Coming from Belgium to marry in a small gathering near Nice — trading the grey and the rough North Sea for the warm Mediterranean light. A small wedding, deliberately so. Ten people, a cathedral, a villa above the sea, two days that felt longer than they were.
Alexandra and Andrei wanted a Côte d’Azur wedding that resembled them — quiet, intentional, with room for everyone close to them to actually be present rather than orchestrated. The choice of the French Riviera was not for the postcard. It was for the geography of meaning: the Mediterranean stands as a kind of opposite to where they come from, and getting married here was, in part, a way of marking that crossing.
Stealing a moment among rocks heavy with sunlight and history, sharing a glass of champagne with the ten people they love most. The morning belonged to the cliffs — the kind of landscape that doesn’t need help from anyone. We took our time. There was no shot list, no announcer pulling them forward — just the four of us between Cap d’Antibes and Nice, the couple, their witnesses, and me, walking along paths the locals know, finding shade, finding stone, finding the right light.
Alexandra and Andrei were married at St Nicholas Cathedral in Nice in a deeply moving bilingual ceremony. The cathedral, with its mosaic walls and quiet acoustic, does something to voices. The ceremony was bilingual — French and English — and read by family members rather than performed at distance. There were tears, the kind that don’t need to be hidden.
What followed was a quietly joyful celebration in a villa overlooking the sea in Antibes. A long table on a terrace, the sea behind it, the light shifting through twenty different colours as the afternoon turned. Dinner stretched. The bride moved between the tables without anyone keeping track of time. The toasts, when they came, were given in more than one language and answered with laughter that carried across the water.
Côte d’Azur weddings often get reduced to a single image — a vineyard, a yacht, a stretch of pastel buildings. This one had none of that. It had heat on the back of the neck during the ceremony walk, salt on the windows of the villa at dinner, and a couple who, when I asked at the end of the day what mattered most, both said the same thing without hesitation: that the people they had chosen to bring with them were still there at 1 a.m., still talking, still laughing.
A small wedding photographed with care, on a coast that asks to be slowed down to.
If a Côte d’Azur wedding — French Riviera, Provence, anywhere along the Mediterranean — is something you’re starting to imagine, feel free to reach out. Even if the date isn’t set yet.
