French Destination Wedding gets a Magazine Feature

Adam and Emily planned their sunny destination nuptuals in the gorgeous South of France, and it didn't disappoint. Emily fills us in on the planning, details and their romantic Chateau wedding.

We had driven around France a couple of times prior to the wedding and adore skiing in France.  The people had always been extremely welcoming so it was an area that we thought made a lot of sense.  If it wasn’t France it would have been cornwall and in honesty, what we paid for the chateau for three nights is what we would have ended up paying for a venue in cornwall for 11 hours.  With that, the fact that we could almost guarantee the good weather and the travel time was pretty much the same as our london based friends to cornwall then it made a lot of sense. 

This particular venue just tugged at the heart strings.  We had searched around online and found a few different chateau’s in this vague area but this one always looked fabulous.  From looking at the pictures we had both agreed that if it was as good as it looked we would go for it.  On arrival to look around I have to say that it was even more striking than the photos do justice.  It really is a stunning venue and somewhere we still feel hugely fortunate to have found. We did some shopping around online to try and find the ideal place and just came across this one randomly.  The thing we loved about Chateu de Lisse is that the venue had a chapel so people just needed to get to one location (at least anyone that wasn’t staying on site).  That and the fact that it was a truly fabulous view out at the back of the chateau which is what we would look over for our wedding breakfast.

We were fortunate that the Chateau itself housed the entire bridal party and as we only had 80 coming to the wedding itself this didn’t leave a huge number to find accomodation.  Thankfully, Jo (our aforementioned wedding planner) had a shortlist of places that she recommended people should stay.  On our drive over to search out wines we stayed at the place that would accommodate most of the other guests and it was delightful.   Jo really made this very easy for us in this sense.  All we did was listed these venues on our website and let people book directly.   We organised for a bus to pick people up on the afternoon of the wedding and bring people to the venue with two of the ushers onboard to check that everyone made it on and up to the venue.

The dress was a totally bespoke number made by Catherine Hunter at Catherine Blades Couture.  There had been lots of shopping round to find the right thing but nothing ever really tugged at the heart strings to think that this was “the one”.  I went to Catherine with the things I liked about a number of dresses and she set to creating what would be my ideal dress.  She created sketches, showed me fabric swatches and then started to put the dress together.  I went for a few different fittings, one with my Mum, and was made to feel a million dollars at every step of the journey.  Catherine really did create my dream dress which, in my view, was elegant and classy with beautiful detailed touches as well.  As a wedding gift Catherine also framed the sketches that she had originally done for me which now adorn my bedroom wall and will be a fantastic momento for years to come.

I am very particular on the type of makeup that I like to wear and was conscious that I wanted to not look too different to how I normally look when wearing makeup.  I therefore decided that I would go to Charlotte Tilbury with one of my bridesmaids and that my bridesmaid would help me do my makeup on the day.  I bought all the makeup from them and had plenty of opportunity to try it out ahead of the wedding so that I would be comfortable on the day, and not have makeup that I had never had before. My bridesmaid did a fantastic job and I felt so much more comfortable with this approach than having someone come in and do the makeup for me.
The chateau recommended a hair stylist who came and did all the bridesmaids hair, mine and my mother’s.  She did a great job and it really was a military operation over the course of the morning (champagne glass in hand of course).

What inspired your colour palette?
We just wanted something very classy so stuck with green and white.  No specific inspiration, we simply didn’t want to over complicate things.  We were really happy with the final look on the day.

Having a wedding abroad certainly came with its challenges.  We very much had to our faith in our wedding planner and her team to decorate things as we had hoped but it was the little touches that took the majority of our time.  It was these that we always took the view would make that extra difference to make the weekend truly memorable.  Getting some of these things over to the venue proved a little challenging but thankfully Jo allowed us to send things over to her for her to collate and bring to the chateau.  The main things that proved challenging were getting over our substantial amount of gin (which thankfully a friend took over in their car), and sorting out getting the champagne delivered from the vineyard we had found in Reims.  The owners of the vineyard spoke very little English and we spoke little to no French. Thankfully we drafted in a French speaking friend to draft and decipher messages so this all ended up going rather smoothly.  We were also extremely fortunate to have a family member who worked in events so was hugely helpful in putting together a run down of how the day would go and subsequently setting tasks for specific people to compete.  Without this I’m certain we would all have been running around like headless chickens and things would almost certainly not gone as smoothly.   I’d hugely recommend for anyone planning a wedding to take this approach.  Whilst it was very regimented, it meant that we didn’t miss a things and absolutely everything went to plan on the big day, which is all we could ask for.

Thank you to Emily and Adam for shring their bug day with us. Their wedding has been featured by Destination Weddings and Honeymoons Abroad Magazine in their latest issue. You can get your copy here.

Venue -Chateau de Lisse
Photographer - Chris Kemp
Events -The Impeccable Pear ( impeccable pear events )
Band -Groove Zoo
Make up - Charlotte Tilbury makeup
Hair dresser - English Hairdresser in France
Dress - Catherine Blades Couture