Last-Minute Magic: Planning a Parisian Wedding in 30 Days

July 26, 2023 Tiega Minvielle

If you had 4 weeks to plan your wedding what would you do first? No venue. No caterer. In fact, not one single vendor booked. Just the ceremony booked at the city hall.

That’s the challenge a Parisian couple gave us:

Plan a Parisian wedding in 30 days

by Yao Raffal

Meet S & G

S & G is what we would call an old marriage.

This Parisian couple has been together for more than 30 years but never got officially married.

As an unconventional couple, having a wedding was never on their priority list.

It’s now or never!

After COVID hit, they wanted to bring together their loved ones to spend a day full of laughter. Of your course, their younger daughter begging them for the last 10 years to get married was also a motivation.

As spontaneous as always, they went to the city hall and booked the next available wedding ceremony slot to get married. It was in 4 weeks.

Their children, family and friends even thought it was a joke. Who gets married in 30 days without even a slight idea on where to hold the reception?

Even as a planner with a trustworthy network of vendors, planning and designing a wedding in 30 days is challenging. Let alone for a full time working couple.

As you can imagine, reality hit them hard and panic crept in. Where do you start? Which vendors do you contact first?

Emergency planning is our thing

S & G learned about Tiega Events through their oldest daughter, who attended a wedding we organised.

Similarly to them, we planned this 50-guests’ Parisian wedding on a tight deadline, 6 weeks. As a guest and close friend to our previous client, S & G daughter had a first hand experience of our services. She naturally suggested Tiega Events to her parents to pull off their dream wedding.

Not your typical wedding

After meeting with the couple and their daughters in their Parisian apartment, it was clear this was a challenge as no vendors were booked, not even the venue.

From our first consultation, we understood that this was not just their wedding, but a gift to themselves and their family. We came up with the idea of "Comme À La Maison" (Just like home), where guests would enjoy a relaxed day with not all of the traditional wedding highlights (no big entrance or wedding cake).

They wanted a unique format of a day-long wedding with no interruptions, from 12:00 pm until 5:00 am.

Our biggest roadblock was finding the perfect reception venue within a 10-minutes walk from the city hall. We were able to curate a venue the couple knew and had attended an event there before.

by Yao Raffal

A day full of surprises

After a 20-minute civil ceremony at around 12:00 pm, the couple and guests were ushered to the reception. They were welcome with a glass of Champagne and a chosen uplifting song.

To honour their love for music, we planned with their daughters two surprise performances, one with an Opera singer and her harpist in the afternoon and later in the evening a saxophonist who lit the dance floor.

For catering, they decided on a standing reception, partly buffet and partly tray service.

At lunch, the caterer offered French Cuisine and in the evening another caterer served French Caribbean Cuisine. Throughout the day, we had 3 interactive food activities: Découpe de Jambon, Crêpes and Tartelettes. Of course this couldn’t be a quintessential French wedding without great wine and Cheese boards.

Fuelled with delicious food, the couple and their guests’ had fun with games like karaoke, blind tests and quizzes before showing their last moves on the dance floor.

by Yao Raffal