How to Choose Your Glass Unity Ceremony Colors (From Someone Who Has Seen Thousands of Combinations)

I have been on both sides of this decision.

When Nick and I planned our own wedding, I stood exactly where you might be standing right now, looking at a palette of colors and trying to figure out which ones were ours. I am a glassmaker. I work with color every single day. And I still found myself needing a moment to just feel it out.

Now I spend my days in the studio watching those colors come together in the heat, seeing what happens when a blend fuses and cools and catches the light for the first time. After thousands of pieces, I have a pretty good sense of what works and why. But I also remember what it felt like to choose.

Here is what I wish someone had told me.

Start with the vibe, not the swatch

The couples who have the easiest time choosing are the ones who stop thinking about matching and start thinking about feeling. Warm or cool. Summer or fall. Tropical or intimate. Classic or bold.

Those answers narrow twenty-four color options down to a handful in about thirty seconds. You are not trying to perfectly match your bridesmaid dresses or your centerpieces. The glass is going to outlast the flowers and the cake by decades. It should feel like the two of you, not like a color palette pulled from a planning checklist.

A few things worth knowing before you choose

Every color in our palette is designed to work with every other color. That is something we are genuinely proud of. You cannot make a bad combination here. But there are a few things I notice from the studio side that are worth passing along.

Pure White is something I find myself recommending to almost everyone. It does not compete with other colors. It adds depth and brightness and a kind of clarity to a blend that is hard to describe until you see it come out of the kiln. If you are not sure what to round out your mix with, Pure White is almost always the answer.

Colors like Jet Black, Gemstone Ruby, and Deep Blue are rich and vivid and beautiful. They can also pull focus in a blend. If you love one of them, use it. Just be thoughtful about proportion. A little of the deep ones goes a long way.

Champagne is one of my personal favorites, but it works best as a supporting color rather than a lead. Pair it with something that has a little more presence and it becomes something really special.

And if you find yourself drawn to colors you do not see listed, ask us. We have a few that never make it to the main palette but are very much worth knowing about.

Some combinations we love

Over the years a few combinations have come up again and again. They never get old. We have started giving them names.

 

 

There are no wrong choices here

I mean that, and I say it as someone who has watched thousands of blends come out of the studio. The material has a way of making everything work. Colors that seem like they might not belong together on a swatch card tend to find each other in the heat in ways that still surprise me.

The only thing I would encourage is to choose colors that mean something to you. Your wedding colors, a color one of you has always loved, the color of the sky somewhere that matters to your story. The meaning behind the colors becomes part of the piece itself.

Trust your gut. You will know when you have found your combination.

Sarah Billalba is the co-owner and glassmaker at Unity in Glass®, the original glass unity ceremony.