Finding the Right Purple

Purple shouldn't have been this difficult.

We had the bride's invitation and the colors of the bridesmaids' gowns to work with. One of the gowns was a beautiful dark purple, and that became our starting point.

After some experimenting with our uplights, we created a dark purple that looked good on the wall at the office. But there was a concern. The color looked right, but we weren't convinced a purple that dark would have enough presence once it was inside the actual venue.

Still, it looked good. Maybe we had it.

Then We Saw the Room

Before the wedding, we happened to be working at the same venue. Seeing those walls again changed things. That dark purple we'd created? We weren't convinced anymore.

It might have been the right color, but if it couldn't make its presence known in the room, being the "right" purple wasn't going to matter very much. So, back to the office.

There was another purple we'd used before. It was brighter, but it didn't feel right for this wedding either. That's when we stopped trying to match the dark purple exactly.

What if the uplighting didn't have to match? What if it just needed to complement the colors the bride had already chosen?

That changed everything.

Finding Our Purple

More experimenting eventually gave us two possibilities. We put them on the wall and asked the And We Danced team to choose.

Everyone picked the same one. Okay. We had our purple.

Now it was time to see what happened in the real room.

Wedding Day

When the uplights went around the venue, daylight was still hitting parts of the walls. In the areas away from the daylight, the purple looked great.

Then we looked at the brighter areas. The purple was there. It wasn't as strong yet, but it was coming through. As the daylight changed, the room would change with it.

So far, so good. But we still hadn't seen the thing that really mattered: everything together.

Then the bridesmaids arrived in their dresses. There were purple flowers on the tables and more purple flowers had been used during the ceremony. And there was our purple on the walls.

We looked at the dresses, the flowers, and the walls.