Weddingbee Blog

Since I don’t have our professional pictures yet from the France wedding, I thought I’d regale you guys with some pictures I took from the ol’ point and shoot.

The day of the wedding, our chateau hostess Brigitte had kindly made a hair appointment for me in a local salon. By local salon, I mean the only hair salon in the town. I was prepared for some old-school hair appliances, and was actually a bit excited about it! I was picturing Chocolat… which it turned out to be a bit like it when two sweet old French ladies walked in and started gossiping… but then they saw me so the gossip turned to gawking. Before I went, I thought they would probably use the curling iron I had when I was in seventh grade. When I sat down, the nice hairdresser lady started wetting my hair and putting it in velcro curlers. I thought hmm, this will be interesting.

After she tightly curled all of my hair into multicolor curlers, she put a hair net over my head and sat me down under this Paramount hair dryer vent thingamajig. I thought, well, there’s no AC, and they’re having a heat wave, but surely this can’t take long. She looked at me and said, “One hour.”

My poor mother waited with me for about fifteen minutes when I decided I have had enough. While I am a girly girl, I am a pretty practical person, and I refuse to wait for things that I can do by myself much quicker. I stepped out of the vent and asked her to simply pin my hair up and put my veil in. She kindly did so, and when I got back to the chateau my awesome sis/MOH did my hair for me with a CHI… which leads me to believe, if they have never heard of a CHI in Barsac, perhaps I should open a salon there? I can get customers in and out so much quicker than they can now!

But I digress. While I was at the hair salon, my dad, Lisa, Mr. Chick’s lil’ bro and best man, and Paul (chateau owner) were busy setting up the ceremony area! I can tell you now (spoiler alert) that there were no major hitches in the wedding but one: I brought the wrong adapter for our iPod speaker! By Lisa’s description, the plug started smoking and Mr. Chick’s uncle asked if anyone smelled anything. They quickly unplugged it and my dad went through the chateau searching for another adapter (thanks dad!). Thankfully Paul had one that worked—crisis averted!

On the left is Allen, Paul and Brigitte’s son’s English teacher, who performed our ceremony for us.

Here’s dad walking me out:

Saying our vows, which we wrote in the chateau garden the day before. We had a hard time coming up with vows that didn’t include religion or too much sappiness. We ended up printing out a bunch of pre-made vows from the internet, and eliminating all the ones we hated… which was basically everything. We finally came up with something short and sweet we both loved and said them to each other in what possibly was the shortest ceremony in history:

We’re married!!

My poor mom trying to bustle my dress. MOH and Lisa later joined in.

First dance to Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots by The Flaming Lips:

Mr Chick getting a kick out of the surprise, “I Love You More Than Bacon” sign I made for him. (In parenthesis should be “most times.”)

Off to take photos in the vineyard and gardens:

MOH went back to the chateau to kick up her heels with mom!

Me finally getting to sit down and have a bite to eat:

After the reception, we all changed into more casual clothes and went to Le Saprien for a delicious dinner. Some of us got lost along the way so we almost didn’t make our reservation, but we all made it there in one piece at the end.

Next three images courtesy of Restaurant Le Saprien.

For appetizers we had four kinds of foie gras! One of them was smoked!

The heat had died down by then, and we were able to sit in the beautiful courtyard.

All dressed down and nowhere to go

Mr. Chick had the duck in mango sauce:

I had the huge rib eye (I almost ate the whole thing!) with perfectly cooked little potatoes.

I’ll end this post on the delicious picture of the steak. I hope to get the professional pictures soon so you can see really how awesome the wedding was!

Overall I had a great time at our France wedding. There wasn’t too much to do, and since there were only eleven of us there, everyone pitched in to help and I think felt like they really were part of our wedding and our lives (which they were and are!). It was very relaxing and intimate.

I did forget to wear the beautiful sash that came with my dress. I didn’t discover this until we were going to dinner. I felt like I spent the majority of the reception taking pictures, which I am so glad that we will have awesome pictures for memories, but I do wish we had more time for dancing and eating canapés (which as all brides have told me, you never get to eat your food at your own wedding—true! This is why we had the casual sit down dinner—I ate all my food there!). However, I was not too sad because I knew I could do it again in Houston… and then in Taiwan (our next two weddings).

How was your day-of wedding experience? Did it seem like a blur?