French Inspired Wedding
This wedding couple, Fu and Anita, hails from Jakarta and made their way to Paris for an inspirational wedding photo shoot. Surrounded by majestic architecture, love is definitely in the air!
A Leeds wedding venue can give you the magical vibe you are looking for too, with incredible abbeys and stately manors on hand for wedding ceremonies and stunning photo shoots. Imagine the elegance and picture yourself there! These images give a good head start for a French inspired wedding and more information is below. Happy planning!
What to Look for in a Venue for a French Inspired Wedding
When you think of a French inspired wedding, first and foremost you’re probably going to be thinking about traditional, old-world romance. Thinking about all those films that have those moonlight strolls along the Seine and the historic castles and buildings that bring that romantic fantasy to life.
It’s because of these kinds of historic, whimsical vibes that you’re going to be looking for an older building or an architecturally interesting outdoor space – think about a square with cobblestones or a beautiful stone bridge spanning a river. It’s these architectural, historical elements that will help bring your French inspired wedding to life.
Colour Palettes for a French Inspired Wedding
In terms of colour palettes for your beautiful and romantic French inspired wedding, go traditional with soft muted pastels, like mauves, dusty pinks and sage greens. By choosing toned down hues, it gives a softness to your overall French inspired wedding look that allows you and your new spouse to be the main focus – as you should be.
When you combine these soft pastels with the rugged cream and neutral tones of the brick buildings and architecture around you, it creates a beautiful, complex colour palette with much needed depth and interest. This is exactly what you want when you’re creating a holistic wedding scheme.
Budget for a French Inspired Wedding
As with any style of ceremony and reception, with your French inspired wedding, there are ways to save money and there are ways to blow the budget. Destination weddings can be a logistical challenge and due to the extra cost, often result in a smaller guest list.
This being said, due to the smaller guest list, the wedding itself may be cheaper as a lot of costs including reception venues and catering are worked out via headcount. So once you’re at your destination, it might actually be cheaper, but the flights and the logistics might bring the costs up.
A wedding at home can be budget friendly, especially with DIY being totally acceptable for flowers and decor.
Wedding Dresses & Accessories for a French Inspired Wedding
When it comes to finding your dream wedding dress for your French inspired wedding, the key thing to remember is the feeling of softness and romanticism. This might be through ornate lace details throughout your dress, it might be with layers upon layers of light and beautiful tulle, or it might be with a cascading, satin gown.
There are plenty of options to find a dress that works well with your French inspired wedding theme, depending on your personal style preference. In terms of accessories, keep it classic with pearl details and traditional closed toe court shoes for an effortless French feel.
Groom Style for a French Inspired Wedding
For your groom’s French inspired wedding style, you can opt to leave the black James Bond tuxedo at home. With such a soft and romantic wedding theme, having such a stark contrast would be jarring and ruin the look you’ve tried so hard to curate.
Instead why not go with a light cream or pastel colored suit that complements your soft and elegant bridal look as we see with Fu and Anita? By going with lighter shades you can add more layering and textural details through waistcoats, ties and pocket squares, as well as using boutonnieres to bring a pop of elegant color to your groom’s wedding outfit.
Bouquets & Boutonnieres for a French Inspired Wedding
As with a lot of things to do with this French inspired wedding, when you’re looking at your floral arrangements it’s best to stick with the soft and romantic classic choices. We’re talking about pinks and creams with minimal green foliage to detract from the more feminine scheme that you’ve created.
Make sure that you choose flowers with a larger face and bigger petals – if you have too many little flower varieties then your floral displays might start to look messy and wild, which is not the kind of vibe we’re going for with our elegant and romantic French inspired wedding.
Wedding Invitations for a French Inspired Wedding
Although wedding invitations are one of the first things your guests will see, they’re often overlooked or left as an afterthought, however with destination weddings, for example, they’re really important and you need to get them out as soon as possible to give your guest the opportunity to book time off work and get flights and accommodation together.
It’s also an important first look at your wedding theme and the formality level of your big day. For your French inspired wedding, use flowing floral elements in your wedding invitation design and maybe even include an illustration of the historic wedding venue if you have one.
Wedding Cake Ideas for a French Inspired Wedding
Who doesn’t love cake, and when it’s a multi-tiered wedding cake it’s even better! For your French inspired wedding, you can go with a floral inspired cake using pastel shades and adorning it with cascading roses and carnations, and even use floral inspired flavours like rose and elderflower.
You could also fully embrace the French elegance aspect of your wedding theme, ditching the wedding cake altogether for a tower of beautifully created macarons. This way you can have them in a spectrum of pinks and creams to mimic your decor and floral arrangements and provide a real point of interest.
Wedding Photo Shoot Ideas for a French Inspired Wedding
When you’ve got such a beautiful wedding location as France, there really are thousands of spectacular options that you could lead with when it comes to your wedding photo shoot. From wistfully gazing out across the river from a beautiful medieval bridge with your new spouse, to the more traditional shots in the manicured grounds of a gorgeous chateau, a lot of it comes down to personal taste.
A great option is to find more harsh architectural surroundings, like rough brick, cobblestones and ornate cast-iron balconies, to juxtapose against you and your spouse’s softer, more romantic and elegant wedding look.
Outdoor Wedding Ideas for a French Inspired Wedding
Depending on the time of year and area that you’re choosing, France can be a beautiful location for an outdoor wedding. A rule of thumb is the further south you go, the warmer and better the weather is going to be, and the French Riviera around Cannes and Nice are pretty solid all year round.
However, if you want an outdoor wedding, but still want to keep that historic and romantic aspect, consider the grounds of a chateau rather than automatically heading down to the coastal regions - you’ll still have those architectural notes that make this French inspired wedding theme so beautiful. For those of you choosing another destination, such as getting married in Leeds, the months between May and September are known to be peak times.
Bridal Portraits With 4 Different Dresses!
It was just the day after that post with loads of blush wedding dresses went up that this stunning bridal portrait session landed in my inbox. Anita, the bride in this shoot, is such a lucky lady! She flew from where she lives in Indonesia to France along with a what I can only assume to be several garment bags. Why so many Garment bags? Because she rocked SEVEN couture dresses in this pre wedding shoot by David of Axioo Photography with her then fiancé (now husband) Fuganto. For this post I’ve pared them down to the four most gorgeous. Enjoy!
From David of Axioo: “I first met Fu and Anita in Jakarta during out first concept meeting to discuss their pre-wedding shoot and we hit it off right away. He is a sweet romantic who adores Anita with a passion, and she is the lovable princess who won his heart with her sweet smile. We met again in Paris for their shoot and I was awed by how great these two look all dressed up. We mostly shot in Paris and Chambord, bringing out the elegance and grace in both of them, the air, adding a certain lavishness and the wealth that seems almost magical. Anita glowed the whole time – it was as if Fu had just given her the key to Paris! And I’m sure that he’d do just that for the woman he loves.”
Credits: Photography: Axioo // Dresses & Locations: #1 pink rose gown custom-made by Stella Ong, Chateau Chambord, Loire Valley // #2 white gown custom-made by Stella Ong, Le Meurice Hotel // #3 pink ball gown custom-made by Melta Tan, Le Meurice Hotel // #4 pink chiffon gown custom-made by Melta Tan.