How Fragrance Uniquely Enhances Your Wedding Experience
Bride to be turned perfumer, Sherri Sebastian, on how to make your wedding favors personalized. (Photo: Sherri Sebastian)
You’ve spent a year planning every last detail of your wedding down to strategically seating chatty aunt Norma next to quiet cousin Eddie. But unfortunately, no amount of time and thought will prevent your big day from zooming by in a blur. Sure, photos and videos documenting the event will let you relive it a tad in years to come. And that ice cream maker (who convinced you to put that on the registry?) you happen upon during kitchen-wide searches for lesser-used saucepans will plunge you into a rabbit hole of nostalgia for your nuptials and failed rocky road experiments. But if you’re searching for other ways to preserve the occasion, consider welcoming fragrance into your wedding party.
“Scent triggers memory more than any of your physical senses and, if you incorporate fragrance into your most special day, it will always bring you back to that moment,” says Sarah Horowitz-Thran, the perfumer behind Sarah Horowitz Parfums and Biography Scents of Self. “Your wedding really does go by in a second, and fragrance can capture it even deeper than a photograph can.”
Horowitz-Thran knows of what she speaks. She is one of three talented women — Sherri Sebastian, senior perfumer at Fragrance West and founder of Sebastian Signs Fragrance, and MarieAnna Ferdinand, vice president of fragrance development at Tru Fragrance and founder of être au parfum, rounded out the trio — in the aroma biz I chatted with about including scents in ceremonies and receptions because they did so in their fall/winter weddings in completely different manners.
Nearly 13 years ago, Horowitz-Thran went the candle route for her November wedding overlooking the ocean in Palos Verdes, Calif. The reception was held in a tent illuminated by 50 scented candles. “The candles were lit everywhere so the fragrance permeated the experience,” recounts Horowitz-Thran. After the cake was cut and dancing dissipated, 150 guests received candles with the same scent as party favors. “We wanted to create an environment where everyone had a great time and, when they smelled the candles back at home, they’d have happy thoughts. They would be brought back to a loving and amazing event.”
The candles were visual and olfactory emblems of the wedding. They featured the color scheme’s reds and golds, and a logo of the couple’s first initials fashioned by Horowitz-Thran’s artist husband Greg. Their scent, which would become a fragrance in the Sarah Horowitz Parfums range called Perfect Bliss, joined notes Horowitz-Thran adores like gardenia and patchouli with components her husband adores like mango and papaya. “He grew up in California. I grew up on the East Coast. He’s a summer baby. I’m a fall baby. I don’t know if that’s why I go more for the patchouli, amber fall type fragrances, and he loves the fruity notes,” says Horowitz-Thran. “We created something that really married the two of us together, and we both love.” The pair continues to light the candles on their anniversaries to revisit their wedding.
Sherri Sebastian and her husband on their wedding day. (Photo: Sherri Sebastian)
Sebastian and Ferdinand opted for perfumes to integrate scents into their matrimonies. For her January wedding earlier this year at Saddle Peak Lodge in the Malibu canyon area, Sebastian bottled masculine and feminine fragrances under the name Sharcus — her and her husband Daniel Marcus’s tongue-in-cheek version of a celeb combo moniker in the tradition of Brangelina and Bennifer — offered as keepsakes for their 25 guests. “The scents were a natural extension of what I do professionally, but also designed to complement and craft a customized mood for our big day — one that captured our essence as individuals, as a couple, and complemented the rustic charm of the lodge and the natural beauty surrounding it,” explains Sebastian. Sharcus Femme was a smoky osmanthus-driven floral fragrance. “It wasn’t just a delicate flower,” says Sebastian. “That’s how I am as a person.” The blend of vetiver and bergamot in Sharcus Homme resulted in an earthy effect evocative of the setting.
“Since this was a new beginning for my husband and I, I wanted to make fragrances that were brand new.” says Sebastian. “There was a level of customization that added to the whole experience. People were really moved by them, and when I go to my friends’ houses, I will see the perfume set aside from the rest of their perfumes, and they will say, ‘I only wear Sharcus now.’ I didn’t anticipate how much they would like it.”
Together with perfumer John Pascale, Ferdinand produced three unique wedding fragrances: For herself, her four bridesmaids and her then-fiancé. Her fragrance was an earthy floral mixture containing rose and fig — an ingredient epitomizing the autumnal theme of the October 2006 ceremony in Ferdinand’s hometown Chico, Calif., that figured in the food as well. “It was special and different from fragrances I would wear everyday, but not so different that it didn’t feel like me,” says Ferdinand. “It didn’t shout. You really had to be close to me to experience the creamy, earthy quality that melded with my skin.”
Ferdinand played up the floral aspect in the bridesmaids’ rose-based scent. “When we were all standing together, I didn’t want it to be jarring olfactively with all of our perfumes fighting, but I wanted mine to stand out from theirs,” says Ferdinand. For her now husband, she settled on a clean vetiver scent she knew he’d be comfortable with. She gave it to him – and to her bridesmaids – at the rehearsal dinner the night before the wedding. “Standing next to each other at the altar, it was when we went in for the kiss that we could really experience it fully for the first time,” remembers Ferdinand. “Afterward, we did a trolley ride, and I was leaning into the crook of his neck thinking about how he smelled on his wedding day, and it was something I worked on. It was very special.”
Ferdinand prizes the fragrances as memory triggers and as wedding mementos she shared with her bridesmaids and her husband, and will later with her children. She describes the bridesmaids’ fragrance as “an intimate gift” for which she could say, “I created this for you, and no one else is going to have this.” Ferdinand saves a small quantity of the fragrance she made for herself to wear and to someday give her three children a glimpse at — or rather, a whiff of — their parents’ wedding. “It is one of those things that you want to show them when it is meaningful to them.”
Related:
Eric Buterbaugh’s Guide to Picking the Perfect Perfume
