Margot and Paul’s summer wedding had a very obvious theme: Rainbows! They also incorporated lots of stars such as on the bride’s dress, their rings and in the stationery. They were married at a lovely country house in the heart of the Thousand Ponds region in Haute Saone, France.
“Our wedding was themed around rainbows and pixels!” said Margot. “It was a mix of Paul, who works in video games and myself, who loves bright colours. We were married in an area of France that we discovered and fell in love with together. We let ourselves be inspired by anything we liked during the wedding preparations. Pinterest was a huge source of ideas, but we also used our range of skills (and those of our friends). If we saw something we liked during a walk or a visit somewhere we would make a note of it and try to use it.”
“Our venue and the location was definitely something original about our wedding. The Haute Saone region is a remote and unspoiled area of France where tourism is not really developed mostly due to the weather, which can often be moody. Our guests were mostly coming from the UK but also from California, Norway, Finland and of course France. But everybody travelled to that wonderful rural location, surrounded by forest and lakes which made it a memorable experience. We sourced all the food and drinks from local suppliers which allowed the guests to experience what this part of France has to offer.”
“Since the guests were primarily French or English speakers, we created our own ceremony which was translated in both languages. The ceremony was officiated by two of our friends who delivered in both languages so that everyone could understand. To encourage people of different nationalities to mingle, we created informal teams for the giants games we had set up in a decorated barn. This helped overcome the language barriers!”
The DIY projects included most of the reception decorations, the favours, all the paper flowers and the guest book. “Since I am a bookbinder by trade, I made a custom leather-bound guestbook and wedding album for us and also photo albums for our parents”, Margot explained. “But my skills are not limited to books, so I was able to make all the save the date and invitation cards. For the favours, I made bespoke leather luggage tags with names and country of origin for every guest. We also handmade party bags, name tags, food labels for the buffet, and collected hundreds of jars for candles. The 300 meters of bunting were made by my sister and my mother-in-law with scraps of fabric that we collected from every possible source. However, the biggest DIY project was the 300 flowers, which were all handmade in paper with the stands to go with it.”
The bride bought her dress online, and had it customised to match their theme by adding multicoloured stars to the waist. Their bridesmaids and flowergirls were each given a different colour for their outfit, making a rainbow when they all stood together! “The best thing about our wedding was to see it all coming together. We planned so many things that it was hard to imagine them all together and I worried that it wouldn’t work. But then we started installing everything, and it was obvious that it was going to work. That was magical.”
“Our advice for other couples would be to help you with the seating plan, use perfecttableplan.com. Also keep in mind that your big day will hardly ever be as perfect as you imagined it to be. But, don’t worry about it! You are going to be surrounded with the people that matter the most to you. And those people are going to be so happy to be sharing this day with you that they won’t realise that this detail was planned and that other one wasn’t. So enjoy yourself, and enjoy your loved ones as much as possible.”
