BOHO WEDDING IN FRANCE

How did you two meet?

I would love to say there was a really romantic story about how we met, catching each other’s eyes on a crowded train, however I have to come clean that we met on Tinder. Although we had mutual friends, I was initially sceptical about online dating, Harry was actually my first and only date I went on! We hit it off straight away and have been inseparable ever since, both sharing a love of horse racing, travelling, psychedelic festivals and dogs.

 
The dress and the bridal look

Before getting engaged, I hadn’t really put much thought into what I might like to wear, so it felt a bit daunting to go into shops and start trying things on. After going into a few shops and trying on lots of different styles, I realised that I might not find what I really wanted and might have to look into getting it made.
I knew I wanted a daring back, and liked the idea of mismatched materials so I collected lots of pictures of the parts of dresses I liked and started to build a picture in my head of what my dream dress might look like.

I came across Indie Bride online, and was really drawn to the bohemian / relaxed style. I visited their showroom near Oval and met with Miina and tried a few of their dresses on. Although I still hadn’t found exactly what I was looking for in the dress selection, I enquired about a bespoke service and knew that I had found the place where I could imagine my dress coming to life. 

I sent Miina a few pictures of dresses that I had seen, where I had liked one part but not another, and we worked together to create the final dress I wore for my wedding.  As the dress started to come together, Miina was so helpful in helping suggesting tweaks here and there and was so reassuring throughout the whole process.

 
Makeup and hair

Our friend Aleksandra Whyman is a talented wedding makeup artist and did my make up as part of my wedding present. I asked for light and natural make up as I wanted to look like myself with a bit more glow! The brilliant Victoria Farr did all of our hair and the makeup for the bridesmaids, my mum and Harry’s mum, keeping the look natural and not too ‘done’.

Accessories

I wore a gold plated Laure de Sagazan crown as a forehead band, with white wax flowers placed above where my veil sat. My veil was the ‘Cali’ veil from Britten Weddings, and it felt so amazing and really flowed in the wind which I loved. After dinner I changed my headpiece for a white flower and foliage crown.

 
The groom's outfit

Harry bought himself and his groomsmen a navy jacket from Crew, some chocolate loafers from Fairfax and Favor matched with stone chinos. As a keepsake from the wedding,  each of the boys were given a colourful alphabet pocket square from a British designer Jessica Russell Flint, each one different depending on the letter of their name.

 
Venue

Neither of us have anywhere in the UK that we are attached to, and we aren’t religious so we had the freedom to go somewhere a little different. We decided on France as we didn’t want our friends and family to have to travel too far and we both love our food and wine.

We knew we wanted somewhere rustic and typically French, but wanted to get married so wanted it to be in a natural and rural setting. We spent a lot of time searching the internet where we found the venue and our wedding planner Ajna Ellis (Oui Mon Couer). She confirmed that the venue we had found was a good fit for what we said we wanted, and that actually she had married at the venue herself!

We flew out to see it a few weeks later and as we passed the gates, drove through the forest and eventually saw La Leotardie come into view, we knew we had found the magic we were after. We are both outdoorsy and the wild flower meadow and remote location, where all you could hear was the cuckoo made us feel so at home.

Decor

The venue was so beautiful, and it being spring, all the roses were in full bloom so it didn’t feel like we had to do a whole lot to get the wow factor. That being said, our planner Ajna, was fantastic and had seemingly endless styling and décor props, such as a furniture suite for our cocktail hour and macramé bunting. 

Our main focus for our décor was the flowers, which we wanted to be as colourful as possible but also natural and in season. Harry’s family emblem is the sunflower so we asked the florist (Le Coeur Sauvage) to include it in key pieces such as the flower hoop that hung on the tree behind where our ceremony was held. We wanted splashes of colour wherever possible and had stems suspended above the dining tables and lots of mismatched jars and containers filled with wildflowers.

Although our main style feature was the flowers, to help bring the venue to life and look ‘bright and beautiful we incorporated colour everywhere we could, including renting mismatched coloured glassware and vintage crockery. Festoon lights were hung up to light up the courtyard where we had dinner and the dance floor, as well as fire pits for people to relax around late into the evening to give the evening a warm glow.

Food and cake

Our caterer was Fabrice Le Chef, who was brilliant and really helpful in helping us decide what would work best. Rather than have strict instructions on what we wanted, we were happy to let Fabrice lead the way, and serve something that was typical to the local area. Instead of having starters, we had an extended canape session, ensuring that there was a steady flow of food so that guests didn’t feel short changed. We then had sharing plates of both confit and duck breast, with dauphinoise potatoes, bowls of roast vegetable salad and c. For vegetarian / gluten-free option we had mushroom parmentier.

Dessert was served as a buffet so people could help themselves, with miniature servings of mini chocolate pots, gluten-free brownies, assorted macaroons and strawberry salad with broken merengues. There was also cheese from our cheese tower that people could help themselves to throughout the night. Rather than a traditional wedding cake, we opted to have huge wheels of cheese which could be enjoyed throughout the evening after dinner with baguettes. We used harder cheese for the first two layers, gradually building up to softer cheeses such as brie and goats cheese.

Entertainment

We had a few garden games throughout the canapes and for our music we had a DJ and saxophone duo along with bongo drums instead of a band which was awesome.

Photography and videography

Our photographer was Melissa Lenoir of Mamzelle, did a fantastic job of making us feel at ease and captured some really beautiful shots of our day. We wanted our photos to be relaxed and not too posed, so we were really pleased with all of the natural shots; we have really enjoyed going back through them all with our family and friends.

For our video, our friend put us in touch with Estelle Gasc from Video Trotteur and she absolutely nailed the brief we gave her. I chose some music options and she put everything together for us, and it really captured our day perfectly.

 
- Lucy -