Whenever my newly engaged friends come seeking advice, I tell them all the same thing – consider a destination wedding. One, they’re beautiful. Two, we all get to travel to someplace utterly fabulous (South of France, anyone?) And three, because you’ve got amazing vendors like Lavender And Rose and Laetitia C on location and others like O’Malley Photographers willing to travel right with you. It’s sort of a win-win-win situation, and you can see more pretty evidence sitting here.
From O’Malley Photographers…We have a gorgeous and intimate destination wedding here to share with you! Taken by the gorgeous scenery and surroundings, this couple opted for a stylish, but rustic destination wedding in the south of France. Domaine des Grottes, the hundreds of years old estate, beautifully restored and turned into an idyllic wedding venue in Provence provided the picture perfect back-drop. Guests gathered together at a nearby catholic church to witness the bride and groom say their vows and afterward enjoyed cocktails, live jazz and dinner on the estate. The bride and groom chose to hire Lavender and Rose to plan and design their destination event without flaw. With beautiful furniture, old-world elegance and sweeping views across the rolling foot hills and olive groves, this truly was a dream destination wedding.
From The Bride…We wanted to get married in Provence. We visited a lot of venues, and we really fell in love with this place the first time we went there. It had everything we wanted, the house itself was beautiful, very well decorated, with enough rooms to allow our families to stay with us. The surroundings with the vineyards and olive fields are magical. They have a very beautiful pool with old stone arcades, where we imagined the reception taking place. It was the perfect mix between the Provence authenticity and modernity we were after. Also, the owner was lovely and really helpful. We rented the whole domaine for 3 days and it felt like home.
We wanted an elegant and ‘modern’ wedding, but as we were in Provence we wanted to incorporate some elements of it in the decor. For example, our stationery was not very traditional but yet very chic, and we used pictures of the domaine, region and images of flowers from the area in it. Our graphic designer thought we should use the idea of travel and designed a series of bespoke little stamps that incorporated some of our styling ideas. We also used names of flowers you can find in the area (lavender, rose, mimosa etc) as table names and Louise created stamps with the name of each flower that we used on our table holders. The RSVP was a postcard as well.
For the tablescapes we wanted something chic and modern, that’s why we chose crystal chairs with grey tablecloth and very neat and structured ceterpieces of peonies, roses and hydrangeas. Our wedding planners and the graphic designer who designed our stationery helped us to achieve what we wanted.
The color scheme was navy blue, dove grey, blush pink, and peach. We had blue envelopes, pink and grey invitations. The flowers were pink and peach and the tablecloth and napkins were pink and grey. The flower girls and page boys were also in navy blue and blush pink. Even the church was pink! The source of inspiration was the place itself which was an old postal station/ coaching inn from the 18th century.
Definitely hire a good wedding planner from the area. It is very difficult to find good service providers, caterers, flowers, etc when you are not from there and also you need someone on-site that coordonates everything, the deliveries, the settings etc. I would also send save-the-dates and invitations far in advance to make sure people can book their flights, hotels etc. Our wedding planners also created a website that was very useful for all the guests who travelled to the south of France.
Photography: O'Malley Photographers | Event Design: Lavender and Rose | Event Planning: Lavender and Rose | Floral Design: Laetitia C. - fleurs d'atelier | Wedding Dress: Vera Wang | Cake: Wedding Cakes By Pamela | Invitations: Louise Richardson Stationery | Catering: Marrou | Make-up: Laury Guglielmetti | Hair: Hope Stanley | Venue: Domaine Des Grottes