride!”

Our top ten requested colours and their meanings:

 Red

In China, red is chosen as a symbol of celebration and good luck, as well as courage, loyalty, honor, success, fortune, fertility, happiness, passion, and summer. In Chinese cultural traditions, red is associated with weddings (where brides traditionally wear red dresses) and red paper is frequently used to wrap gifts of money or other objects. As a result, it’s often used as a primary wedding colour (especially combined with gold and black). In India the colour red is chosen for its association with purity, love, and beauty. In Russia the colour red is often used in marriage ceremonies. In parts of Central Africa, red is used during celebrations as the colour of health and life, but make sure you do your research before you wear red to a wedding in Africa – in some African countries, red is seen as a danger colour and sometimes even symbolises death!

Pink

In Western society the colour pink stands for love and romance and is also associated with kindness and be cared for. In Catholicism, pink symbolizes joy and happiness. As a result it’s one of our most popular colour choices, particularly as it’s considered one of the more aesthetically pleasing colours, with many brides preferring a different variation of pink for their big day.

Orange

The colour of saffron, is considered a sacred colour amongst the Hindu community and in the Netherlands the colour orange is a symbol of royalty and is a very popular choice. It also represents the holidays of Halloween and Thanksgiving in the USA so orange, while popular in its own right (Tangerine Tango was Pantone’s colour of the year this year) it can be used to theme weddings accordingly. Irish and Scottish Protestants use the colour to identify themselves – i.e. the Orange Order so it has links to sectarianism.

Yellow

In the Middle East this colour is linked to happiness and prosperity and is a popular wedding colour. In Japan the colour yellow is associated with courage – conversely in American culture it’s also synonymous with being a coward – so has totally opposing meanings in different parts of the world. However, in Western cultures in general, is it a sign of summer and warmth, and is a popular choice for modern brides, particularly mixed with shades of grey for a beautiful and inviting colour palette.

Green

Eastern society links the colour green to new life and new beginnings. The Irish Catholics link the colour green to religion and in Japanese, green is a symbol of life. In Western culture it can refer to something or someone new (a “greenhorn” for example) and also to the colour one turns when ill or seasick. It also refers to jealousy, and in the medieval period it represented love so green has a long and chequered history. This hasn’t deterred brides and grooms, however, who often choose green as one of their primary wedding colours!

Blue

The ‘something blue’ wedding tradition started in amongst the Western society. Its association with weddings makes it a very popular choice with brides. In Mexico the colour blue is associated with calmness and serenity and in Egypt the colour blue is a sign of heaven and spirituality. Blue is also an extremely important colour in Judaism, being mentioned in Torah in many places: for example, meditating on the colour.

Purple

In European culture, this colour is associated with royalty, in the Eastern society the colour purple is seen as a sign of nobility. However, in Brazil it represents mourning and it’s also the colour of death in parts of East Asia (such as Japan). 

White

In Europe this colour is strongly linked to brides and weddings, it’s seen as a sign of purity and cleanliness. White tends to be the classical and traditional stationery choice for brides. In Zambia, White is the colour for good luck and is very popular at celebrations. In Japan the bride wears white to symbolise the “death” of her old family and her entry to the new family.

Gold

Gold is universally known around the globe as a sign of wealth, success and high quality and is a very popular wedding colour, particularly used to accent a dominant colour such as white, red or blue.

Black

For aesthetic reasons, many brides and grooms are choosing a monochrome theme for their weddings and black is playing a much bigger role in their colour choices. In many countries this colour is associated with evil and mourning but in China the colour black is linked to trust and high quality. In Australia and New Zealand, Black is considered a patriotic colour. It can also be seen as the colour of authority. It’s a common symbol of anarchism. In the Masai tribes of Kenya, black symbolises rain clouds and thus life and prosperity. The Rastafari consider it a colour of beauty.

 “Wedding stationery doesn’t have to be bland and beige and we love seeing so many of our international clients not being afraid to experiment with colours and wishing to tie in elements of their culture into their wedding stationery”, says Kay. 

 Whilst travelling, Kay and her husband Jit were so inspired by the beautifully cut hand designs of local Vietnamese artists that they decided to attempt their own. Kay says: “We were so taken with the hand-crafted stationery we discovered in Vietnam, from the elaborate patterns to the beautiful and individual story behind each piece. The minute we got home we were buzzing with ideas about how to invent our own designs with their own unique history.” The opportunity arose when Jit proposed to Kay. Keen to put their own stamp on their big day, the couple designed their stationery together. With their first attempts proving a resounding success, Kay and Jit had found their true passion and Intricate Creations was born as a business and launched at the National Wedding Show in spring 2011.

Kay says: “We decided to bring a laser in house to keep prices competitive and to give us creative freedom to play with our own designs. We realised we were able to bring some real colour to the wedding industry – over a hundred and seventy colours in fact, and constantly expanding. Inspired by our own cultural heritage, we decided that stationery should be vibrant, beautiful and personal. We feel that colour is a very important part of that expression. Many couples believe that their stationery needs to come in creams, golds and neutral tones, but Intricate Creations is all about letting couples explore their creativity and pushing their boundaries while maintaining the quality you would expect from luxury stationery.”

Intricate Creations specialise in contemporary, laser-cut stationery and accessories for the sophisticated, style-conscious individuals of today. Brides and grooms-to-be are not limited to unique laser cut wedding invitations but also co-ordinated Save the Dates, Day, Evening Invitations, RSVPs, Place Cards, Menus, Table Numbers/Names, Table Plans, Thank You Cards, Gift Tags and even Cupcake Wrappers and Wine Charms. All designs come with matching envelopes and personalised printed inserts, made to fit individual colour schemes and can be ordered quickly and easily online at www.intricatecreations.co.uk.