Floral design for a Vogue Weddings feature at Chateau le Clos de la Ribaudiere

Floral Design for a Vogue Wedding at Chateau le Clos de la Ribaudiere, France

This is one of those weddings I think about when people ask me what chateau wedding floral design in France actually means to me. Not the arch, not the palette. The brief. Two ceremonies in one weekend, two cultures, one garden. Each one had to feel completely true to itself.

Makeda is Ghanaian. Thomas is from Poitiers. They chose Chateau le Clos de la Ribaudiere because it was his home, not because it appeared on a venue list. That detail mattered to me from the first conversation. A place with that kind of meaning asks something different from a florist.

Thursday was the Ghanaian traditional ceremony, and for Makeda, it was the official marriage. I wanted the design to feel that way too. Tall pampas columns on the lawn, deep foliage, wicker baskets, warm white and natural green. Nothing that borrowed from the formal French chateau language. It needed to belong to her, not to the architecture around it.

Saturday, the whole thing shifted. The ceremony moved to the ornamental pond, on the stone steps at the far end, with guests standing along both sides of the water looking up. I built the floral arch directly into the existing stonework of the staircase rather than placing something in front of it. White climbing flowers, hydrangeas, garden roses, delphiniums. The bouquet was loose: peonies, ranunculus, lisianthus, astrantia, and a pale blue ribbon. The stone urns throughout the garden held overflowing green and white compositions that held the space without competing with the ceremony.

The two days looked nothing alike. That was never a problem. What I kept consistent was the logic: both designs started with the place. That is how I work, whether it is a chateau in the Loire Valley, a garden in Paris, or somewhere I have never been before.