My life as a foodie: we got married!

I couldn’t wait any longer: finally I’m here to tell you everything about our wedding day! It’s time for a break: take a seat, make yourself a drink, grab a couple of cookies, and get ready to read!

So yes, let’s start with the most important here: we said YES! Yes for love, yes for life together, yes for all happy and challenging times life will bring to our lives. We got married on the 24th of June, so it’s been nearly a month already, and I still have stars in the eyes every time I think about it. Everything was perfect, magic, and exceeded – by far – all of our  expectations (check my Foodie Life Series to learn everything about the wedding prep).

We both felt truly blessed and we can hardly believe it happened for real. The weather was perfect, warm and sunny, the venue amazing, the dress beautiful (I will tell you more about it in a minute), and we had the best bridesmaids and groomsmen we could ever imagine. Together, they teamed up and made everything possible with our guests to organize the most beautiful and dream day for us. We laughed a lot, felt emotional so many times, and were amazed by every single surprise we got to discover through the day. I still smile by remembering all of these beautiful times we had together.

In this new episode of my Foodie Life Series – wedding edition, the main focus will be about food at the wedding! But before we start, I would like to address a special thank you to our official wedding photographer, Marine Le Berre, who has been accompanying us throughout the day, making each moment count and very special to us. Marine has been a friend to me for the last few years – I met her through a blogger event in Paris – and it’s such a honor to have had the opportunity to have her around us on our wedding day, especially when you know she photographed some of the most popular fashion bloggers at the moment. Thank you, Marine!

A cookie before the ceremony? Yes I do!

We started the day with the wedding preparation of course. We were lucky to be in a castle in Touraine, and we got dressed there. Some people would tell you it’s bad luck, but we both got ready in the same room as we figured we were already married anyway, and I can tell you it was a lot of fun. It makes things more casual, and I was happy to share every little moment of the day with my other half. And if you ask me: what was the craziest thing I did just before the ceremony? I grabbed a cookie in my wedding dress! Oh my, it was delicious!

My precious: a 100% French & tailored wedding dress

I’m extremely honored to have had the opportunity to have exactly the dress I had dreamed of. It’s also sentimental, as my aunt tailored it for me. Regarding the fact that she lives in France and I live in the US, you can imagine how big the challenge was! With only photos I had sent her, she worked tremendously over the 10 months prior the wedding day to make my dream come true.

We chose the fabric together in a shop in Paris in last November, choosing French silk and a very delicate French Chantilly lace. I couldn’t have been more happy about the result: this dress is me. Simple, with some discrete and elegant touches and a tail. I couldn’t have seen me in another wedding dress, and I will never thank my aunt enough for making it happen. A couple of days before the wedding, she looked at me and said: “I can’t even realize I made this dress!”. Thank you, my dear!

A Midsummer wedding: between Sweden & France!

As we got married for the first time in Sweden, we chose to get married in France on Midsummer Day (June 24th), with the idea to celebrate summer on our Wedding day, with lots of flowers, wildflowers mainly. We had them in my bouquet, in David’s lapel, and also on the tables at the cocktail and for the dinner.

The little American touch was brought by the Mason Jars I had brought back from the US as they are difficult – and expensive – to find in Europe. For some of them, we used some extra lace from my wedding dress, making it very fancy!

The food was a mix between traditional French and Swedish dishes, with a stand of French foie gras with bread on one side, and another one with the typical Swedish gravlax, served with the typical mustard sauce and some classic rye crispy bread “knäckebröd”. We even had some Swedish soft drinks such as a blueberry syrup or elderberry syrup.

You can check my own gravlax recipe on the blog, as well as my own version of crispbread, not the one we had at the wedding but Swedish multi-seed crispbread recipe. It’s much easier to prepare than it looks like and it’s absolutely delicious. A must try for any summer celebration!

