A Guide to Choosing The Perfect Colour For Your Wedding Manicure

The flowers you choose, the melodies played, and the sparkle in your accessories all weave together to tell the story of your unique day. Amidst this tapestry of carefully curated elements, one detail that often flies under the radar, yet plays a crucial role in your overall look, is your choice of nail color.

Think about it—your hands are constantly on display, from holding your bouquet to exchanging rings and lifting a glass in a toast. Each of these moments draws attention to your hands, making your manicure an essential part of your bridal aesthetic. The right shade on your nails adds a subtle yet significant touch to your look, enhancing your natural beauty and ensuring every detail aligns perfectly. However, selecting the ideal shade, especially when working with a seemingly simple palette like white, may be far from easy.

While white may seem like a straightforward shade, there are many different versions of white and matching your whites on your big day is of the utmost importance. Let’s take a look at how to get this right on your big day.

The shade can be seen in three separate categories: neutral, warm or cool, depending on the dominant undertones. White can lean towards ivory, cream, blush, olive, grey, blue, or pure white, to name a few. It is almost like make-up, there are that many different undertones.

Let's compare the undertones within these white-based shades in our Gelcare collection. Below, in the order they appear: French Alps, Oat, Blonded, and Chalk. On their own, these colours look white on their own. It is not until they are placed side by side that you can really differentiate the undertones within each shade.

A great way to do this is to ask your seamstress for a small cut square of your dress’s fabric. Take it home with you and analyze it in all different lightings: direct sun, shade, outdoors, indoors, day and night light. This will demonstrate the variation of how light can alter the shade of your dress.

PRO TIP Hold your piece of dress fabric against a white sheet of paper. This will help you see the undertones in your dress up against something that represents the standard neutral white.

Identifying your dress’s undertone will be essential in helping you choose the perfect nail colour for your bridal manicure. If your dress is pure, bright, cool white, you don’t want your nails to look yellow up against it. Go for Rose Georgette, a pale pink with a white base. It's very similar to the texture of GELCARE’s signature BB Creams, which are semi-translucent, enhance the beauty of the natural nail and provide a very natural, clean look. Another good option for bright, cool white dresses is Chantilly Lace, a sheer milky white with micro finely milled glitters. The softness in both colours will not compete with the bright white and will flow seamlessly together.

If your dress is off-white, Chantilly Lace may stand out too much as a milkier white nail against it. Flash photography will capture each individual nail along your off-white dress, making the white differences more noticeable. Ivory Pearl is a very pale cream with a pearly texture that fits right in with our existing Pearl Capsule. On the nails, it appears slightly off-white, perfectly complementing an ivory dress.

For a dress with a nude underlay, something more soft, natural, and pink would sit well together, like French Tulle—slightly pearlescent pale pink with very subtle microglitters. It leans more towards milky on natural nails, which is how it differentiates from Primrose Pearl.

If your dress is any of the above, Blush Organza looks intimidating, but have full trust. It is an old rose in colour, with silver microglitters, and its texture can be compared to GELCARE’s Oil Capsule. It is a warm shade and is also the darkest of the capsules. Accentuating the deep neutral pink tones in our natural nails, Blush Organza gives your nails a natural tone, but better.

So much planning goes into every little detail of a wedding. Planning ahead can for sure be stressful, but when that day approaches, it will feel much more settling when most aspects have been planned in advance. We recommend adding your wedding manicure to your plan. Whether you do your own manicures at home or work with a nail artist, testing out different colours ahead of the big day will ensure you look and feel your best!

Our bare natural nail beds are pink, along with our white-ish free-edge, which is the white line at the tip of our nail that detaches from the skin. When looking at a colour on a swatch, it is sometimes hard to imagine what this colour may look like on our hands because the plastic swatch sticks are typically clear or white. If a polish is semi-translucent, our natural nail colours will shine through the polish, giving such a beautiful effect that may not have been anticipated by solely looking at the swatch. French Tulle, Chantilly Lace, and Blush Organza all have microglitters in their formulation. Microglitters are so microscopic that they do not look like chunky sparkle nails. Once they are on your hands, you notice that the microglitters give the most subtle shine to the nail, making your nails look extremely glossy and catching the light from all angles.

Narrow down to your top three polishes based on your fabric colour analysis. This way, you can see the colour on your hands and how it looks against your skin tone. It is preferable to maintain your nails with manicures every two to three weeks. Plan to test these colours over your next three manicures prior to your wedding day. This means to begin about six to eight weeks prior, to ensure they are uniform and you can achieve your desired shape and length.

PRO TIP Take photos of each of your top three potential wedding day manicures. Create an album called Bridal Nails. You can go back and look at this album for reference and comparison. Don’t forget to hold your nails up to that little piece of fabric to get a true sense of what your manicure will look like with your dress.

You are asked to be a bridesmaid, and you are ecstatic to be a part of such a special day in the bride’s life. Next up, the bride tells you she wants everyone to have “nude nails”, which, based on our experience, is the most popular colour request for bridesmaids. Start off with the colour of the bridesmaid dress. Depending on the colour of the dress, look at what polish shade won't stand out like a sore thumb against it. French Tulle, Rose Georgette, and Blush Organza are perfect for the bridesmaid to stay safe.

The new Gelcare Bridal Capsule consists of colours that are ideal for wedding manicures for brides and bridesmaids. The collection draws inspiration from fabrics and jewelry typically used in bridal fashion: Ivory Pearl, French Tulle, Rose Georgette, Chantilly Lace, and Blush Organza. Timeless, soft and versatile, The Bridal Capsule has the potential to become a staple in the Gelcare Core Collection.