Anglo-French wedding | Aurélie & Simon

Anglo-French wedding photography

Last Saturday saw Aurélie and Simon’s wedding in the village of Ménestreau-en-Villette, just south of Orléans in the Sologne region of France. Slightly different job this – Simon is one of my wife’s friends from University. I was a working guest on this one!

After a civil ceremony in London a few weeks before, the religious blessing took place in the village church, only a short walk through the woods from the reception venue, the Chateau Villette.

Chateau Villette

A impressive loooking house built in the late nineteenth century, situated in the heart of the Solognote Forest. In the Loiret department of France. Reonvated from a neglected state, now a chateau for hire. So for a wedding, with many people coming from the UK, it can offer a weekend retreat feel, with it’s twenty-seven bedrooms. The look of a grand hotel, without the stuffiness that often comes with that. All a short walk through the surrounding woods to the local village and it’s church.

The ceremony was a bit different to your usual English church wedding, a bit more chaotic. I don’t think (in fact I know they won’t) that videographers would be allowed to set up their tipod so close to the couple during a ceremony. But here the priest didn’t bat an eyelid. Always interesting, at destination weddings to see the similarities and the differences with what happens in the UK.

So on a very, very hot day, a small church in a French village resounded to the hymn ‘Jerusalem’. Aftre the ceremony and the confetti outsde – somehow one of the confetti boxes ended up on the groom’s head, back to the Cahteau. Led through the village and the wood by musicians. Drinks in the shade followed, before dinner in the evening, as the air began to cool a touch. Wedding speeches translated from French to English, English to French. In the late evening after the first dance, wedding games.

Here are a few images from this Anglo-French wedding in the hot sunshine…

Another hot wedding in France with two Brits.