Weddings held during summertime are some of the brightest and boldest, and there are hundreds of ways in which you might go about styling your own. Nearly any theme complements a summer wedding perfectly; here are just 10 of our favourite ways to style your summer wedding.
1) Colourful Beach
A rather obvious choice, a beach summer wedding is everything sea and sand. You can have a beach wedding at home here in the UK, or even push the boat out a little with a destination wedding on your favourite tropical beach abroad. Beach weddings can be far more casual than a classic, traditional wedding, for flip flops and summer dresses are often encouraged. Decorate with all shades of blue and other bold primary colours, and add pretty finishing touches with accessories like shells and nautical charms. Even think carefully about the ceremony itself—Confetti’s unity sand ceremony sets are particularly perfect, for example.
2) Retro Candy
Retro weddings come with bright colours and everything sweet, like colourful candy and flowers in all manner of vivid hues. Glass bottles and mini jars, striped sweet bags and novelty popcorn cartons, polka dot fabrics and textured accessories—these are the things that will make your colourful retro wedding burst with summer fun. You can afford to be bold in a summer retro wedding—wear bright coloured shoes and a beautiful flower crown, and add a blush of colour to your tea-length wedding dress!
Read more about how to style a retro wedding as we look at styling a 60s wedding!
3) Garden Picnic
Step off the beaten track when it comes to your summer wedding and arrange a unique outdoor picnic. A picnic can be held anywhere—in a large garden, a quaint little field—and it makes for a very cosy wedding for you and your guests. Wicker baskets, colourful blankets, birdcages filled with plants and flowers, and refreshing fruity snacks and drinks are wonderful additions. Ornamental vases and accessories like birds and butterflies add life to the decor, and decorative elements like lanterns and twinkling fairy lights will keep your reception alive even once the sun has set!
4) Vintage Tea Party
A spin on the oft-used vintage wedding, a vintage tea party in the summer is a pretty way to style your wedding. Reminiscent of afternoon tea, you can gather your close friends and family together to share in tea and cakes, platters of biscuits, tiers of fruit, and a buffet table. Decorated with lace, silverware, crockery and teapots, set the tone to a delicate and dainty get-together that works incredibly well as an intimate wedding reception. Soft shades like pastel pinks and blues are beautiful alongside small arrangements of flowers and tea light candles.
5) Pastel Rustic
Rustic weddings are perfect opportunities to use a wide range of textures—materials like burlap and lace, cuttings of ribbon, etc—that are then complemented by large floral arrangements of plants and flowers in vases, or something more provençal like pitchers, watering cans, and coloured glass bottles. Violet and pale lavender or lilac are stunning colours that keep growing in popularity in the weddingsphere (purple is, right now, one of the most popular wedding colour schemes!), and pastel hues come in a wide range from pale yellow through to mint green and all the way to powder blue.
6) Naturally Bohemian
Bohemian weddings are like ‘vintage meets outdoor’. It’s a very earthy wedding theme, filled with delicate florals and lace patterns; it’s a perfect theme for the nature lover. Feathers are a favoured motif here at Confetti.co.uk, and the yellows, greens and blues that are so often seen in boho weddings are an ideal match for your own summer wedding.
7) Summer Glamour
Summer weddings work extremely well in the outdoors, but they needn’t be all nature and no glitz and glam: have both! Crystal garlands and twinkling lights can hang from trees and gems can be mixed with flower decorations across the wedding tables. The warm summer sun striking glass accessories and metal charms will set your wedding a-sparkling, and you can outfit yourself with gem encrusted jewellery and clothing. Magnificent!
8) Vibrant Wanderlust
Inspired by all things ‘travel’, wanderlust is a whimsical wedding theme that conjures images of hot summers and adventure. It’s the perfect summer wedding theme, especially when paired with ideas such as compass wedding favours and vivid colour schemes. Some wanderlust weddings are almost amplified versions of bohemian weddings!
9) Woodland Love Birds
Compared to all the others, woodland may not appear at first to be a particularly summery wedding theme. That’s why colour can be so important. Initial assumptions of dark greens and browns can be transformed when you imagine colourful yellow flowers and flickering candles sitting next to white artificial trees and our very cute birds. Add nests and birdhouses, moss-effect plant pots and pillar candle holders, and you get a very beautiful, very summery wedding theme indeed!
10) Floral Shabby Chic
Like rustic weddings, the shabby chic wedding theme is characterised by its textures of burlap, lace and ribbon, etc. Aged and antique finishes are incredibly good effects, and pastel shades complement them very well. Barns are common venues of choice for shabby chic weddings, as they can offer a semi-indoor and -outdoor effect. Shabby chic weddings are somewhat more laid-back than other wedding themes. Usually the big difference in styling this summer wedding comes in how many flowers you use, and if you use flowers at all. Big floral displays look gorgeous in aged antique vases, but these also open up a wonderful opportunity to use flower alternatives, like fabric flowers.