What Color to Wear as a Wedding Guest (And What to Avoid)
Weddings are a huge deal, marking one of the most important days of someone’s life. It goes without saying that a wedding is the time for the bride and groom to shine, and they certainly don’t want to be upstaged by any of their guests on their special day.
As a wedding guest, you’ll have a fine line to walk for what you can wear. You should aim to dress in a classy and refined way without upstaging the outfits of the bride and groom. And while this might sound like a lot to worry about, it really just boils down to color.
Wear These Colors as a Wedding Guest
As a wedding guest, you should wear either dark blue, brown, and gray, or light tans and nudes as base colors in your outfit. Do not wear too many flashy colors and avoid white and too much black at all costs. You are allowed to accent your get-up with small elements of color but be careful not to overdo it.
These are all legitimate colors to wear to a wedding. Obviously, black, gray, and brown are good choices as well.
As you can see, there are certain colors that should be avoided as a guest, and there are others that are more appropriate. In this article, we’re going to examine exactly what colors you should wear as a wedding guest, and which should be avoided by all means necessary.
Suitable Colors for Wedding Guests to Wear
Let’s first identify the suitable wedding colors you can wear to a wedding. These colors are going to help you blend into the crowd, not stand out, while still giving you a formal and dressy look.
Some safe colors include formal cool colors like gray, brown, tan, or muted shades of green and blue.
These are classic colors that are typically worn to formal events like weddings. So unless the bride or groom has specified that any of these colors should not be worn, you should be fine wearing these.
All of these colors are great choices to wear to a wedding.
Besides helping you not to stick out, these colors will also give you a cool, confident look, perfect for mingling and socializing with other wedding guests.
As we said, cooler colors like those previously mentioned are typical for most weddings. However, some brides and grooms (most of the time brides) may specify the exact colors they want wedding guests to wear.
If you’re given color guidelines to stick to, then any of those colors will/must be suitable. Additionally, the groomsmen and bridesmaids will often be given specific colors (or specific articles of clothing) that they will be required to wear.
How to decide what colors to wear
If you haven’t been given any specific color guidelines on what to wear to a wedding, there are a few things to consider that can help you decide. These key factors include the formality of the wedding, the location, and the seasonal weather.
Formality
If you’ve received a formal wedding invitation, you can assume that the bride and groom prefer their guests to wear traditional wedding guest attire.
If the invitation is more on the casual side, you can expect the wedding to be a little less formal, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that you should show up wearing casual clothing.
Darker colors tend to be more suitable for formal events. You can accent a primarily dark outfit easily with a few strategic color splashes. | Socks: Bordeaux
A more formal wedding will require classic colors, including jewel tones, navy, and metallic gold and silver hues.
Additionally, a wedding in the evening will generally be more formal, requiring guests to dress up in their finest. It’s perfectly acceptable to wear a black tux in this situation, for example. However, it may be a good idea to check with the bride before showing up to the wedding all decked out.
If you’re required to wear a tie, then opt for a rather subtle but friendly tie color. Read our article on how to choose the right tie color to find out more.
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Location
The event location is also a factor you should consider when choosing your outfit. A barnyard wedding inevitably calls for less formal colors than a ceremony at the most luxurious five-star hotel in town.
In short, the general “vibe” of the place where the event is held determines whether a certain color palette is suitable or not.
As a rule of thumb: the more luxurious the location, the more you should lean towards more subdued and less bright colors. The more prestigious the event location, the less you’ll want to wear bold accents like a bright red tie or that flashy new yellow purse you just bought.
Season
The season and weather can also be determining factors when deciding the color for your wedding attire. If the wedding is in the fall or winter, you should opt for jewel tones and dark colors, including burgundy, emerald, plum, crimson red, or navy.
Stick to darker colors during the colder months of the year. Also, refrain from wearing groomsmen colors.
Again, you don’t want to stand out too much, so keep that in mind when choosing one of these colors. It’s generally a good idea to know which colors are suitable for which season – not just for a wedding. Read up on this topic here.
Alternatively, if the wedding takes place during the warmer months of the year, in summer or spring, brighter and lighter colors are more suitable.
You can try wearing pastel tints if it’s during the spring, such as blush or dusty blue. During the summer, brighter colors like lime green or fuchsia may be more appropriate, reflecting the warmth of the season in your outfit.
And this is especially true if it’s a destination wedding, somewhere tropical and beachy, you’ll definitely want to break out those bright, vacation colors!
