Winter wedding Chateau de Montrouge I French Wedding Style

Winter has well and truly arrived here in the UK but this wedding at Chateau de Montrouge by Celebrate Agency, will certainly warm you up.

Claudine and Tanguy’s story is such a brilliant one, and in amongst the cold weather and Christmas rush, it really did make me tingle, not because of the cold but instead with that excited and romantic feeling you get when someone tells you how they met their husband / wife.

What I also love about this wedding is that even though it’s a winter wedding it’s not the traditional reds and greens you get around Christmas time proving that simple styling and muted tones can be just as effective, and in this case still create a really warm and cosy atmosphere.

Wedding planners Celebrate have done a great job and so I’ll hand over to them now for the full story…

Claudine and Tanguy met thanks to friends they had in common who deeply believed they would make a perfect match. And their friends were right! It was love at first sight. Our bride and groom were certainly meant to be together.

Only when they were grown-ups and settled as a couple did they find out they actually met in 1995 when they were kids. Claudine’s grandfather was the mayor of the village when pictures were taken of him with his grand-daughter inaugurating the new town-hall with the project manager accompanied by his son…Tanguy.

Nine years after they met and a daughter later, Tanguy who had always denied matrimony, finally proposed, for them to come together as one and have the same family name.

As they didn’t want a long engagement and absolutely wanted to host the wedding in a castle, we chose to set the date on February the 14th at the beautiful Château de Montrouge, close to their childhood village and with the capacity to host 200 people for the reception. Luckily the Château was available on that particular date and it was a nice way for Tanguy to easily remember their wedding anniversary. Which, actually, turned out to be a bit of a challenge for us as we only had three months to plan and style the wedding.

Talking about styling… As they chose to have their wedding during the winter, what Claudine and Tanguy wanted was for their guests to feel the warmth of the day even if it was cold outside. So we chose to have a soup bar during the cocktail to warm the atmosphere up a bit, before they entered the reception venue which we decorated in a cosy style with warm and neutral colours and the space was lit up with warm-white lights to create the atmosphere they were looking for.

We chose to have winter-themed table centre-pieces made of elements that make people feel the warmth of the season: wood, pine cones and pillar candles, as if they were in a mountain chalet. We even incorporated star anise to have the smell of a good winter hot drink, cotton flowers for the soft touch and cones from Cunninghamia Lanceolata – which look like little roses – for the romantic feeling.

The civil ceremony was held in their beloved town-hall and given by Claudine’s brother. Her grandfather, who passed away a few years ago, was undoubtedly among us during this highly emotional moment. The religious ceremony was in the lovely tiny church in their village, so small that only a few could attend. So we arranged a live broadcast for the other guests to watch the ceremony live in comfort from another location.

It was a cold winter day, but it was warmed up by the sun, the atmosphere and the love our bride and groom shared with their friends and family. Claudine was certainly the most glowing one on that day, as she learned three days before that she was pregnant with their second daughter born October 19th, the sweet Zélie.

Winter wedding at Chateau de Montrouge Snapshot