Category Archives: Chateau wedding

Transatlantic Wedding Planning Adds Glamour

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Twitt

OK, so I’m going to admit it. American guests can be a little more demanding than the average Rigaud client and the NY crowd don’t always understand the limitations of our rural French community. So when we took a booking from a Brooklyn bride with roots in the fashion and photography industries it was not without stress that we get things absolutely right.

The bride and groom both come from high profile, creative backgrounds and have a very clear idea of how things should look. The flower brief referenced our all time favourite flower blog, the Brooklyn based Saipua. This inspirational blog comes from hottest flower shop in the hippest city on the planet, so being asked to deliver what they do was no walk in Central Park. From the images here you can see that Hayley came through the scared “Help!” phase and did us proud!

There were some crazy moments over the weekend.  The temperatures were into the 30’s, causing the suited groom to wilt a little so we popped him into the walk in fridge for ten minutes to relax and “chill”.  When the bride made her stunning appearance, thirty five minutes behind schedule, the heavens opened and the wedding party were forced to take shelter in the chateau, but this gave her the ten minutes of calm that she needed before floating down the aisle to the notes of the Kora, an African Harp, which was a first for the Rigaud lawns.

Chefs Steve Carss and new to the team, Rupert Craddock, produced an incredible meal which included the sweetest baby Charantais carrots and beetroots from the Chateau vegetable gardens. They topped the home grown strawberries on the white chocolate mousse with vibrant blue borage flowers and the effect was pure “dessert by Anthropologie”. I was so proud!

The weather was kind for the rest of the day until it was time for the fireworks at which point the chateau was engulfed in one of those dramatic electric storms when the rain falls in sheets and the ground rumbles with the vibration of the thunder. Thankfully our pyro technician had the forethought to wrap all the gunpowder in polythene ahead of the night to while the guests stood under the new bar cover so the grounds were spectacularly illuminated by lightening and “feu d’artifice” at the same time.

The bride and groom were delighted by the drama of it all. They loved, loved, loved that the rain forced guests to stay within the safety of the barn walls and dance the night away.

It was an intimidating booking and not without it’s moments of stress but when the very lovely bride left on Monday morning her comment to me was “Anna, thank you, for everything, it’s all been absolutely perfect” and that was high praise indeed!

 

Focus on our house white – Chateau Bauduc

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Twitt

We’ve been serving Chateau Bauduc Sauvignon Blanc at Rigaud for several years now and in 2012 it will be our standard house white for party bookings and weddings. We’re in good company with this choice – the same wine has been a house white at Gordon Ramsay (for the past ten years), at Rick Stein’s various restaurants and at the Hotel du Vin establishments.

I love the post on the Bauduc blog in which wine writer Jancis Robinson rates the Bauduc 2009 which retails in the UK at £8.95 more highly than the slightly more expensive Chateau Mouton Rothschild blanc 2009, selling at £70 and only half a point behind the wildly extravagant Chateau Haut Brion blanc 2009 for which you will pay in the region of £750. This makes a Chateau Rigaud wedding look like rather good value when you consider how much of the Bauduc blanc is consumed by guests as part of our package!

Oz Clark also had complimentary comments

“The whites ought to fly off the shelf because they are absolutely the right wine for 2011: the zeitgeist of white wine drinking – the Bauduc Whites hit it bang in the middle”

Oz Clarke, March 2011

If you’re getting married at Rigaud, or you’re attending a wedding or a party here and you get a taste for the Bauduc white then you’ll be delighted to hear that you can buy online, direct from the chateau and expect delivery within three to five days. It would be like having a bit of Rigaud delivered to the door, albeit in fact a bit of Bauduc. But I think you get the drift. www.bauduc.com

The pressure was on for our French-Irish love match

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Twitt

There was a degree of pressure on the team for the first wedding of the season. The groom is responsible for events, including plenty of high spend weddings, at a leading Irish Country House Hotel and a French man to boot. Xavier clearly “knows his onions” when it comes to wedding planning, banquet delivery and the standards of service to expect. His beautiful bride, Bronagh, manages special events and entertainments for a leading Blue Chip. Between them they’ve planned a few parties and managed a few budgets!

Bronagh was clear about what she wanted from the start which was a bohemian feel, with plenty of colour, a relaxed atmosphere but enough sophistication to satisfy the French side of the family. I think Rigaud was the perfect choice of venue to pull this off and that Hayley, fresh back from her course with McQueen’s, scored maximum points with the flowers, which had a definite meadow feel about them.

