You Won't Believe the Luxe Details of This French Chateau Wedding

Melissa Baran

Sun, July 21, 2019 at 1:00 PM UTC

When the favorite guest comment is "You've officially ruined weddings for other people", you know you're in for some serious beauty. That's exactly what this French fete from Alexandra Vonk and France Wedding Planner is—beauuutiful. For a travel-loving duo, their destination wedding at Chateau de Chantilly was the perfect way to celebrate their union. Take a peek, you might just be adding this venue to your list after this.

From the bride... We love to travel the world, so we knew it had to be at an international destination, otherwise, if we kept it local, we'd probably end of just going to city hall in NYC! Once we narrowed it down to France, we had initially thought we'd do it in one of the wine region's of France because we love wine, specifically wine from Bordeaux, but we got married at the Domaine de Chantilly near Paris. The first time we saw pictures of the venue, it was aerial drone footage, and we immediately fell in love. We were also looking at other chateaus in France, and also considered going down to the South of France for the wedding, but ultimately decided Chantilly was it for two reasons 1) the team they have in place running the property, Nicole, Celine, Chef Julien, they are true professionals and went above and beyond to accommodate us during the site visit and ultimately during our wedding weekend 2) the location of Chantilly was ideal for us because 90% of our guests were flying into France, and being that it is only a 20 minute drive from CDG Airport and 40 minute drive from Paris, we didn't have to worry about our guests having to take another plane/train to get to the final destination.There is also so much history behind Chantilly, and the fact that it has the 2nd largest painting collection in all of France, next to the Louvre, was very enchanting. The property actually has a few originals in place there, and the will of the last person who lived there states two things 1) the paintings can never leave the property, so to see some of these original work of arts, you must go to Chantilly 2) the paintings in the room where we had the reception, they are not allowed to rearranged, therefore, when you look up at the walls, you'll notice the paintings are not hanging in size order and look a bit scattered, but it works!

We wanted to go with a elegant and classic look and feel. We added some pink to the wedding, for a pop of spring color. For the flowers we worked with Laura Le Cam, owner of Oz Home. We were definitely a bit nervous because she mainly spoke French, but with the help of our wedding planner, we were able to get our ideas across and Laura delivered at the end of the day. The floral arch and the florals during the reception were beautiful, they complemented the outdoor ceremony space and rooms they were in very well. Because the venue is already so beautiful, we wanted something that wouldn't detract from it, so we were very focused on a classic style.We designed the wedding invites, menu's, name cards ourselves and had it printed by our friend who owns his own commercial print shop. My Netta BenShabu dress was also custom designed, we actually took ideas from two different dresses that she designed and combined it into one. When I placed the order for the dress, I actually never had the chance to try on the final product as it had yet to be designed, so I ended up putting on two dresses at once to be able to see the combination of it. When the dress arrived, it was close, but we still had a fair amount of work to do, the seamstresses at Wedding Atelier did a phenomenal job getting every piece of detail I asked for, in place (including essentially building out a new upper back for the dress with applique that they had to go back and order from the designer after the dress initially arrived). Francis' ceremony and reception dinner jackets were also both custom designed, working alongside our good friends / designers / owners of Monsieur Brunold. They happen to be French and transplanted to the US ~8 years ago. When you order jackets from them, they have it completely built in France, then shipped back to NYC. They are so easy to work with and know what their customers want. Francis' reception dinner jacket was purple paisley since purple is one of his favorite colors.Chef Julien's team from the michelin star restaurant at the Auberge designed and made our cake. Again, we did not have the luxury to taste the exact cake being that we are NYC based and did not have a chance to go to France the month before the wedding, but it was DELICIOUS! We do not like fondant, they did a wonderful job with a butter cream strawberry cake.

Favorite Moment... Walking down the aisle to Kevon (from Shine Live Band) singing Hallelujah during the ceremony. I actually heard him rehearsing about an hour beforehand as we were getting ready at the Auberge, and when I first heard it, it gave me the chills. His voice is so beautiful, soothing, yet powerful. He sang it with so much grace, I could listen to it over and over again. Also, it rained about half an hour before our ceremony started, I saw it coming down as we were finishing up our final touches in the Auberge and I felt really deflated because our ceremony was set up to be outdoors and we made the call the morning of that we would chance it and have it outdoors. Luckily, by the time I was heading over to the ceremony it stopped. The moment I began walking down the aisle and set my foot onto the white carpet with my mom by my side, I felt a lot of heat on my right arm, that's when I realized the sun came out, the timing could not have been better!Favorite Crafted Detail... This is actually an (un)crafted detail, about half an hour before the ceremony, it began raining and I was worried the guests would be all wet, so we sent a mass group text message out to all the wedding guests, asking them to bring umbrellas with them to the ceremony 15 min before every one was supposed to show up. Because they did so, the umbrellas got integrated into some of our wedding photos and it was beautiful. It made the pictures much more dramatic and added a nice flair / vibe to the wedding. Luckily, by the time the ceremony started, it stopped raining!

Advice for brides-to-be:- For any brides-to-be who plan on going abroad with a destination wedding, it can be stressful with the time zone difference and not physically being able to visit vendors at your leisure, but having a wedding planner who knows the local market / speaks the native language, doing your own research online using social media tools such as Instagram and having Skype calls with your vendors can really help pull things together.- I'd also suggest applying the 80/20 rule (if it's 80% there, the 20% is often a nice to have) when you're in the final stretch of planning, obviously we all want everything to be perfect as we envision on the wedding day, but it is true, there are many small details that your guests will often not realize and/or remember when looking back at your wedding day!- Lastly, it is incredible how our vendors from Alexandra (photographer), Ben (band), Tatiana (hair & makeup), Alex and Federico (videography), Rachel (wedding planner), Nicole and Celine (Domaine de Chantilly) all pulled together to create such a beautiful event for us. We are so grateful that everyone was professional and able to work together, meeting each other for the first time during our wedding weekend.

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You Won't Believe the Luxe Details of This French Chateau Wedding

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