Photo: Happy Menocal1/32Happy Menocal designed our invitations with the most whimsical and lovely crest that included an illustration of Le Coual, my family’s house in Southwestern France where the wedding took place, as well as a rooster (we have a large chicken coop) and lavender. We also included a schedule of the weekend’s events. We only had about 40 guests and almost all of them came from the States except for my French family so it was a big trip and my mom [Candice Bergen] and I felt like if they were coming that far we needed to have a full lineup of events for them!
Photo: Merry Brownfield2/32This is a side view of Le Coual, the sixteenth-century stone manor house in Le Lot that my father bought almost 50 years ago. I grew up spending every summer there so it made a lot of sense to me to get married there. When I first got engaged, I was overwhelmed by the idea of planning a wedding, but as soon as I started thinking about getting married at Le Coual everything felt so natural and easy to imagine—even though it’s basically about as convenient as getting married in Djibouti, which my mother liked to remind me.
Photo: Merry Brownfield3/32The house is in Le Lot region which centers around Lot river, seen here from the neighboring Château Cénevières where we had lunch on Friday. It is a farming region so most of the land is taken over by corn, sunflower, and tobacco fields.
Photo: Merry Brownfield4/32We used the local straw market baskets as gift bags for everyone and filled them with Soludos espadrilles, local nut cookies, and chocolates, a power adapter (obviously Graham’s practical idea), a towel for river day, and an umbrella as my mother was very concerned about rain. We also included a map of the area illustrated by Happy Menocal. I basically set up a sweatshop with my four nieces the day before everyone arrived, and we assembled all the baskets. They drew on all the shoe boxes and wrote Bienvenue with everyone’s name and I watercolored postcard tags for everyone with a personal note.
Photo: Merry Brownfield5/32I always stock up on cheap espadrilles at the local supermarkets when I’m in France, but I love all the quirky motifs and embroidery on the Soludos ones so much that I decided to get those for everyone. I spent way too long choosing a specific pair for each person based on their style and personality and getting everyone’s sizes but it turned out to be a huge hit and was totally worth it. Here is a sampling!
Photo: Merry Brownfield6/32After lunch at the Château Cénevières, which overlooks the river, we biked down the shore and kayaked down Le Lot.
Photo: Merry Brownfield7/32This is my nephew Alfie, dressed for river day, drawing his sword (or salad knife) at the Château Cénevières which had a collectsion of miniature shields with their family crest on them.
Photo: Merry Brownfield8/32Friday night we invited everyone to dinner at this little pizzeria, L’Oïlo, that looks out over the river onto one of the most beautiful clifftop medieval villages called Saint-Cirq-Lapopie. One of the more genius moments in Graham’s wedding planning was finding Sebastopol, the traveling one-man band, online and trackings him down. He played for four hours straight on everything from an aluminum washboard to a tea kettle and mop handle. He would kill it in Williamsburg.
Photo: Merry Brownfield9/32We found a small family florist in nearby Montauban, called Zeste, and the owner, who did everything himself with his wife and stepson, really took our directions that we wanted the whole weekend to feel very natural and true to the region so he used all varieties of wildflowers and a collectsion of these typical antique Provençal dipped water jugs.
Photo: Merry Brownfield10/32Graham and his friends are big soccer players and so it was perfect that there was a little field below the pizzeria where they played a bit before dinner.
Photo: Merry Brownfield11/32The pizzas being prepared.
Photo: Merry Brownfield12/32My eldest niece, Ysé, and I. Ysé’s grandmother found this vintage lace dress that I am wearing at a brocante years ago in a state of disrepair but I’ve always loved it so I had **Christy Rilling’**s studio rehab it and replace the old ribbons with pale blue ones. I wore it with fuschia satin Christian Louboutin espadrilles which gave it the perfect pop of color.
Photo: Merry Brownfield13/32A view of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie under the moonlight. A few years ago it was voted most beautiful village in France and the region is very proud!
Photo: Merry Brownfield14/32I got ready for the wedding at the hotel where everyone was staying. The hotel was called Hôtel Le Saint Cirq and was a miracle find since it was adorable and everyone got to be together in one place. Andre Cueto Saavedra works for **Guido Palau’**s team and agreed to come down for the day to do my hair. I felt silly having someone come from Paris but Andre was incredible and my hair ended up being my favorite part of my wedding look. I wanted wildflowers nestled in my hair, so Andre, my friend Jed and I went to the field at the hotel and picked a handful to work with.
