A three-day Château de Ferrières wedding near Paris blending Chinese and Puerto Rican traditions, international creatives and an enchanted garden design.
CHÂTEAU DE FERRIERES, SEINE-ET-MARNE
Three days · 135 guests · New York and
Welcome dinner · Ceremony · Black-tie dinner · Sunday brunch
Photography: Vlasta Wedding · Florals Katya Hutter · Catering : Château de Ferrieres
For eighteen months, we planned Tina and Sebastian’s three-day wedding around two things that mattered enormously to them: their families and the cultures they came from. Tina, an American bride of Chinese heritage, wanted the generosity and traditions she had grown up with to remain part of the celebration. Sebastian’s Puerto Rican heritage mattered just as much. The challenge was never to decide which traditions to include. It was to make them belong naturally within a wedding taking place in a nineteenth-century French château — without the day feeling like a succession of separate cultural moments.
The weekend began in Paris with a welcome evening on the Seine before 130 guests travelled the following day to Château de Ferrières, just outside the city. Tina’s aesthetic brief was an enchanted garden, realised with a highly international creative team: the florist travelled from the Netherlands, while the photography and film teams came from Italy. Florals in burgundy, pink, blush and green moved through the château’s gilded staircases and richly decorated salons, allowing the design to respond to the architecture rather than compete with it.
Making Tradition Part of the Day
Some of the most personal moments happened long before the ceremony.
As part of Tina’s Chinese wedding traditions, Sebastian had to make his way to his bride through a series of doors, negotiating with the bridesmaids on the other side. Red envelopes containing money were passed beneath each door; only when the bridesmaids considered the offering satisfactory was he allowed to continue.
At Ferrières, the architecture gave us an opportunity to turn that tradition into an actual journey.
Sebastian progressed through the château, door after door, until he finally reached Tina for their first look. Rather than staging the custom in one room simply because it needed to appear on the timeline, the château itself became part of it.
That same thinking continued throughout the evening. We created a dedicated area during the after-party where Tina’s Chinese family and guests could gather to play cards — something several of them asked about almost as soon as the evening began. It was not entertainment we had invented for them. It was something they genuinely wanted to do together, and therefore something the wedding needed to make space for.
For Sebastian’s family, music became the connection. Among the three vocalists performing with the band, we specifically requested a singer who was fluent in Spanish, allowing a substantial part of the after-party repertoire to move into Spanish-language music. By then, French château formality had given way completely to the personalities of the families inside it.
An Enchanted Garden, and an Abundance of Hospitality
Hospitality was equally central to Tina’s vision.
One of her recurring concerns throughout planning was that there should always be enough food. For her, abundance was part of looking after people. Our role was to translate that instinct into a French wedding format without creating unnecessary excess or waste.
During cocktails alone, guests moved between sushi, a brasero, freshly prepared pasta, cheese and fruit, passed canapés and cocktails. Later came dinner, followed by another generous round of food during the after-party: quesadillas, burgers, brownies and macarons.
Rather than concentrating everything into one enormous meal, food appeared throughout the celebration. Guests could eat when they wanted, return for something later and continue dancing without the evening ever feeling interrupted by another formal service.
Entertainment worked in much the same way. More than twenty performers were involved across the ceremony, cocktail hour and after-party, creating a musical thread through the entire wedding rather than saving the spectacle for one reveal at the end of the night.
From the Ceremony to the Dance Floor
The ceremony itself took place outside in front of Château de Ferrières on an unexpectedly hot and brilliantly sunny afternoon. As guests stepped off the coaches from Paris, we realised immediately that the exposed ceremony area would be uncomfortable while everyone waited.
Our team brought out the paper parasols we keep within our own production stock and began distributing them to guests as they arrived, then seated everyone promptly so that the ceremony could begin without unnecessary waiting in the heat. Afterwards, guests moved into the shaded areas of the estate for cocktails.
By dinner, the atmosphere had shifted again. Inside the château, candlelight, intricate table settings and the florals sat against red walls, gilt frames and historic paintings. The enchanted garden had moved indoors.
Then came the party.
The band took over, the Spanish repertoire began, the late-night food appeared and the dance floor filled. Nearby, guests played cards. Elsewhere, another round of quesadillas or macarons was being passed around. What could easily have felt like several different celebrations instead felt like one family gradually revealing itself over the course of the night.
The weekend ended the following morning with brunch at a Paris hotel.
For multicultural weddings in France, incorporating tradition is rarely about adding a symbolic moment to the timeline. The more interesting work is understanding why that tradition matters — and then giving it the space, setting and rhythm that allow it to feel entirely at home in the wedding around it.
