Luxe Wedding in a French Chateau

Dec 20, 2016 | Inspiration

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The lovely Sylvie Gil Photography recently hosted a workshop in the beautiful Burgundy region of France at Chateau De Varennes. She considered every single last detail, even managing to weave in a meaningful and relevant storyline with actual facts in order to bring full worth to her attendees. Today we're focusing on the luxe, romantic bridal style seen during two different shoots. Brides - we know you'll be loving the full gowns, the classic groom looks, the insanely beautiful bouquets by Holly Flora and all of the pretty details so we won't keep you any longer...

From Sylvie: "Chateau De Varennes, located in the Burgundy region of France has hundreds of years of history. Built almost 400 years ago and recently named by CNN and Luxworldwide among the top ten best wedding venues in the world it called for a decor story that was laden with luxury and albeit history. With 70's vintage walking the most current red carpets and runways of Europe, I decided to focus my design on the era of excess, bold prints, color, texture and unusual fabrics.

Inspiration was found from current collections from Gucci's newly anointed creative director Frida Giannini and Nicolas Ghesquiere, creative director of Louis Vuitton. Colors were also pulled from images of vintage 70's fashion magazines such as Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. When designing a wedding, I pull inspiration, quirks and unique customized ideas from my clients personal life, history as a couple, interests, passions and family heritage; as this was a stylized shoot for the purpose of teaching photography, there was a lack of personal connection to a client per-say, which I didn't want. I wanted the design to still read as something that a client had helped me envision, something that felt authentic and real, and so a style story was born.

Two affluent young 70's Parisians, with a family home in Burgandy, take over the Chateau De Varennes while their parents are on holiday in Morocco. I wanted the look to feel young, exuberant, fresh, ethnic inspired and lux. There is so much white and cream and pink in the wedding industry so I challenged myself to push the boundaries of color and work with colors that I hadn't used before. The mustard color of the dinning table linens was inspired by the location of Burgundy, which is a huge exporter of mustard from Dijon, a nearby region in France. La Tavola Linens provided us with beautiful velvet linens and table runners that were made for their new 2016 collection, they were the first time they had been used in fact.

We mixed wooden and silver flatware with brightly colored raw linen napkins to add texture and depth to the design. Place cards at each place setting we created by the talented Yonder Design based in San Francisco. Olive colored cow hide was used and paired with acrylic tortoiseshell and then etched with each guests name. The combination reads current, but individually these pieces are so 70's inspired, but somehow it all works together. Holly Flora a LA based floral designer worked with us to create juicy, bright almost edible looking blooms. The colors added a cheerfulness that could not be added from any other element. Her garden inspired blooms look freshly ripped out of the Chateau De Varennes gardens, casually elegant, while not trying to hard to be perfect. The invitation suite, also by Yonder Design is modern, textured and sharp."