Like I mentioned before, my husband and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary this week. As I was looking through photos and tripping down memory lane, I started playing the “what would I have changed” game. I planned my wedding in France long-distance while I was living in the U.S. I had never been married before, had no idea what my “wedding style profile” was, and had to rely heavily on my mother- and sister-in-law who lived in the town that we were marrying in. I didn’t speak French at all, and didn’t understand that a lot of the cute wedding “Good Things” that I was seeing in Martha Stewart Weddings magazine simply didn’t (and still don’t) exist in France. Before I finally wised up, I had this Grand Plan to have the majority of my DIY wedding items waiting for me to assemble in France, which would minimize the already ridiculously huge amount of other wedding crap accoutrements that we would be schlepping across the Atlantic with us. From the get-go, this idea seemed to be a bit iffy. But as everyone with The Style Channel now knows, you can’t deter a Bridezilla from her Grand Plan- even when all of the warning signs are there. My 1st sign should have been that my sole method of communication with my in-laws was through my French- born, weddingly-challenged husband.
For example, back in the day, no self-respecting Follower of Martha would dare to NOT offer her guests a favor trussed up in a mini Chinese takeout box. (These days, they’re just another shape of favor box, but in The Year 2000 they were the bee’s knees!). In the midst of my destination wedding planning frenzy, I had to rely on my husband to explain to his maman in a tiny town in the North of France what:
- Chinese take-out was
- what Chinese take-out boxes were
- what an American favor was (and how it differed from the traditional French dragées)
- and why his American bride-to-be didn’t want dragées
He then had to delicately ask her to see if she could go look for the aforementioned boxes in her town. We also had her running around looking for glassine envelopes and monogrammed aisle runners and hosts of other Martha-inspired wedding paraphernalia, all to no avail. After living in France for 7 years, and working as a wedding planner here for the past two, I now realize what ridiculously impossible tasks these were to expect her to accomplish. But for a hyper-sensitive, stressed-out, mono-lingual American destination bride-to-be, I saw it as nothing but incompetence (I remember standing behind him in silent anguish, gnashing my teeth and clenching my fists until they bled as I listened to him try to translate the color “sage” to his mom. Le pauvre, it’s a wonder he went through with the wedding at all 
)
All this is to say that despite all of the crazy, dramatic insanity leading up to our wedding, that week-end was one of the best memories of my
entire life, and until yesterday, I always thought that I would have only have changed the photographer (he was a little old man from a tiny village on the French/Belgian border. Nice as pie, but not exactly at the forefront of wedding photojournalism). But then yesterday I received a candy-pink cake box in the mail with a dvd from Layer Cake Films inside, and I realized that I soooo want do-overs for my wedding video! Layer Cake Films will shoot your wedding in retro Super 8 film, and then edit the film with the soundtrack of your choice. (For you young’uns, Super 8 was what existed before video and dvds- if you’ve ever seen your grandparents old home movies, they were probably shot on Super 8). You have to check out the demo videos on their site- why didn’t we choose Iggy Pop for our soundtrack?? Layer Cake Films is based in Los Angeles and North Carolina, but the team is available to travel for destination weddings. In fact, Michelle from Layer Cake is also in Paris a few times during the year, and is available to document your Parisian wedding or event for you in fun and funky Super 8. Oh! And while you’re visiting their site, be sure to check out all of the cake-y goodness on their blog. Yurm….
weddings
Wedding Style
Paris, France
destination wedding
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