Photo: Robert Fairer1/25Last year, we celebrated my husband Adrien’s 30th birthday at a stunning hotel called Baumanière. We loved it so much that we decided to get married there exactly one year later. We organized a welcome dinner on Friday night and chose the pool and garden on the Baumanière property as the setting so that our guests could enjoy views over Les Baux, the famous rock formations in Provence. Because we wanted our guests to get to know each other in advance of the big day, we decided against a sit-down dinner, opting instead for stations, and Michelin star–winning chef de cuisine Glenn Viel created a menu of regional delicacies.
Photo: Nikolay Zverkov2/25The theme of our wedding was the Ballets Russes, a period between 1909 and 1929 when impresario Sergei Diaghilev staged radical Russian ballets in Paris. As an art history student, I was always fascinated by this moment of French-Russian cultural history, and it felt like an appropriate way to frame our cultural backgrounds. To reflect this theme, I asked Olga Vilshenko to create my Russian folk motif–inspired dress for Friday night’s event, and commissioned Olympia Le-Tan to make a clutch that incorporated a costume design drawing by Léon Bakst and is embroidered with our names and wedding date on the back. I also wore my great-grandmother’s ring, which has been passed down through our family for generations.
Photo: Robert Fairer3/25We wanted to give our guests a true taste of Russia in France on the first night, so we served Russian vodka with black bread and pickles from Caviar Kaspia in Paris. We also offered all of the ladies traditional Russian Pavlovo-Posad shawls. For the florals, I asked Thierry Boutemy to create bouquets in vases covered with the trunk of a birch tree to evoke the Russian countryside.
Photo: Robert Fairer4/25Working on my wedding dress with Giambattista Valli was creatively one of the most interesting and rewarding parts of the entire wedding experience. He gave me these drawings of the two dresses I had made as a keepsake.
Photo: Robert Fairer5/25I love Giambattista’s signature full skirts, and I knew I wanted to get married in a dress that celebrated his unique vision. For my wedding, he decided to create a dress with a bustier and skirt out of 300 meters of tulle in five tones, ranging from white to ivory. The lightest parts of the skirt were on top, with it becoming gradually darker toward the bottom. Since our wedding was inspired by the Ballets Russes, this dress felt very appropriate—it reminded me of tutus from Swan Lake. In this image, I am getting ready in my room with my friends and family before the big moment.
Photo: Robert Fairer6/25We had our wedding bands made by a family friend of 20 years from New York City, jeweler Alex Balanevsky. It was really special to ask friends to help with elements of the wedding—the process of planning it felt very inclusive and gave me a chance to celebrate the achievements of the people around me.
Photo: Robert Fairer7/25The romantic courtyard of Le Manoir, one of the buildings on the property of Baumanière, proved to be the perfect setting for my wedding portrait.
Photo: Nikolay Zverkov8/25Instead of getting married in a religious establishment, Adrien and I decided to wed outside. It was a challenge to find an outdoor flat surface large enough to accommodate 275 guests, but Adrien had the idea of covering a pool on the property. I loved how the two cypress trees and an old stone sculpture created the perfect setting for our ceremony. Florist Thierry Boutemy created a special chuppah-like structure, keeping the surrounding vegetation in mind. In a nod to my Russian heritage, it was supported by several birch tree trunks. I also loved how Thierry completely covered the officiant’s podium in flowers from top to bottom.
Photo: Nikolay Zverkov9/25In lieu of a religious figure, we asked Debora Spar, president of Barnard College, to officiate our wedding. Debora has been my mentor and friend since 2008, and we are in touch regularly, as I serve on the board of Barnard, my alma mater. As a mother of three, a wife, educator, professor, published author, community leader, and an all-around fantastic woman, Debora is an inspiration to me, so it was an honor to have her offer us words of guidance and wisdom as we set off into married life.
Photo: Robert Fairer10/25The happy moment after we said “I do.”
Photo: Nikolay Zverkov11/25Seeing our friends and family all around us made this moment even more special.
Photo: Robert Fairer12/25Adrien wanted to drive me away from our wedding ceremony in a classic car. He chose a navy Jaguar XK120 convertible from 1952. The car was in its original state, ’50s stick shift and all, and proved to be challenging to drive. I’m having a lot of fun in this photo while Adrien is worrying about starting the engine.
