A Chartreuse and Raspberry Styled Shoot at Château Pontac-Lynch, Bordeaux

Preparation happened indoors, in rooms with tall shutters and bare boards. Carla Garcia shot the whole sequence in black and white, which sets the colour story aside and leaves the window light to do the work.

The bride stands at the shutters in a veil edged with heavy lace, reading as texture rather than trim. The groom dressed separately, working through a tie and then a jacket in front of the same tall windows.

One frame catches him waiting against the wall while the bride sits in the makeup chair, still turned away from him. It is the quietest picture in the set, and the only one where both appear before any of the styling begins.

The portraits stay in black and white throughout. That is a deliberate break from the colour running through the rest of the shoot. Without the chartreuse and raspberry, the frames read as fashion pictures: posture, fabric and the fall of a veil.

The first pair were shot beside the dressed tables, using the château wall and the planting behind as the backdrop. A third places the couple beneath the veil on a stone balustrade with trees beyond it.

The last looks straight down on a striped surface, with the bride reclining and the groom at her hand. It is the most styled frame in the set and the closest the shoot comes to a campaign image.

The reception design is the centre of the shoot. Rather than one long table, the team laid 2 crescent tables facing each other across the gravel. The shape gives the setting movement and keeps every seat within sight of the others.

Mauve velvet covers both tables and pools onto the ground, while chartreuse velvet wraps the stools and spills in loose folds around them. Deep green glass plates sit at each cover with gold flatware and a single calla lily laid across them. Florals run the length of both curves in coral, raspberry and white.

Seen from overhead the paired crescents read almost as a drawing on the gravel. That is why the drone frames carry as much of the design here as the ground-level ones, and why they sit in this section rather than with the architecture.

The detail work holds the same 2-colour dialogue at close range. Menu cards printed in blush stand upright among ferns and coral blooms, each stamped with the grapevine drawing that repeats across the stationery. A white arrangement of roses and calla lilies anchors one end of the table beside coupe glasses.

A further 2 pieces sit apart from the tablescape. A chartreuse velvet banner hangs from a first-floor window down the limestone, carrying the same grapevine and a line of calligraphy in pink. A hand-calligraphed sign forms the backdrop to a toast, shot in black and white so the drawing reads clearly against the dark ground.

The last detail leaves the colour behind entirely: a calla bouquet photographed on an antique carved chair, framed by the chair's oval back. Stationery came from Mademoiselle Mouche and the tableware from APS Location and Options.

The flat lays were shot on marble, which keeps the paper and the colour separate from the garden. The suite pairs a blush save-the-date with cream menus, a gold wax seal and chartreuse silk ribbon, and the grapevine drawing recurs on each piece.

Objects join the paper across the set. A perfume bottle, the bride's shoes and green blooms are laid along the edges of the frame, and the rings rest in the cup of a raspberry calla petal.

One frame drops the colour altogether and photographs the shoes alone in hard directional light, which is the sharpest change of register in the shoot.

Château Pontac-Lynch gave the shoot pale limestone, a gravel courtyard and mature planting, which is most of what a design-led editorial needs. Wisteria was in flower along the façade, and palms and climbing roses frame the ground where the tables were laid.

The drone frames show how the building and its setting work together. The courtyard sits tight against one wing with gardens running out behind it, so the tables read as part of the grounds rather than an installation dropped into them.

For couples weighing getting married in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, the estate reads as one address where a courtyard can carry an outdoor dinner without much dressing.