Our French wedding reception in the Loire Valley took place nearly 9 months after our civil ceremony, 3 months after the Green Card, 3 weeks after our religious ceremony, and 3 days after the end of our Honeymoon. I worried that the event would feel anti-climatic. The day before, I regretted our decision to re-wear our wedding attire, for fear that it would feel as if I were trying to recreate our wedding day in a totally fake and even dishonorable way. I began conjuring (fake?) superstitions about the perils of wearing the same wedding dress twice.
A week beforehand, while we were in Spain, we began getting gloomy text messages from my mother-in-law about the weather forecast for the weekend of the reception. “Pouring rain all weekend,” she warned. I tried to cheer myself up by reasoning that, until then, we had been very lucky with weather. It was flawless in PA for our wedding (and then poured rain the following weekend). It poured rain in southern Spain days before we arrived, but then cleared up for the duration of our stay (and then promptly poured rain the night we left.) So I wasn’t surprised that we were due for pouring rain in France.
Except, I was surprised. Because it didn’t rain a single drop! In fact, during much of the four day stretch that we were in France, the weather was sunny, unseasonable warm, and simply magnificent. Any worries that I had about the event disappeared when I saw our guests frolicking on the grounds of the chateau, their content faces beaming at Mr. Pinault in his tuxedo and me in my wedding gown.
There are over 300 chateaus in the Loire Valley. To get married in a chateau in France is nearly a universal dream. Indeed, some of the French relatives talked about a Japanese wedding party at a neighboring chateau, which is apparently a common sight. They will hire a bus to take them to a chateau, hold a Western-style ceremony, and then leave the next day, their ultra-romantic wedding dreams fulfilled. And now I’m in a position to answer the question: Is it worth it?
Well, here is the chateau where we got married:
Okay, that’s a total lie. The chateau pictured above is actually the renowned Chateau at Amboise. This is the chateau where my wedding reception was:
Not exactly the apex of grandeur or pinnacle of pomp, but a perfectly acceptable chateau located in the pleasing French countryside. (I just read this to Mr. Pinault and he feels I’m being disrespectful to our chateau, so I must clarify that I’m being tongue-in-cheek snotty. I’m a middle-class girl of no great beauty from Pennsylvania. Any chateau is too good for me. ) We had a fabulous time. We drank, we danced, we ate rabbit, we cut a cake that resembled multiple turrets of Munchkins. Here’s my piece of cake:
Still, one of the coolest things about having a wedding reception at a chateau in France is that whenever I tell people that I had a wedding reception at a chateau in France, their American imaginations will run freely wild with no prompting from myself, picturing this:
