From Sylvie Gil Photography... Lorène & Kenny met in Paris nearly 10 years ago. Before getting engaged, Lorene and Kenny moved across the world to Hong Kong together to set up an architectural and interior design studio together. They have been living/working/spending every waking minute together for the last 4 years, and still decided to get married! While it took Kenny 9 years to ask Lorene for her hand in marriage, he did it beautifully and naturally, while they were spending some time in the Lake District (England’s largest national park). He proposed with a gorgeous ring of sapphire (for the blue colour which is Lorene’s favourite) and diamonds.

Lorene and Kenny are a very cross cultural couple. Lorene is French but grew up in London and Kenny is half Japanese/Chinese, and a British citizen who has lived over 20 years in the UK. They both now live in Hong Kong.

Lorene has very fond memories of her childhood and special holidays spent in Provence and Provence was an easy choice when it came to deciding where the wedding would take place. Their wedding was a unique chance to gather everyone in France, close to where Lorene’s family is settled in Provence, and to make all their friends and families from abroad discover this unique part of the world, with its delicious foods and beautiful landscapes.

Also, Bastide de Gordes is a very well known luxury hotel in the Luberon, but it is not a venue that hosts many weddings, so the couple felt that holding their wedding there would be even more special as it is not something that has been seen and done plenty of times before them. The venue is so gorgeous in itself that it did not need much to make it beautiful for the wedding, in fact we made sure to not over decorate it and to keep it natural for everyone to enjoy its beauty.

Lorene and Kenny are architect and interior designers so materials are important to them. Lorene wanted to use some material from Provence in some of the décor elements of the wedding, so we used stone from Gordes for the table names, which we had calligraphy on. For the ceremony arch, we used a hothouse arch, as there are many of these in the area and they provide an interesting width compared to traditional garden arches, which worked great with the space.

The ceremony was a very peaceful moment, punctuated by readings from close family members and an olive tree ceremony, the olive tree symbolizing wisdom & peace, hope, light, fertility, health & wealth in Provence.

The wedding venue is hung on a cliff and on the other side of that is a small popular view point. During ceremony we could see a family of locals watching the event from afar and we heard them clap when the bride and groom kissed!

After dinner the party moved indoors for the dancing party. All the guests gathered each side of the hallway leading to the ballroom with large sparklers for the couple to walk through. The effect was magical.