If you love the look of rustic mountain weddings, it simply doesn’t get better than a wedding in Chamonix, France! Nestled in the French Alps, this town looks straight out of a story book, and was the perfect home for this inspiration photo shoot created by Kristin Smetona of Smetona Photo, Monica Delevaux of Haute Weddings, and a team of other talented wedding professionals. I love the relaxed simplicity of the design, the inclusion of local, traditional elements, and the absolute grandeur of the scenery surrounding it all!
From Photographer, Kristin Smetona:For this stunning mountain location in the French Alps, the sublime scenery inspired the natural, romantic style. White, green, beige and brown were the underlying tones for this alpine wedding surrounded by lush meadows, glistening glaciers, and rustic chalets. Chalets des Philippe, the reception venue, is an exquisite collection of hamlet chalets built in the traditional style dating back to the 18th and 19th centuries. Each chalet has unique antique pieces incorporating the local history and lifestyle of the region to the décor: tin milk cans, hurricane lanterns, intricately engraved quilt trunks, etc.
The wedding table was dressed with charger plates sculpted in gorgeous heavy wood, wine glasses with droplet designs like the dew on the nearby tree branches, while pine cones and antlers gave the finishing touch to the exquisite mountain style place setting. For brides and grooms traveling to exotic locations for their wedding, cake pops make for an easily transportable dessert or favor for your guests. The powerful beauty of Chamonix leaves guests mesmerized and in awe of the sky-scratching granite peaks, glaciers touching the valley floor, and pristine grandeur found in this tiny corner of France on the border of Italy and Switzerland. People like our bride and groom who come for a skiing or hiking vacation are enchanted by the lifestyle and splendor – sometimes they end up staying forever.
What a gorgeous couple and stunning wedding we have today! Jess and Jeff created an elegant Newport, Rhode Island celebration that thoughtfully incorporated their Haitian and Chinese heritages. Such a wonderful way to honor their families – I love it!
What were the top three priorities for you in planning your wedding?Mirth, elegance and a sense of timelessness.
What wedding traditions or cultural traditions did you incorporated into your wedding and what did they mean to you?Being from different cultures – my family hails from Haiti and Jeffs from China – it was important to us that our cultures be represented at our wedding. We included subtle touches – for example, each guest was given a fortune cookie alongside a slice of Haitian cake for dessert. Inside each fortune cookie were messages with our favorite love quotations and lucky numbers that read 8-12-2012,” our wedding date. We also had a surprise performance of a Chinese traditional lion dance by the group Woo Chings White Crane of Boston. The dance wards off evil spirits and wishes the newlyweds prosperity and good fortune in their new life together.
Were there any places where you broke the rules in your wedding planning? Why and how did you do that?I wanted to personalize and customize everything from the programs, which were newspapers (a nod to my background as a journalist), to the menus with our monogram on them. We even found ways to get our guests to help personalize our day by having the traditional guest book turned into a guest quilt. Guests signed patches that will later be turned into a family quilt – a souvenir that can be passed down through generations.
What was your biggest wedding planning success?Our primary goal was to have a timeless, elegant festivity that was not short on the essential fun. We still have guests telling us what a fabulous time they had at our wedding. The dance floor was always packed, and the photographs reflect the incredible amount of joy and love that we shared on that day.
What was the most important thing that you learned through the wedding planning process and what would you tell other brides-to-be?Make a statement. Your wedding should have your personal touch throughout, and I think its safe to say that you want people to feel like its an authentic representation of who you are as a couple. If you can define that early, youll be great shape in making the day truly your own.
This has been such a fun week! Beautiful flowers wedding bouquets have been pouring into my inbox from our Junebug member florists, and it’s like Christmas came early! Each designer sent their personal favorite bouquet of the year and a little information about their creations. And lucky you, because I’m going to regift, and send all the beauty and inspiration to you! Bella Rugosa: I loved designing this for my bride who wanted a bold mix of pink florals in a tight pave design with lots of textural interest.
Christopher Flowers: This is my favorite from this year because it was kind of an unusual color palette! The wedding style was a mix of antique and modern touches.
Fiore Blossoms:Pure white peonies, ruffled garden roses, and dark viburnum berries were full of wintery romance. This bouquet, created for a winter bride, was so gorgeous in the snow!
Flora Nova:I loved the softness and the vintage touch of this bouquet lots of David Austin English garden roses made this a super romantic bouquet. Trailing amaranthus add old English garden flair.
Photo by Ashley Paul Studio
Floressence: I made this bouquet in June for a super sweet bride who sent me a few inspiration images and then let me roam free in the wholesale market. Poppies were just starting to burst from their casings, while overripe peonies and garden roses carried the sweet promise of warmer days. The whole bouquet totters on the cusp of spring and summer, freshness and decay – and pretty much says everything I love about flowers.
Garden Party Flowers: This bouquet epitomizes seasonal and sustainable. It was designed for a bride who embraced those ideals and loved the palette and texture of late summer’s bounty and glory. I loved the challenge of creating a piece without flower blooms to showcase nature’s beauty in every season.
Isari:A romantic loose spring bouquet with blush roses, anemones, poppies, trailing jasmine vines, pieris, ranunculus, dusty miller foliages and scented geranium bound with pale nude silk ribbon.
Kathy Wright & Co.: Composite flowers unto themselves are not anything new. Since I was a very young floral designer, I have been pulling the petals off poor unsuspecting blooms, and making them into larger than life specimens. I love the new and unusual shapes and textures they take on in their newly enlarged state, and find that I get the most amazing responses from my clients as they truly have never seen anything like it before.
Composite flowers are time consuming and also can wear on your patience, as each individual petal must be put into position. But the end result is pretty cool, and for some brides, it is the perfect solution to finding a unique statement to compliment their beautiful wedding dress! This composite rose was crafted from the petals of a white Anastasia rose.
Krista Jon: I love the simplicity and subtle edginess of the color fade. We did quite a few ombré bouquets this year, but this peach one maintained such an elegant and soft feel with a slight nod to the unexpected…I also happen to adore the bride on a personal level, so you can imagine the love that was put into each bloom for this entire wedding.
Peony & Plum: This romantic bouquet had all the classic English flowers…garden roses, delphinium, Queen Anne’s lace, and ranunculus. The end result was feminine and so summery!
tic-tock: An uncommon, yet signature tic-tock bouquet featuring intricate work, blended seamlessly with a mixture of soft, pastel florals and embellished with sparkling details.
Willow & Bloom: Ashley and Chad are New Yorkers with southern roots that were planning a pacific northwest wedding. We loved incorporating flowers and foliage in Ashley’s bouquet that reflected each of these locations. We used elegant white roses and callas (so chic New York!), southern magnolia foliage, and northwest thistles and blackberry.
Wisteria Lane: I love this bouquet because it is unusual – the raw cotton and the dried pods juxtaposed next to the frilly garden rose are a striking combination!
Woodland Flowers: This is a bridal bouquet from a spring wedding that we did this year that incorporated some our favorite flowers: black-centered anemones, pink peonies, ranunculus and tulips. We also loved the owl timepiece the bride Kate chose for her bouquet handle that represented her steam punk theme.
So much loveliness! A huge thanks to our member florists for sharing their work with us. And for more floral inspiration, visit our image gallery where you can browse through flowers from real weddings and even search them by color.
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