A Bespoke Toile de Jouy Wedding at Château de Champlâtreux

Liana spent the morning in Château de Champlâtreux's Salon Bleu, where pale blue panelling and tall windows provided the setting for hair, makeup and dressing with her bridesmaids.

She began in a bridal robe before changing into a custom La Première gown with a sculpted silhouette and mini basque waist. Her bridesmaids wore lilac, introducing one of the colours that would continue through the ceremony and reception.

Ruiji prepared separately, with some of his portraits taken beside a vintage convertible outside the château.

The ceremony gown was only Liana's first look of the day. Once dinner was over and the evening moved towards dancing and games, she changed into a short second dress that gave her more freedom to move.

The ceremony took place outside in Château de Champlâtreux's formal gardens, with the fountain and surrounding landscape forming part of the setting.

Instead of a conventional floral arch, Souika Event created a sculptural textile installation for the ceremony backdrop. Airy blue and lavender flowers were arranged around it without covering the structure completely, keeping the installation itself visible.

Liana's bouquet was equally distinctive. Flowers and greenery fell from a basket-style arrangement in a long, cascading shape instead of the more usual hand-tied bridal bouquet.

One of the ceremony's most personal gestures involved no installation at all. Liana and Ruiji each presented a bouquet to their mother during the ceremony, recognising the two women in front of the family and friends who had travelled to France for the wedding.

Liana's ceremony dress was custom-made by La Première.

The gown combined a sculpted silhouette with a mini basque waist, creating a defined point through the bodice before opening into the fuller skirt.

For her bridal portraits, Morgane Ball photographed the dress inside the blue-panelled château as well as outside beside the vintage convertible. The cascading bouquet introduced a less formal shape against the structure of the gown.

Liana later changed into a short dress for the evening, giving the wedding two clearly different bridal looks without changing the wider colour direction of the day.

Liana and Ruiji used both the château and its grounds for their portraits.

The vintage convertible returned for photographs of the two together, while other frames took them onto the lawn in front of the château. Morgane Ball photographed them running hand in hand towards the building, Ruiji lifting Liana in front of the façade and the two together again after dark once the château had been illuminated.

Together, the images form less a single formal portrait session than a sequence spread across the day, letting the same architecture appear under very different conditions.

The soft blue and lavender palette extended to the wedding party, with Liana's bridesmaids dressed in lilac.

They were photographed together in the Salon Bleu before the ceremony and later outside around the fountain, lawn and ceremony installation.

Against the pale stone of Château de Champlâtreux and the greens of its gardens, the pastel dresses introduced colour without requiring the architecture itself to be heavily decorated.

Following the ceremony, guests remained outside for cocktails on the château grounds.

The 120-person guest list had brought together friends and family from the United States, China and beyond, making this part of the day one of the first opportunities for everyone to mingle after the ceremony.

Drinks and canapés were served on the lawn, while guests signed the couple's guestbook before dinner.

With the wedding taking place in spring, this portion of the celebration remained outdoors in daylight before the evening programme began.

The reception is where Liana and Ruiji departed most noticeably from the expected wedding programme.

They deliberately kept the traditional dancing portion of the evening short. Board games are one of their shared interests, so they gave much of the reception over to games with their guests instead.

The bouquet toss was reinvented too. Instead of throwing flowers, Liana tossed a plush cat. Catching it came with something considerably more substantial than a bouquet: the opportunity to adopt a rescue cat, a reference to the couple's own cats and their importance in Liana and Ruiji's life together.

Dessert returned to French tradition. Guests were served a croquembouche alongside an oversized red berry tart.

The weather also became part of the evening. Rain arrived just as everyone moved inside for the first dance, but cleared later in time for fireworks over Château de Champlâtreux.

The most distinctive touch of the wedding began with a traditional French pattern.

Liana and Ruiji commissioned their own toile de Jouy, replacing the conventional pastoral scenes associated with the print with symbols drawn from their life together. Their cats were among the personal references worked into the design.

The bespoke print appeared across the stationery and table linens, allowing the same pattern to move through different parts of the wedding.

It was a particularly appropriate choice for a wedding in an 18th-century French château. Toile de Jouy has an unmistakably traditional visual language, but here the scenes belonged specifically to Liana and Ruiji.

The wider palette remained soft blue and lavender, joined at dinner by pink and burgundy flowers. Round tables were covered in blue linen and paired with gold chairs, while the custom print and hand-painted paper details brought the more personal elements into the tablescape.

Dinner was arranged around round tables in front of Château de Champlâtreux. Blue tablecloths set the base for dinner, with gold chairs and arrangements of pink and burgundy peonies adding warmer colour. The blue and lavender introduced earlier in the day continued here, without every element needing to match exactly.

The bespoke toile de Jouy appeared within the table setting alongside hand-painted stationery, letting the couple's custom artwork become part of the dinner instead of staying confined to the invitations.

It is a useful distinction in a château of this scale. The architecture was already decorative, so the reception didn't need to compete with it. Colour, print and flowers were concentrated at table level while the château remained the backdrop.

The smaller details continued the mixture of French references and personal design.

Welcome baskets contained bread, cheese and grapes alongside a hand-illustrated map for guests arriving in France. The stationery suite included a wax seal, while Liana's shoes, veil and folding fan were incorporated into the bridal details photographed during the day.

Individually, these were small decisions. Together with the custom toile de Jouy, however, they made the paper and guest details recognisably part of the same wedding.

Château de Champlâtreux is an 18th-century estate in Val-d'Oise, approximately 30 minutes from Paris, surrounded by 50 hectares of gardens.

For a wedding of 120 international guests, the property allowed different parts of the day to take place in distinct settings without leaving the estate.

The Salon Bleu was used for Liana's preparations. The formal gardens provided the setting for the ceremony and cocktails. Portraits moved between the lawns, château façade and vintage car, while the celebration eventually continued inside once rain arrived in the evening.

That combination also made the château particularly suited to a wedding bringing guests to France from several countries. It sits close enough to Paris to remain accessible, but with the scale and grounds of a countryside estate once everyone arrived. It's part of a wider group of château wedding venues near Paris built around the same appeal.

Liana's practical advice for couples planning their own destination wedding is to look beyond a supplier's portfolio when choosing the team. Responsiveness, she says, should be taken seriously during vendor selection. A talented supplier who communicates poorly can add unnecessary stress to an already complex planning process.

For Liana and Ruiji, the final wedding was remarkably specific to the two of them. It brought together 120 people from different parts of their lives outside Paris, a French textile tradition redrawn with their own memories, and bouquets for their mothers alongside games with friends. Their cats were worked into both the design and the evening entertainment, and fireworks closed the night above an 18th-century château.