Planning a Wedding is Harder than it Looks on the Internet

This summer, Mr. Pudding and I went to Poland to attend two weddings. About a week before we left, I telephoned our decorator because I wanted to pick out the linens before the vacation. Despite of the very short notice, she was wonderful and agreed to meet with Mama Pudding and me. I thought that this would be a breeze; I knew exactly what I wanted, so we would be in and out in a matter of minutes. Boy, was I wrong!

When I got to her studio and sat down, I realized that I actually had no idea what our event is supposed to look like. I explained to her that the main colour was going to be navy, at which point she made a bit of a face and explained that navy is "a very difficult colour to work with". I told her that I wanted the decor to be mostly navy and white, with yellow accents. She asked me if I had any pictures. Of course, since navy seems to be such a popular accent colour on the internet, I thought that the decorator would for sure know what I was talking about. I mean, she has definitely seen all of those beautiful navy and yellow inspiration boards on Snippet and Ink or checked out the several Weddingbee weddings that were heavy on the navy blue, right? Man, am I a bonehead! Turns out that what works in the virtual wedding world and what works in the real world are two totally different things.

Take, for example, this beautiful inspiration board from Snippet and Ink:

(source)

Beautiful, right? This board was very inspirational to me when I first started leaning towards this colour combination. But, wait a second, do you see what is wrong with this picture? The board has very little to do with an actual wedding! Hmmm...let's see....fancy china in the colour scheme that is not available for rent in quantities of 200+.....a lovely yellow chair with dogs on it (I do not possess neither the furniture nor the canines)......a girl wearing thick, navy stockings to our July wedding.....a bottle of navy blue nail polish that I would never put on my fingers for our wedding day, but I suppose that I could incorporate it into the centerpieces? All in all, the only actual idea that I got from this board is that I should have yellow in the invitations (duh) and that lemons could work as a major decorating element. Ok.....but what about the table cloths? What colour should the chair covers and napkins be? Alas, these questions are not often answered on blogs that feature really beautiful, unique weddings that do not take place in giant, empty reception halls.

So, I went online looking for inspiration. You know what? My decorator was right. Navy is difficult to work with. This statement must be true since it is close to impossible to actually find pictures of real life reception halls decorated within this colour scheme. Here are the only images that I have hoarded so far:

InStyle weddings managed to be somewhat helpful with this image of a navy and yellow place setting...

...and Project Wedding provided me with the only picture of a navy and yellow reception table I could find using my (very modest) Google skills.

So, back to the story. I told the decorator that I was thinking about navy table cloths and ivory chair covers. She said that she wasn't a fan of the great contrast that those colours created, and that it might not look great in a reception hall of our size. She suggested silver chair covers, and Mama Pudding agreed. Internally, I was thinking "Ewww....silver chair covers are totally against the initial vision of my (ahem....our) wedding!", but when I got home and found the picture above, I started to wonder if maybe silver was the way to go?

Ashley emailed me images of the navy table cloths next to the silver and ivory chair covers:

Navy damask table cloths and silver chair covers (personal photo)

Navy damask table cloths and ivory chair covers (personal photo)

In the pictures, they actually don't look that different. Which would you choose? Can anyone out there find other images of the navy and yellow colour scheme put to real wedding use?