Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild Archives - Smashing the Glass

Weddings by the sea are my absolute favourite, so I’m a little bit obsessed with today’s gorgeous French Riviera Jewish wedding coming to you from the à¼ber-glamorous Cap Ferrat — a quite breathtaking part of the world that I was fortunate enough to visit last summer.

When STG regular, Polly Alexandre revealed the sneak peak to me, I just knew that Renata and Jonathan’s three day wedding extravaganza would be seriously fun to blog. This gorgeous destination wedding has more than a touch of class about it and I thought it would make for the perfect pick-me-up in the first week of January. Thoroughly elegant and sophisticated, the flowers in particular are unbelievably dreamy, with lots of beautiful pink and white peonies, roses and hydrangea. I’m also loving the sweetheart table, the macaroon pyramid, the suite of ‘magnificent garden’ themed stationery (complete with flower seed sachets!), and the jaw-dropping ceremony backdrop.

It’s quite the fashion fest too. I love the classiness of an outdoor black tie wedding, and Jonathan’s Tom Ford tuxedo is an absolute showstopper. Renata chose a Monique Lhuillier gown paired with Manolo Blahnik shoes, and then changed into a bespoke Femmes Fatales dress by Ella Tatarinova for the evening. I told you it was a fashion frenzy!

I’ve got the wedding film for you from Allora Visuals at the end of the post, as well as all the breathtaking imagery by the supremely talented Polly Alexandre. Take it away Polly and Renata…

How we met

In the words of Polly Alexandre, their photographer, Renata and Johnny’s love story involves two jetskis, two cities, one sea urchin, 40 spikes and a hospital.

Polly Alexandre, “This may seem like an unusual story and it’s definitely one of the most original I have heard for sure, but like all good fairytales it has a happy ending. The couple met on a group holiday in Kenya where Johnny persuaded Renata to come out on a jetski ride with him. However Johnny *may or may not* have gone a little bit fast and consequently Renata was thrown from the jetski into the shallow waters. She stepped on the seabed to catch her footing and “ouch!” immediately trod on a sea urchin that immediately shed over 40 spikes into her foot. So it was off to hospital to have them removed.”

“Feeling slightly responsible for her fate, Johnny arranged to take Renata for dinner in London a few weeks later, by way of apology. Except that this was a little more than an apology as rumour has it Johnny actually booked several restaurants for this rather special date…… finally opting for dinner at Daphne’s. The connection was immediate and soon blossomed into a beautiful romance. Despite living in different countries, the couple took it in turns to fly to each other for the weekend so they could be reunited each week.”

French Riviera weddings are renowned for being exquisitely beautiful but I think that this Cà´te d’Azur wedding is one of the most unique that I’ve seen. It has absolutely magnificent attention to detail and superb originality and creativity running through it including a gospel choir singing before and after the Chuppah ceremony, a life-size cow wedding cake (bet you’ve never seen that before!) and a surprise second half to the evening when guests were transported from a palatial villa garden setting onwards to a magical secret beach party.

Natasha and Jez, both from London, met at a mutual friends wedding and are a super-gorgeous couple with great taste and style. Both Jez and Natasha were very heavily involved in their wedding planning, both wanting to make it a fun and very special party for themselves and their guests.

Natasha the bride: I wanted to get married somewhere different and I wanted to think ‘outside of the box’. We have a house in Cap-Ferrat in the South of France where we spend a lot of time, and I remember being there and thinking how lovely it would be to get married in the area. We looked at all sorts of local venues and by far our favourite was the Villa Ephrussi. We had the ceremony and reception in the beautiful gardens of the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild and then later on we secretly took everyone down to Passable Beach for the dinner and dancing. No-one knew they were going there. We didn’t mention Passable Beach on the invitation and people were wondering around thinking “where are we going to sit for the food” and bit by bit, “where is everyone going?!” Guests stating disappearing but they didn’t know where they were going to!