Photo: Merry Brownfield15/32Here is my dress hanging in mama’s hotel room. It was the first look from Oscar de la Renta’s last bridal collectsion and I just fell in love with it and knew it was the perfect thing for my wedding in Le Coual. I loved that it was unlined cotton, so simple but so lovely and delicate. I had a whole army of espadrilles I was planning to wear: white Valentino lace, satin pink Christian Louboutin—but the week before I left for France I found my mother’s wedding day ballet slippers and so I made a last-minute decision to wear those.
Photo: Merry Brownfield16/32Here is my final hair look. I did my own makeup so the hair was really the big excitement of getting ready.
Photo: Merry Brownfield17/32Graham arriving in the deux chevaux, the little vintage Citroën that my sister-in-law gave my brother as a birthday present a few years ago. I knew it was the perfect getaway car.
Photo: Merry Brownfield18/32Here are the girls and my nephew Roo waiting for the wedding to start with their flower crowns and lavender baskets at the ready. I spent ages looking for the right little white lace dresses for the girls and finally went with these from Bonpoint.
Photo: Merry Brownfield19/32Mama and me outside the mairie, or town hall, of our local village Lugagnac. My only jewelry was a pair of antique diamond and emerald dragonfly earrings which my niece said looked like they were hovering in the wildflowers in my hair! We found them on 1stdibs and my mother gave them to me as a wedding present so they were my something new. My mom wore an Akris tunic and the cobalt version of the Louboutin espadrilles that I was going to wear in pink.
Photo: Merry Brownfield20/32The mayor of Lugagnac, Gyl Crayssac, married us in the same room where my mother and father were married 35 years ago. It meant a lot to me to actually be married in France and we went through a lot of transatlantic paperwork to make it happen!
Photo: Merry Brownfield21/32The Mairie de Lugagnac is a small room that only fit our group of about 40 with everyone standing. We each had our witnesses, both of our sisters, standing next to us. Here we are exchanging rings. Our friend Monique Péan made them: Graham’s is a simple rose gold band and mine is a thin sapphire wave band that sits under my engagement ring.
Photo: Merry Brownfield22/32The flower girls, my nieces and our friend **Carlos’**s daughter Paz, took their lavender-throwing duties very seriously. We got them little straw baskets and filled them with lavender that they showered on us as we left the mairie. Twenty-four hours later I was still finding lavender in my ears and hair!
Graham wore a jacket, pants, and shirt by Craig Robinson of Robinson Brooklyn; Charvet tie that matched the lavender; and his striped espadrilles.
Photo: Merry Brownfield23/32My niece Camille put her basket to good use as a hat as soon as the lavender was finished. She is heading from the mairie to the town square where we invited our guests and the village for a champagne toast. The population of Lugagnac is only 100 people so our family knows most of the townspeople and the wedding was a big event so everyone was lingering outside the mairie during the ceremony and then joined us down the hill.
Photo: Bernard Garibal24/32Graham and me driving off in our getaway car. My nieces did a spectacular job decorating the car with my brother and sister-in-law’s expert help.
Photo: Merry Brownfield25/32I loved the baskets of lavender and sunflowers that Zeste made for the entrance to the property, it was such a cheery welcome to the house and the reception.
Photo: Merry Brownfield26/32We had our cocktail hour in the garden in the front of the house. My father loved Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli, as do I, and so we wanted to have a trio that could play their music. Here the band is moving from cocktail hour to dinner on the other side of the house.
Photo: Merry Brownfield27/32I probably spent the most time on the tables. I looked at different fabrics for the tablecloths for months and finally decided on this lovely Carolina Irving stripe print in parsley and had my tailor make it into huge tablecloths. I wanted the evening to be a chic version of a bal champêtre, or a country village picnic, so we found these vintage bistro chairs and the plates are actually painted tin by a place in Paris called Au Bain Marie.
Photo: Merry Brownfield28/32My niece Ysé helped me write all the names for the placecards in watercolor pencil. She wanted to do Graham's and mine in blue so it was our "something blue" for the wedding.
Photo: James from Nanobox.fr29/32The dinner was in the garden behind the kitchen where we usually eat all our meals. It has a lovely view onto the back of the house and we hung these strings of lights with large round bulbs like they always have at the village fetes.
Photo: Merry Brownfield30/32After dinner I changed into this Alberta Ferretti short dress for dancing and wore my Valentino lace espadrilles since my mother’s ballet slippers were a size too big! I saw this dress on the runway last spring and fell in love. I can’t wait to wear it again and think of this night.
Photo: James from Nanobox.fr31/32After dessert everyone walked across the property to the old barn which the DJ, James Nanobox, and our wedding coordinateur, Heather Jerue, had turned into a disco.
Photo: James from Nanobox.fr32/32Everyone danced until the wee hours, which was basically about the same time the shuttle bus drivers got a little testy and wanted to go home. It worked out though because we finished the party on a high note.
