A Beautiful Beach Wedding in France…

Hello everyone :)  This week is going to be a good one, I can feel it in my bones! 😉 Starting off right now with this just beautiful set of photographs, that celebrate the wedding of Patricia & Pierre-Yann,who tied the knot on 2 July 2010.

Patricia and Pierre-Yann wanted to have their wedded close to the ocean, so chose a beautiful beach 'La chambre d'Amour' ('the room of love' beach) at the venue L'Espace de l'Océan (the 'Ocean space', located in Anglet in The Basque Country of France. A stunning backdrop no less, for Patricia's floaty chiffon wedding dress by Pronovias…

"I wanted an ivory color and flowy fabric. I didn’t go for the typical heavy princess dress because it was a beach wedding so a chiffon material was more suitable. I thought it would take me ages to find a dress and I only had a week to find one as the shop needed 5 months for them to have it altered.

I find my dress straight away, but I didn’t want strapless so they added sleeves that fell off the shoulders and wrapped up into a bow in the back of the dress.

I choose my dress because I loved the way it was fitted on the hips – it was very feminine and it had an athenian emperor style to it too. It was very comfortable too…"

Love My Dress Wedding Blog – Photography Copyright (c) 2011, Ed Peers

What a beautiful shot of Patricia's dress…

Patrician actually wore 3 pairs of shoes on her wedding day;  For the beach ceremony, she wore a pair of espadrilles (traditional Basque shoes).  For the afternoon ceremony, she wore a pair of Faith silk ivory high heels with a bow on the front of the shoe {see below}.   For the reception, Patricia, wore a pair of leather tap dance style high heel shoes from famous Japanese designer: Yohji Yamamoto.

I love these shots that Photographer Ed Peers has captured…

"I wore a pair of earrings and bracelet from the vintage Top Shop accessories departement on Oxford street. They were fabulously shiney and yet a fraction of the price of real diamonds – a perfect alternative for me…"

"On our wedding day, we had a morning ceremony with a close family and a few best friends located on the beach next to the venue. The afternoon took place in the venue overlooking the ocean waves…."

"Pierre-Yann proposed on the deck of a house boat overlooking the light city and it was a full moon and the deck was covered of candles. I had my eyes closed and he started to play piano and I was confused because I thought we were going out to meet friends. I then opened my eyes and he was playing he said to shut my eyes again and then the music changed. When I heard Israel Kamakawiwo`ole 's version of 'Somewhere over the rainbow' I knew right there and there with my eyes shut he would be on one knee. I had associated that song to that moment and had not clue how he knew but that song created a magical moment. He said i love you in english, french and spanish and it was perfect.

On the bridge I cried out I'm engaged!' We walked home to my parents and all our closest friends were there to open champagne and have diner. The next day I went to university for one class and hopt on a eurostar for two days in london! We had a fabulous diner in Oxo tower and some more champagne open with the friends who hosted us…"

"My sister Camille White is a florist, so she created all the floral decoration with the flowers bought at the markets. We choose peony white for my bouquet that was a round ball of flowers that I held with an ivory ribbon. Then there were orange and rasberry bergeras in vases on the tables, orange and rasberry arums…"

Mind those waves! 🙂

"All the groomsmen had a classy black suit and thin black tie. They groom had a raspberry color rose bud in the pocket and the groomsmen had an orange rose…"

Patricia's Bridesmaids wore beauitful chiffon vintage style pink dresses from Zara, that she had altered to fit each Bridesmaid perfectly.  The maids also wore dark pink high heel espadrilles…

"I walked down the aisle by music composed by my fiancé called " Le Chemin de l'amour véritable" ('the way to true love') it was classical and majestic to the most!"

The couple had their rings hand-made by Karlin Anderson…

"She had designed my sister's wedding rings and I have always wanted a handmade piece for my engagement ring. When we decided to get married, my Husband told me we would go to London to check out some fancy jewellery shops to get an idea of rings I liked but actually the day before leaving for London, he proposed and a handmade ring by Karlin Anderson was in a wooden box shining before the moon lit night and I said Yes before even seeing it. I went close to a candle and loved it. He had gone to London for a day and they met up in Covent Garden and he told her what I wanted. I wanted her to make the wedding band as well.

