Our Parisian Wedding -- Part I: le Pont des Arts

It has been nearly two months since our wonderful wedding in Paris, and I am finally ready to share some of the photos we recently received from our fantastic photographer, Juliane Berry. She was a dream to work with and took such beautiful photos that perfectly captured our day.

We had decided to do our ceremony in the morning as we noticed the Paris streets were nice and quiet in the early morning hours, and that would give us a lot of freedom and privacy to have our ceremony and take photos wherever we liked. Our only snafu was that the Paris Marathon (think 50,000 runners--eek!) was happening that day, much to our surprise, but between Juliane and our driver Didier, we didn't even see a single runner while we drove around Paris, and there was almost no traffic.

Didier picked us up in his 1953 Citroen in front of our apartment (more on our gorgeous apartment here if you're interested) at about 7:10 am, as sunrise was at 7:20. I had initially wanted "getting ready" photos, but I'm glad we jettisoned those and went right to our ceremony spot, the Pont des Arts across the Seine.



I did do a little bit of getting ready while waiting on the bridge, just to make sure my lipstick looked right. I decided to do my own hair and makeup as I wasn't sure if I could find someone to do it the way I wanted without meeting them well in advance. I love makeup and I know what looks best on me, so I preferred to mess with it myself. It turned out looking very "me," which Sean and I both agreed was the way to go.




Although I was lettering for quite a few other weddings this spring, I managed to make some time to letter a few of our pieces of wedding paper, which included this pretty card I gave to Sean during our ceremony. I'm pretty sure my note inside made very little sense because I was in tears--happy, emotional, madly-in-love tears--while I was trying to write it late in the evening the night before.



The next few photos show our sweet little ceremony on the Pont des Arts. The sun was just rising over the Seine, and there wasn't a soul in sight. It was the perfectly intimate exchange of vows we had hoped we'd be able to have.







After we exchanged vows, read one another's notes, and signed the wedding contract I had hand-calligraphed with our vows, we took the lock we had written our names on and locked it firmly to the bridge. The legend says that if you place a love lock on this bridge, you will have a happy, long married life.





I had been advised by many websites and previous Parisian brides that I should find a florist to create my bouquet when I arrive and not fuss with ordering it ahead of time. I'm guessing those brides must have spoken much, much better French than Sean and I were able to manage while ordering flowers. I had brought along my iPhone with Pinterest open on it to try to show them what I wanted, but I was told I'd have something "even better" in 24 hours. When I returned, there was more French confusion, but in the end, I got a gorgeous, unique bouquet that I absolutely loved. It had blush roses, white anemones, eucalyptus leaves, juniper berries, and darker greenery, which gave it a vintage-insired feel. Oh, and Sean's rose boutonniere looked sweet and stylish on him, too.





At the moment pictured below, I think I felt like the luckiest, happiest girl in the world.

Photo Credit: Juliane Berry
On Tam: Dress: Sue Wong (carried at BHLDN) | Shoes: Jimmy Choo | Earrings: J. Crew (similar here)
On Sean: Suit: Calvin Klein (similar) | Shirt: Brooks Brothers | Tie: Yves St. Laurent | Shoes: Ecco
Flowers: L'île aux fleurs, 20 Rue Monge, 75005 Paris

More wedding posts from Paris coming later this week! [Update: read Part II and Part III.]

x, Tam

P.S. If you're interested in reading my past travel posts about Paris, they can be found here: one | two | three | four