Merav & Martin

This morning's wedding takes us to sunny France for a classic, elegant wedding in a Chateau. Merav and Martin celebrated their wedding with close friends and family in the most beautifully French way - with lots of good food and wine of course! Green Antlers were on hand to take some stunning photographs for them - the dusk shots outside the chateau are just dreamy and have me longing for warmer days and later sunsets. This wedding is an absolute stunner, but also feels homespun and intimate and I'm sure you'll see what I mean when you enjoy the images...

The Bride

Merav the Bride: I had never really thought about what kind of dress I wanted before we got engaged, so had no idea where to start! After a couple of bridal appointments and lots of Pinterest board browsing, I came across Catherine Deane. During my first appointment at her London bridal boutique, I found two lace dresses - one beautiful strapless lace dress (having started my search vowing not to go strapless!) and another with an incredible lace top. I'm indecisive at the best of times so this was always going to be a tough decision, but Sandra at Catherine Deane helped me through the process, suggesting I have a lace top made in the style of the second dress to wear over the first one...and I was sold! My veil and shoes were from Luella's Bridal in Wimbledon and our florist Magali made me a fresh flower comb for my hair. Our hair and make up were done by the lovely Sarah Fekir and her team.

The Groom


Martin's suit and tie are from Hugo Boss and his shoes from Dune. He wore this with cufflinks I bought him for his 30th, and his watch which was an engagement present from me. Martin is half French and grew up in France, and we both love good food, so getting married there was an easy choice for us! We looked at a few planners for French weddings, but in the end made a shortlist ourselves and took a road trip to view them - 
Chateau du Croisillat ticked all the boxes!

The Styling


Chateau du Croisillat is such a beautiful venue, it didn't need a lot to dress it up for a great party! We made many of the decorations ourselves and are so lucky to have such wonderful friends and family who helped us decorate the venue the day before the wedding - we couldn't have done it without them! We didn't have a wedding planner, but my sister-in-law Lauren kept everyone on track the morning of the wedding. In the run up to the wedding, I folded over 1000 paper cranes which our friends then painstakingly strung up and hung around the venue. We kept the table decoration simple with floral centrepieces, my brother made beautiful candles from wine bottles we collected and we had kraft menus tied with rosemary alongside green paper cranes. Our favours were a jar of M&Ms on each table, a little thank you from M&M!

The Flowers

Like most of our suppliers, Magali was recommended to us by our venue - she was one of the few local suppliers that spoke perfect English which meant I could help Martin with some of the local planning too. We met Magali on a visit to France around 8 months before the wedding and she immediately got what we were looking for - the only real guidance we gave was lots of greenery and blush/white flowers! The table centrepieces and bouquets were incredible, some of the most beautiful flowers I've seen.

The Wedding Party


We found the bridesmaids dresses on ASOS. They wore with their own shoes along with a pearl necklace and earrings which I gave them on the morning of the wedding to say thank you for all their support! The groomsmen wore ties from Hawes and Curtis and we also had cufflinks made as thank you gifts, with vintage maps of the wedding venue on one side and their home city on the other.

The Ceremony


Despite some rain in the morning the sun came out just in time for our outdoor ceremony - turns out you can't guarantee the weather, even in the south of France, but it all worked out in the end! Having had our legal wedding in Wandsworth Town Hall a week before, we wanted our French ceremony to be personal to us and those we love. We wrote our own vows and asked our good friend Dror to be our celebrant - he created an incredibly moving ceremony which reflected us and our vows to each other perfectly. Our reading was a passage from The Little Prince in three languages - our relationship is in English, Martin's mum used the French version to help his dad learn French when they were first dating, and my dad used to read the Hebrew version to us as kids - so it felt like the right choice for us!

The Entertainment


We're lucky to have several hugely talented friends and family - Martin's Mum and Uncle played piano and flute before and during our ceremony, accompanied by his cousin Lucie's beautiful voice. Our friend Katrina sang incredibly during the cocktails, accompanied by our DJ who also kept us partying well into the night!

The Food


Food was one of the most important elements of the day for us, particularly given the area of France we were in had some great local produce. As Chateau du Croisillat is hired on a venue-only basis and we were planning the wedding from the UK, we found caterers that could take care of everything from receiving delivery of the wine (sourced from local vineyards) to manning the bar, as well as setting up and serving canapes, dinner and drinks. Our guests enjoyed bubbles and canapes outside following the ceremony followed by dinner of salmon gravlax, steak and a traditional French wedding cake for dessert. We also had platters of bread and local cheeses served at midnight.

The Photography


When we started planning our wedding, other than of course being surrounded by everyone we love, one of the most important elements was finding someone who could capture our memories for us! We knew the day would fly by, so having photographs that helped us re-live such an emotion-filled day was a way to extend this just a little longer! We could not be happier to have picked (and been picked by!) Green Antlers Photography. When we received our photos, we felt transported back to our wedding day, and so many of our friends and family have said they felt the same. Sam and Diana are hugely talented, managing to capture not only the setting, details and people, but the mood and emotion too...I cannot recommend them highly enough!