Destination wedding in South of France for Belle Bride Hollydawn

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Hello trulovers, I have a fabulous treat for your this Friday, the long awaited destination wedding in South of France of our very own Belle Bride Hollydawn!

It may have been a little wait, but I am delighted to welcome Hollydawn back to the blog as she makes me LOL as always on her wedding journey. Be sure to welcome Hollydawn back to the blog and any questions you have for her, leave in the comments below and she will come right along and answer.

Don't forget if you love ready about the real brides wedding planning journeys, apply to be the next Belle Bride here!

So here she is the newly married Hollydawn:" I have a confession: I don't know how to talk about our wedding day. This is the reason I have delayed writing this post, as well as our thank you cards, for over 6 months. But there is no need to hold your breath, nothing went wrong. In fact, even the things that went wrong were so...right (minus the rain, rain is never right). And herein lies my problem, I cannot describe our wedding day because I feel no words appropriately follow it. And so, I present to you a narrative of our wedding day with only one insight: our wedding day was exactly what we needed it to be (again, minus the rain).

French Wedding Style - Photography © Francesca Manolino, La Mariee Amoureuse Photography

The day began with the expected bridal pampering: hair and makeup in my self-titled bridal suite. G had one of my bridesmaid's repeatedly deliver me coffee that was much needed, but slightly awkward to drink threw a straw (lipstick requires sacrifices ladies!). My 4 glowing bridesmaids congregated in my room shortly after. Here, we drank champagne, arranged the flowers, zipped the dress (yes, it zipped!), and drank more champagne.

And then it was time. G and I were going to the Mairie (in a vintage VW bus) and we were going to get married (surrounded by loving family and friends)! The ceremony was in French, though at the last moment the mayor agreed that a very generous family member could provide an English translation since there were non-French speakers in our group. Overall the ceremony was very light hearted. We laughed a lot for all kinds of reasons: I didn't say 'yes' loud enough, our Officiant admitted he was familiar with my Canadian hometown because he may or may not have smoked illegal substances there during his youth, one of our best men could not sign the marriage certificate because he was MIA somewhere in Nigeria, and generally because the entire conversation centered around how we would raise our non-existent 25 children.

After the ceremony, we returned to Monein for our reception. We started with a Sangria and Jurancon vin d'honneur complemented by tapas, and followed by a champagne toast. A warming dinner of parmentier de canard was served directly from the food truck and ended with an assortment of our favorite pies. Fortunately, we were able to tear ourselves (and our guests) away from the bar long enough for some 'formal' photographs.

In the end, we surprised our guests with a small bit of tradition: the first dance. Except that halfway through our song we ran out of moves, so we invited our guests to join us on the dance floor. Now, the party had started. But we weren't the only ones with a surprise: my husband's mother and sisters surprised us with a beautiful sky lantern launch. It was magic.

And after the party, was the after-party. Once the sun came up, G and I left our friends to finish the bottles for us and snuggled up to sleep for the first time as husband and wife, finally. The following day we woke up surrounded by our guests. Together we enjoyed a buffet, took an afternoon wine tour, and shared stories of the night before. There were tales of skinny dippers, taxi rides gone wrong, and a few casualties who slept the night on the dance floor. All in all, our wedding ended in laughs."