Siegel Thurston Photography

Congratulations! You’ve gotten engaged, you’ve started planning your wedding, and now on to some of the details that will make your wedding day dreams come alive — selecting your color scheme, your bridal party and their look.

Now we’ve all been in weddings before where we’ve ended up with a closet full of dresses that despite what the bride might of said when she showed you what dresses you were wearing—you knew you would never wear again.

All of that has been changing the last few years, changes that have made both the bride and the bridesmaids equally as happy.

There’s so many fabulous trends in the latest in bridesmaid fashion the last few years, and one that has remained tried and true and timeless is allowing your bridesmaids to choose the style of dress they’re wearing.

Don’t worry, before the thought of having girls in random styles and colors of dresses surrounding you on your wedding day — one of the best parts about this trend is YOU still get to pick what you want them to wear, but they get to choose a dress style and silhouette that is most flattering on them.

With the trend of having mix & match or mismatched dresses, one of the most popular variances of this is for you to pick the color and a selection of styles and they pick which style they’re wearing. Depending on how large your bridal party is may determine how many styles you let your ‘maids choose from. For example, for a bridal party of eight, you may select anywhere up to four styles for your girls to choose from. For bridal parties as small as four, maybe just two options. You just want to make sure that there’s never just one person in one sort of style, unless you want to do what some brides do, have the maid or matron of honor wearing a different style from the rest of the bridesmaids.

So with choosing your color, (this is usually the primary color of your wedding color scheme), and choosing a handful of styles, you create a win-win situation for everyone, you look beautiful, your wedding looks beautiful and not only do your bridesmaids look beautiful, but they also FEEL beautiful standing next to you on one of the most important days of your life.

What exactly does this look like? We loved how one of our recent brides, Sydney, coordinated this for her bridal party of seven.

MIX & MATCH DRESSES: ONE COLOR, DIFFERENT STYLES – GET THE LOOK

Sydney went with one of 2015’s hottest hues for weddings and bridesmaid dresses this year: royal blue. Notice how you still get the uniform look, but you also get a variation of styles that flatter each figure and in a way that doesn’t make any of the dresses look out of place.

Here you can see the bridal party is wearing the same color, but two different styles: a strapless option and a sleeveless option. One of the key things to remember with this trend is selecting dresses that are the same type of fabric to add to the uniformity. That way even with each girl wearing a different style, the bridal party still looks consistent.

They’re just absolutely lovely. Congrats again to the Wilhelms, it was a pleasure to be a part of your special day!