Photo: Nikolay Zverkov13/25When we finally got the car to drive, we took it for a spin into the old town of Les Baux-de-Provence, considered one of the most beautiful villages in France. The mayor graciously allowed us to drive the car into the pedestrian-only town so we could take these gorgeous pictures on the cobblestone roads of this charming French village.
Photo: Nikolay Zverkov14/25When inviting our friends to be part of our wedding party, Adrien and I realized that we each had a person of the opposite sex we wanted to include, so we ended up with six bridesmaids and groomsmen, as well as one bridesman and one groomswoman. As we lived in so many different countries, our friends also came from all over: from Russia and France to China, Armenia, Iraq, Morocco, Cuba, Spain, and the U.S. We had a great time all together throughout the eight months of wedding planning, and on the day. The bridesmaid dresses were specially created in mint by Galvan, an emerging fashion brand created by friends from London that focuses on eveningwear at a reasonable price point. The creators of Galvan want to dress women who work and need to attend black-tie, red carpet events but prefer not to spend a fortune on long dresses. As we are all working professionals, Galvan’s brand ethos resonated with me and my bridesmaids.
Photo: Robert Fairer15/25At dusk following cocktail hour, our guests proceeded to a tent we constructed for dinner and dancing. Our tent was envisioned by Anthony Coppers of the NYC-based events agency WCMG. Anthony doesn’t do weddings, but we asked him to do ours because he is a friend and has done many private family events for us before. We set the tent on a field amid the rock formations that make this region of France so famous.
Photo: Robert Fairer16/25When the guests walked into the tent, this is what they saw. We asked the band to play as they filed in to set the mood. Guest tables were all round, while the table set for us and the wedding party was rectangular and placed in the middle so that we could see everyone.
Photo: Nikolay Zverkov17/25Instead of numbering the guest tables, we named each one after an artist, choreographer, dancer, or composer who was involved with the Ballets Russes between 1909 and 1929. This particular table was named after Russian artist Nicholas Roerich, who did set designs for the Ballets, while our table was named after Sergei Diaghilev, the impresario who managed the ballet company.
Photo: Nikolay Zverkov18/25We tried to keep the Russian inspiration going throughout the evening and relied on many small details to set the tone. These crystal carafes were rented for the evening from an antique shop in Brussels—they reminded me of the kind of crystal I saw on my grandmother’s table growing up in Moscow.
Photo: Nikolay Zverkov19/25When the guests were seated, we walked into the tent to a rendition of Pharrell’s “Happy” played by the wedding band. We had so much fun dancing and doing the rounds, but my skirt kept knocking over every chair in sight, so at some point my husband started carrying it.
Photo: Robert Fairer20/25Sitting down and getting up in my wedding dress was challenging. Every time someone would make a toast, we would get up to kiss them, and the chair would be knocked over by the weight of the skirt. To get me back in my seat, my husband and his groomsman Hashem Shubber had to put me in the chair, lift it, and carry it over to the table. I just love this photo shot by Robert Fairer—he is incredible at capturing the mood of a brief moment. This was taken after the boys sat down, and Hashem is still helping me by moving my skirt out of the way.
Photo: Nikolay Zverkov21/25Our wedding band was Charly’s Angels from Paris. We asked them to play all of our favorite cheesy songs.
Photo: Robert Fairer22/25Once dinner was over and it was time for dancing, I swapped my big wedding skirt for a more manageable ankle-length A-line skirt with gorgeous embroidery of my favorite anemones, created by Giambattista Valli for this part of the evening. I wore the skirt for our first dance to a rendition of Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman.”
Photo: Nikolay Zverkov23/25On Sunday we hosted a picnic brunch on a beautiful lawn. My Russian friend and talented designer Vika Gazinskaya created my bespoke dress for this event as a gift. She used an old Russian knitting technique to create the elements on the wings of my dress as well as at the bottom of my skirt. I also commissioned Kayu to create a bespoke clutch for the event featuring my new initials, MBF.
Photo: Robert Fairer24/25We selected special French fabrics for floor pillows and throws to set the rustic scene inspired by Manet’s famous painting Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (except the ladies were all dressed!).
Photo: Nikolay Zverkov25/25Everyone enjoyed drinking local Provençal rosé and sitting in the sun, discussing the gossip from the night before.