In France, we drink champagne from the region we come from, which for me means Vouvray! We served in two different versions, dry and sweet, for the cocktail and for the dessert. During the dinner, we had a declination of local French white and red wines, among them some Chinon, which is one of my favorites red wines.

To make our Vouvray more festive and a little bit fancy, I got the idea to add some small fresh raspberries in the glasses at the cocktail. A pure fantasy of mine that might seem a random detail to you but made me very happy (I love raspberries)! Oh, and don’t miss my Vouvray recipe I posted on the blog just before the wedding: a Blackberry Lavender Vouvray Cocktail.

Our Midsummer cocktail turned out very nice and amazed us in many ways! When David and I showed up hand in hand after the ceremony, we got the surprise to see that our guests had built a Midsummer maypole covered with flowers for the occasion! We had thought about that with David before but kind of forgot about this idea as it was too complicated to organize. And I remember David telling me just the night before the wedding: “Too bad we didn’t do the maypole idea…”.

Well, what a surprise!! Note to mention that the maypole looked stunning. We even sang and danced the traditional Små grodorna around the maypole with all our Swedish guests, and even the other ones who had learned the song for the occasion. We felt truly blessed and had a lot of fun!

Other activities to entertain our guests during the cocktail included the Finnish wooden game Mölkky. We could have brought the Swedish version, Kubb, but I personally really prefer the Finnish one. It doesn’t matter anyway, as Midsummer is a Nordic celebration and we also got to celebrate it in Finland with friends once, a couple of years ago. It was so much fun!

Edible gifts for our guests: Lavender Honey Madeleines (a recipe by Del’s cooking twist)

Oh yes, we made presents for our guests of course! Usually in France you serve dragées, or macarons lately. I went my own way with my favorite tiny little French madeleines. I have an endless love for these beauties, and I created a special recipe for our wedding guests, a recipe that you can already find on the blog: lavender honey madeleines.

Originally I wanted to bake them myself. A crazy project when you think that madeleines need to be eaten when they are still fresh. So the closest to the wedding you bake them, the longer they will last. Hopefully I know a very gifted woman and cake designer in Touraine, Emeline from Sweet Mama. She accepted to bake the madeleines following my own recipe, putting some love in each batch she would prepare. Simple, elegant, beautiful.

The wedding cake: introducing the berry naked cake!

And now… the wedding cake! You wouldn’t have guessed what happened with this project. Of course as a blogger I had high expectations, and so had our guests. I had ordered one already, when Sweet Mama suddenly surprised me with the idea of baking an additional one for us, as a present!! Emeline is really an incredible person. I still can’t realize she baked it for us!

Her dessert happened to be a huge naked cake, exactly as the one I had always dreamed of when drooling over some stunning Pinterest photos. The naked cake was filled with fresh berries, as you would have for a traditional Midsummer dessert, and I liked that it was decorated with wild flowers matching the Midsommar theme. An enormous thank you, Emeline, for this masterpiece that ended up our wedding day beautifully!

A flower of love, and other surprises!

Note that this is an edited version of the original video in order to respect our guests privacy.

To get the full recipe in video, click here.

Again, we had the best bridesmaids and groomsmen we could ever dream of. They got us right. Among other surprises, we got a private impro show organized by our comedian friends from Paris (lucky us!!), and a baking surprise! Our guests took up the challenge to film themselves baking my Swedish Cinnamon Star Bread at home together with their families. Then, they created an adorable vintage video for the wedding. The video features dozens of happy people baking and enjoying a proper Swedish fika (tea time). I still can’t stop smiling every time I think about it, I’m so moved by such an adorable idea.

Our wedding day turned out just perfect, with much love, fun, and magic. David and I are the most happiest people in the world to be surrounded by such amazing people to celebrate our love with us!

To read more about the wedding prep, discover my latest episodes of My Foodie Life Series:

• My life as a foodie special wedding: 4 days to go!
• My life as a foodie in Chicago: wedding prep + a trip to NYC!
• My life as a foodie in Chicago: we’re getting married!