The use of coloured ribbons was repeated through the day, with a stunning display in the honeysuckle arch which guests walk through to reach the ceremony and a further curtain of ribbons at the entrance to the barn. Multi coloured heavy satin ribbons wrapped the napkins at the dinner table and all of the shades were picked up in the flowers in shades of orange, red, pink, yellow, green and purple. They were clever not to use blue, which would have been too tricky to match with florals.

For this to look as good as it did you have to be brave and go all out for the big mix with a genuine abundance of cut flowers. It’s not a cheap solution but I have a feeling that Bronagh perfected a look here which will be repeated throughout the year. Boho chic, effortless style, bravo!

 

Mark Bolton Photography Hero

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Twitt

We recently entertained garden and interiors photographer Mark Bolton and his very lovely family, who joined an April House Party here at Rigaud. The weather was great and Mark captured lots of images which will form the basis of a new Chateau Rigaud coffee table book. The team really enjoyed having an official photographer in residence and it was perfect timing before the wedding season began so I think we’ll try and make an annual event of it. It’s a long term project to have a self published glossy hardback which tells the Rigaud story, with a few recipes plus housekeeping and gardening tips thrown in.These are some pictures he took of the Tower Suite which is the room we recommend for brides. The light is fantastic for make up and the view from the window is over the lawns where the ceremony takes place. I think he captures the atmosphere of the room really well. More shots to follow later this week..

Miss Havisham’s Chateau Wedding!

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Twitt

The chateau has the air of Miss Havisham’s wedding this afternoon as the flowers remain throughout the house, but a stillness pervades. The guests have long gone.

Sarah and Robert celebrated their vows over the weekend in great style, filling the chateau with life and style and a party atmosphere so when it came to clearing up none of us could bear to throw away the blooms. Hayley combined some gorgeous deep red velvety roses, with white heather, eucalyptus and a vintage pink ranunculus rose. The effect was very pretty, giving a seasonal tinge without allowing Christmas to take over.

I often think flowers look their best when they’re just over their peak. It would be a brave bride who went with full blown, slightly dropping roses but that’s when I think they look most lovely. (No comments here or comparisons please!)

The wedding had a definite air of a country house party with log fires, wellies and woolly jumpers. The winter months generate this atmosphere so well. The guests also raved about their St Emilion visit on Saturday which was arranged for them by the team at Vignobles et Chateaux in St Emilion, (www.vignobleschateaux.com) where Patrick also sold them some very smart wines for their wedding meal that evening. All in all it was a very smart do!

Wedding Highlights of 2010 – Chandeliers for Clare and Will

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Twitt

It’s been a brilliant season with something special to remember about every wedding. My mind is filled with visions of oh so beautiful people gracefully floating across the lawns in the golden afternoon sunshine. I can also conjure up a few less attractive images as they staggered back again in the early hours of the morning but the less said about that the better!

So what were the highlights of the year? It’s going to take a few blog pieces to capture all the best bits but it definitely started with Clare and Will back in May. This was the first appearance of the fabulous chandeliers in the trees. Every French chateau wedding should have candlelit chandeliers hanging from the trees. C’est de rigeur!

I spent the early spring scouring antique shops and brocantes (French word for up market jumble sales) looking for the impossible – authentic antique chandeliers with plenty of pretty crystals but an equally attractive, meaning low, price tag. I eventually struck a deal and bagged three from one dealer for just under 600 euros.

The buying is of course just the start of it. The next stage was to clean them up, then strip out the electrics and replace the nasty mock candlesticks with glass voltives. Into the glass voltives go special, exceedingly expensive, voltive candles which burn for nine hours or more. One of the loveliest moments this summer has been walking back to the chateau on the morning after a wedding to see some of the chandeliers still alight, still ready to party long after the bride has hit the pillow.

Anyway, back to our bride and groom. Will is the online editor of GQ Magazine, Clare also works in publishing so the guest list was rich with media folk which proved handy. I was desperate for a good shot of my sparkling new lighting installation but Tom the wedding photographer had left after the first dance. It looked like it was down to me to snap the shot until Clare introduced me to one of her guests who is a brilliant fashion photographer. Then an art director from ad-land wandered over and before we knew it we had a full scale shoot in the garden. It’s not easy to capture the moment on uneven ground with fast fading light and a wonky tripod, not to mention the effects of a lengthy champagne reception, wines with dinner and the open bar… But I think they did a mighty fine job and an enormous cheer went up when we got the shot we were after.

We were going for rock n roll album cover chateau bride. I love Clare’s stance holding her dress and the slightly ghostly effect that it has when they don’t smile.

