Color Coordinated Family Outfits for Disney

Ok, I am going out on a limb here.  Some people will think I am crazy and totally type A personality (which I really am not), but I am counting on the fact that there are also other people out there who will enjoy this post and even be helped by it.  🙂  When we go on our Disney trips, we have found from experience that we look better in our pictures if we are in color coordinated outfits.  Who doesn’t want to look great in pictures?  I am going to show you how to create color coordinated family outfits for Disney so you too can look fabulous in all your pictures!

I have to admit this is not my brainchild.  We went on a cruise one time and the family that sat next to us came to dinner each night in color coordinating outfits.  They looked amazing every night!  I absolutely loved the idea!  I thought about how good they would look in their pictures from the cruise each day.  Ever since then, I have done coordinating outfits for our trips and even other holidays/events where I know that we will be taking a lot of pictures.  It does take a little extra time in packing, but the trade-off is looking “marvelous darling”!

If you think about it, it is really not that crazy of a concept.  How many of you coordinate your outfits for family pictures?  I am betting most people do, us included!  This is the same thing only on a smaller scale.  You do not have to go all out with layers and different textures like for family pictures.  Think more simple…moisture wicking shirts, t-shirts, tank tops, shorts & comfy lightweight dresses.  After all if you are going to Disney World, it can get REALLY hot and humid.  Not to mention all the walking you will be doing while you are there.  

My first and foremost top tip is to wear something comfortable!  You don’t want to be walking around all day in the heat in uncomfortable clothes.  That is no fun anytime!  My second tip is to take at least one picture of the whole family together (like the iconic castle picture) early in the day while everyone is still looking fresh.  I can help your outfits but I can’t help the sweaty mess you will become later in the day.  Ha!

My third tip is to check through your family’s clothes that they own already before buying all new clothes.  You will be surprised what you can throw together with what you have already!  However, an excuse for a couple new shirts/dresses is not a bad thing, is it?  😉  Plus we usually go to Disney in the fall and the kids always need new “back to school” clothes anyway.

Using a Focus Piece

The easiest way (and my preferred way) to coordinate your outfits is to find one focus piece of clothing to pull colors from.  This way you will know that the colors already go together.  There is no guessing, it is a foolproof way to coordinate.  I usually use one of my shirts or dresses to pull from since it is easier to find clothes from my boy’s closets to match mine.  However this year a lot of the focus pieces were my boy’s shirts.

Can you pick out the focus shirt in this example?  If you said the white shirt with the beach scenes on it, you are correct!  Can you see how I pulled out the yellows, peaches, pink and purple out of the shirt?  Looks awesome together, right?   

In this outfit the focus shirt is the “Dude, Chill” shirt.  This is a perfect example of colors that look good together that I wouldn’t usually pair together.  The navy with the pops of purples and pinks looks amazing!  It makes sense though as it is an analogous color scheme (meaning the colors are next to each other on the color wheel).  I will be talking more about this later.

Like I said, these are not colors that I would normally pick so it also gets me out of an “outfit rut” doing it this way as well.  I asked my 13 year old if he was ok wearing pink and I was told that “Real men wear pink!”  🙂  You can also see that there are several other colors in this shirt that I could have picked from so the options are endless here.  If you focused on the purple, orange, turquoise and yellow colors, that would be an example of a square color scheme as shown in the photo below.

Color Wheel Schemes

If you are not good at pairing colors, I would recommend the prior tip first but another way is to look at a color wheel to see which colors go together. Here is a great photo to show different combinations you can use.  I will give you examples of some of these schemes in our outfits.

Source

Analogous Scheme

I already talked about analogous combinations a little bit.  It is one of the easiest schemes to put together.  This example uses different shades of blues and greens which lie directly next to each other on the color wheel.  In truth I just pulled out colors from the “Living Legend” shirt but it also serves as a perfect example for analogous combination.

Here is another example.  I would call this more of an extended analogous theme since these color shades (gold, mint and navy) are not directly next to each other but the color families are…yellow, green and blue.  So it still works.  

Complementary Scheme

Another easy one is complementary combinations.  Complimentary colors lie directly across from each other on the color wheel and always look great together!  This orange and blue outfit is a good example of a complementary scheme.  As you can see in the outfit, using this method you can use different shades of the two colors and it still looks terrific.

Split Complementary Scheme

This scheme is similar to the complimentary but instead of using two directly across from each other, you use the 2 colors adjacent to one of the opposing colors.  In this example we are using green, orange and navy blue.  When using the color wheel, don’t be stuck on the shades they show.  You can use the same concept with different shades of the colors.  Like in this one the color shown on the color wheel is a true blue color but in our outfit it is navy.  They still blend together nicely!

Triadic Scheme

This color scheme is one of favorites.  I love the color combinations that it provides.  In our example we use the green, orange and purple combination.  As you can see though, there is no purple in our outfit.  So this is my tip for you, you can pick two out the three colors in this scheme and they will still look fantastic together.  Another option, like I did here, is to substitute a neutral color as your third color.  In this example we substituted purple with brown/tan.

Using Neutrals

Another easy option is to pick a color and use neutrals with it.  Neutrals include black, white, grays, tans and browns.  You can pair anything with neutral colors.  Here are some examples of that.

I have to show off the embroidery that Mr. Wonderful and my MIL did for a couple of our shirts.  Aren’t these Mickeys on the shirts adorable?  I think they add the perfect amount of “Disneyness” (I just made up that word!) to our outfit.  They also did a couple shirts for the “Dude, Chill” outfit above.  

This last outfit is a fun one.  We are going on this trip with my in laws and some of our friends.  We made these tie-dye shirts a couple years ago for a trip where we (us and the in laws) all wore them.  My MIL really wanted to wear them again but our friends did not have them.  So we loaned them one of ours for their youngest boy.  We decided that the in laws would both wear them and one person from each other family would wear one.  We then picked colors out from the tie-dye shirts to use for the rest of the shirts.

And yes…our friends are also color coordinating with us each day too!  🙂  It took a little time organizing this but it will be worth it.  Now anyone who takes a picture with anyone else with look great together!  We can’t wait to wear our DIY floral wire Minnie ears with our outfits too!

Obviously these are not full outfits but the main focus in most pictures is on your shirts anyway.  Just follow the same rules when adding shorts or just throw a neutral pair of shorts with the outfits.  I hope this helps you, it does take some extra time planning but it will be worth it when you see the end results in your pictures from your trip!

Have a wonderful day!