What made it so special is that the diamonds are from an antique brooch that belonged to my great grandmother. She extracted the diamonds and it has a vintage style to it and very modern too as it is in platinum and has three claws to hold the main diamond. My husband has darker skin and thin fingers so silver looked funny so he opted for a larger titanium ring that is mat color very masculine and feel very light…"

"We had very simple decoration because the venue was classy enough. We had colourful flowers in a simple square vase and ribbon on the white tables. We only had pictures of lots of our friends that we put on the vases and had a scrapbook area where people could write in the guest book where we made it as a fun questionnaire to fill.

We had colored spots of light that made a hot feel atmosphere. We wanted it to feel very simple  – and we didn't want to fall foul of tacky wedding decorations…"

"Pierre-Olivier Gruber provided our catering.  He has very good taste in the way the food is presented and he uses only the highest quality ingredients.

It was not a traditional sit down meal. We had high bar tables and some lower tables and people got up for all sorts of small portion food. Some oysters, spanish tapas, some green lemon tinny ice creams, duck and mashed sweet potato, foie gras toast with fig…"

"Our traditional wedding cake was home made by Cascade of 19, High St, Great Bookham, Leatherhead, Surrey KT23 4AA.  I am not a fruit cake eater and so we had our caterer make some lovely yummy cakes and the table of deserts was filled with macaroons.

Of the whole night I remembered only eating one macaroon right after I cut the cake. We had spot lights and bubbles floating around – it was beautiful…"

"My father and I danced to the Waltz of the Flower by Tchaikovsky and then my husband and I waltzed away some more before dancing a little moment and it broke off with "I am feeling good" by Michael Bubble and then on a tango music that ended up with some bossa nova tune…"

Words of Wedded Wisdom…

"I would mostly say that in order to truly enjoy the day you need to be smart enough to delegate the coordination to someone special (yet not your family and not your best friend because that person needs to know all the details and take on all of the issues and coordination). I was told by my sister on the wedding morning, "now you cannot say anything,if something is not where it should be don't even say anything, its not the moment, you go through the day enjoying it to the full as it flashes by so quickly".   Then I would add you need to spend time with the people that have traveled far away to make it and show true appreciation on the wedding day or thanking them later on.

Then try and have a very clear map out of everything anyone is in charged of and after what it follows (who puts my extra pair of shoes in my area when the first pair hurts? who opens the door at the ceremony when you enter to go down the aisle? who is going to make sure they know where all the decoration boxes are put so that it isn't a mess when you need to put it away late in the night ?) The coordinator of the day needs to know the run-sheet and in details; then you can remind people beforehand what they said they would do to make it easier and it can happen as smoothly as possible.

Try but it is very hard: get thank you cards ready beforehand, if not enough time, when you send your invitations, try to have the addresses close by so you manage easily to send your thank you cards."

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Brides dress & veil – Pronovias
Brides shoes – espadrilles + Faith + Yohji Yamamoto.
Accessories – White peony as hair accessory + Topshop earrings & bracelet
Bridesmaids – Zara
Groom's suit – Karl Lagerfield
Venue – 'Espace de l'Océan
Photographer – Ed Peers
Transport – black maserati + black porsche
Flowers – Camille White

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Thank you so much Patricia for so kindly sharing your wedding day style with Love My Dress, huge congratulations to you and Pierre-Yann on your wedding 🙂

Big thanks too to the brilliant Photographer Ed Peers for allowing reproduction of these images.  Patrica says…

"To tell you the absolute truth we knew we were not going to get a traditional french photographer because we had found only expensive unoriginal shots on most websites.   We found Ed Peers' website that had travel pictures. One day as we were looking at his albums we saw one wedding featured and we were captured by the angle used and the originality. The simple is turned into the special and he can capture looks and details. I love details and facial expressions and that's the things you want on a wedding day. You don’t want to force a smile because you have a jaw ache of smilling too much because everyone wants a shot with you but if you have a photographer like Ed all the real moments will be captured to make the day a real memory.

We both loved the photographic filtre used that added a dreamy feel to the shots. Plus you want someone that makes you feel relaxed when you have your wedding shots alone: you kiss, you hug and you look at eachother intensively so you want someone taking your picture that gives you ideas and directs you so you don’t end up with tacky shots and that's what we had. We had such a fun photoshoot and in one place it seemed like so many different backgrounds were found!"

Thank you so much,

Annabel xXx

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