Here’s our pro tip: go for neutral colors as a canvas and accent with happy, light, and bright colors like yellow, lavender, and rose. This is bound to look great and not draw too much attention to you.
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Colors You Should Avoid Wearing to A Wedding
As a general rule for wedding guests, one should never try to be the center of attention. As such, you should shy away from wearing overly bright or out-of-place colors, in addition to the bride and groom’s main colors, black and white.
Black may be acceptable if the wedding is a highly formal event, but white is never suitable (as what is known as a canvas color). Only the bride wears white, signifying her purity and the joy of this momentous occasion.
Obviously, if you’re wearing a suit and tie, you are allowed to wear a white shirt. This goes without saying… By the way, white is one of the best colors to wear to hide sweat stains (just saying).
Again, if the bride and groom have not supplied you with color guidelines, you can safely choose any of the colors we’ve outlined above, based on location, formality, and the time of year.
As always, make your selection with subtlety and formality in mind.
Here are some other colors you should generally try to avoid when attending a wedding. They include white (never wear white), shades of off-white or ivory (too close to white), entirely black (it’s not a funeral), entirely red, or overly gold or sparkly metallic colors.
Each of these colors has the potential to draw the focus away from the bride and groom and onto you, which no one wants.
Pro tip: Try not to wear the colors that the bridesmaids are wearing.
In addition to these colors, you should avoid wearing the same color as the bridesmaid or groomsmen parties, and don’t wear the same colors as the parents of the bride and groom. The color of their outfits will usually be coordinated so all are uniform, and if you show up wearing one of those colors, it could cause unnecessary confusion.
You should also try to keep the coloring of your attire on the simple side. You don’t want to draw attention to yourself with too many flashy/strange patterns or clashing colors, for example. We highlight 10 rules you should follow when putting together an outfit with color in mind in this article.
What The Experts Say
Despite the seemingly simple nature of this discussion, color and psychology experts have also weighed in on what colors should and should not be worn to weddings and why that may be.
We’re going to explore the rich history behind wedding customs, where they came from, and why color is so important at weddings today.
To start, in Clare Finnell’s dissertation on the subject entitled “A History and Analysis of Weddings and Wedding Planning,” she goes into great detail on the origins of current cultural traditions for Western weddings.
Originally, the idea of the traditional western wedding originated in Medieval Europe. Finnell explains that “At the time, what we now think of as a ‘wedding’ was typically just a nice feast, not necessarily even one with decorations or special outfits unless the couple was very wealthy, in which case occasionally new or matching outfits would be worn for the wedding during this time period.”
As Finnell stated, color was not even an issue in early Western weddings. So, when did it become so important?
Indeed, the major concern of early weddings was security. Finnell goes on to explain that the groomsmen were originally knights whose job it was to protect the bride from potential kidnappings. Thankfully we (usually) don’t have to worry about that in modern times.
Knights were the original groomsmen at weddings.
Color did not become a key consideration in Western weddings until the Victorian era, where members of the aristocracy became hugely concerned not with safety, but with how much beauty they could bring to their weddings.
This sparked the requirement of color coordination among the bride and groom’s guests. Wearing the wrong color could deeply offend the marrying parties, which may have hurt the offender’s social standing.
While this is similar to today’s wedding climate, the ostracization one might face by wearing the wrong color to a modern wedding pales in comparison to what one may face in a Victorian-era wedding.
Here we see the most influence on modern-day weddings, with formal bridal and grooms’ parties, a color and dress code, and lavish decorations and feasts. We can thank the Victorian era for many of the traditions held by modern-day Western weddings.
Final Thoughts
When attending a wedding as a guest, the last thing you want to do is offend anybody. Wearing the wrong color is one way you might offend the wedding party, as strange as it may seem.
In order to avoid this situation, follow the tips we’ve outlined here for picking a color to wear.
If the bride and groom do not make requirements for the dress code readily apparent, tend towards the side of dark or muted, cool colors. You will hardly ever go wrong by choosing gray, tan, beige, or brown, along with muted shades of green or blue.
And remember above all other colors, stay away from white. This includes varying shades of white or off-white and ivory, as they will be close enough to the color that the bride will probably be wearing.
Obviously, it’s fine to wear a white shirt underneath an otherwise dark suit but please – we cannot overstate this enough – do NOT wear a pure white suit/dress as a wedding guest.
Make your selection with careful consideration, and good luck with all your wedding-attending endeavors!
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