Z+S from ParisIntimate Elopement in Paris and the Provence Lavender Fields
Hotel Amour, Paris // Valensole, Provence
France - July 2021
Above: Elopement Teaser of Z&S by Il était un Pixel in Provence, France, 2021
Below: Photos by Il était un Pixel
Z & S lived in Paris, she of Greek origin, and their wedding was planned as an intimate celebration in Santorini. But before the island, they wanted two things: images in the city where their story lived day to day, and Provence, because it made them dream. From that double wish came one of my favorite elopement-style days: a pre-wedding in two acts, Paris then the lavender, just the three of us.
Act one: Paris, their city
Preparations happened at the Hôtel Amour in Paris, in that atmosphere at once intimate and deeply Parisian that gives getting-ready images an extra soul. Then we photographed in Paris, their Paris: not the postcard first, but the city they actually lived in, the one they wanted to remember themselves in, dressed for a ceremony. It is advice I often give urban couples: the city where you love each other daily deserves its place in the gallery as much as the dream destination does.
Act two: seven hours south to the lavender
Then we drove. Seven or eight hours on the road together, a full day, heading south: it is one of the things I love most about elopements, that travel companionship which turns the photographer into an accomplice rather than a vendor. Arrived in Provence, I took them to my places, and the day ended where it had to end: in the lavender fields of Valensole at sunset, for vows exchanged between the two of them and a small celebration all their own, an elopement before the elopement.
Lavender at sundown has no equivalent as a setting: the purple catching fire, the perfume, the perfect vanishing lines, and two people alone in the middle of it. The day closed at nightfall with a bottle of champagne opened between the rows, and for them that moment remained as powerful and symbolic as the ceremony that would follow in Santorini.
Valensole, a field manual
For couples the lavender calls, the field notes from this day: at Valensole everything plays out in the final ninety minutes, when the sun drops into the axis of the rows and the purple ignites. You arrive early, you scout your field (they are not equal: orientation, plant height, horizon line), you respect the growers' work by keeping to the pathways, and you keep the vows for the very end, when the light is on its knees. The bees head home with the evening; the mosquitoes clock in: repellent is the one unromantic accessory I insist on.
Wedding Team
Photo/Video: Il était un Pixel, Jérémie + Mathéo
Location: Hotel Amour Paris & Valensole, Provence
The road as part of the story
I want to defend the seven-hour drive, because on paper it looks like the day's cost and in memory it became part of its treasure. A car, three people, France scrolling from grey to gold outside the windows, the playlist negotiations, the roadside coffee: by the time we reached the lavender, we were not photographer and clients arriving at a location, we were three travelers finishing a journey, and the evening's images carry that ease. Elopement days work like this everywhere: the travel is not between the moments, it is one of them.
What this day teaches
Two lessons I share often. First: a pre-wedding session is not a rehearsal, it is a chapter in its own right, sometimes with its own vows, and with images the wedding day will not make. Second: lavender has a precise season, roughly late June to mid-July at Valensole depending on the year, and the smart strategy is usually to decouple the lavender session from the wedding date, exactly as Z & S did.
And for your elopement?
If a chapter for two between Paris and Provence, or anywhere the light is beautiful, makes you dream, this is the heart of my work: the elopement page and the Provence guide are the right doors in.