Wedding planning weekends – the big feed

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Twitt

Five brides gathered at Rigaud over the weekend for a wedding planning weekend with the Rigaud team. We love these weekends since they give us the opportunity to get to know the couple and in some cases their close family and to work out what they really want from their chateau wedding.

On Saturday we visited head chef Laurent, at what he romantically refers to as his “laboratoire”. You or I might describe it as his industrial catering unit but hey, this is France. There, in the heart of the kitchen the brides sampled everything they will be served during their wedding day and they were able to choose specific course options they will go for.

First up were oysters, crevettes, ceviche and tartare of scallop with wild salmon, swiftly followed by foie gras toasts with cèps and more with figs. Superb jambon “Patta Negra” with red pepper tapenade came next and for me the star of the canapé parade was the pan fried scallops with leeks and saffron jus.

Starters were limited to asparagus with smoked salmon or the guacamole with crab which looks fabulous in a tall Martini glass. Laurent explained that he is always happy to do a delicious seasonal salad to start, with perhaps asparagus and quail egg in the spring? There’s room to improvise. For mains they had the regional signature dish of confit de canard with dauphinois potatoes. It never fails to please. Then the cheese course was Brebis with Morello cherry jam.

Before dessert the brides were given a spun caramel demonstration which will stand them in good stead for married domestic bliss, then came the “Declinaison Autour du Chocolat” an assembly of chocolate delights. The secondary dessert was a quick profiterole which would form the Piece Monte wedding cake that we can offer in place of a dessert on the wedding day.

We rolled them back out of the laboratoire into cars for the trip home where the real wine tasting began. They didn’t really do justice to Frank’s fabulous buffet that evening which we’re still finishing for lunch.

The Sun came out for our high profile media wedding

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Twitt

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t anxious about last weekend. It wasn’t the larger numbers attending or the higher than average spend that concerned me as much as the combined media weight represented in Rigaud’s ‘rustique’ wedding barn and the potential fallout should things be less than perfect. When you have the editor of the largest selling newspaper in the UK joined by an array associated high flying colleagues you want to be sure it’s right, don’t you.

Life experience had taught me that this would inevitably be the wedding when a freak storm of monsoon proportions would flood the grounds, taking out the power along with a couple of trees and that the “luck” of rain on your wedding day would be lost on our savvy bride.

Well it didn’t happen. It was all shockingly perfect with just the right amount of sun, the right shade of flowers and even my occasionally tetchy French caterers were on best behaviour. It was another very lovely, glamorous wedding at Chateau Rigaud of which we are very proud.

In fact if truth be known, the only ones to let themselves down were the slightly naughty Rigaud team who, after threading 650 white chrysanthemums onto fishing wire, bunching 120 lavender sprigs, tying ribbons around 120 Roccoco chocolate bars (without eating a single one), placing out 150 paper bag lanterns and 100 candle tree lanterns, stapling 60 confetti cones and hanging 30 wicker hearts, did at around about midnight get stuck into a couple of bottles of vodka and were still to be seen on the dance floor at around 4am when all the media babes had no doubt filed their stories for the night.

Sunday was an entirely different matter….

We are gathered here today….

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Twitt

Ed and Ondine attended a wedding here at Rigaud in 2008 and loved it so much that they wanted a repeat for their own nuptuals this summer. The only problem was that Ondine had always envisaged a church wedding and Ed’s aunt is a vicar. It seemed only a church would do. Of course French churches are mainly Catholic so while we have arranged for brides to be married here in the St Emilion Abbey, it’s not possible unless they are of the Catholic faith. The only solution was to build a church, here on the Rigaud lawns, complete with alter, cross and an organ,  which is what we did and Ed’s aunt Miranda gave a very moving service in which she definitely stated that The Badger should be more fogiving when I leave the lid off the toothpaste.

It was a strange mixture of emotions for us ex pat chateau owners to hear Jerusalem sung on our French pastures green. And after the fabulous hymns and the thoughtful ceremony they went on to drink the most champagne of any wedding so far averaging nearly two bottles per head over the weekend. Bravo! It was a very jolly affair.

Celebrity photographer puts Rigaud in the Bridal Soup

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Twitt

When the bride’s brother is a wedding photographer to the rich and famous www.BrettHarknessphotography.com it puts a degree of pressure on the venue. Brett has shot weddings in the most prestigious venues and his Texan wife Kristie knows a thing or two about how a wedding should be run. We had to get it right or we’d know about it.

It’s an even bigger compliment that the wedding has now made it to the pages of super blogsite, Bridal Soup www.bridalsoup.com

Check out the full story and some incredible images at http://www.bridalsoup.com/?cat=108