My husband and I were married through Love Gracefully in May. We are so happy with every aspect of our wedding and all the help we received from the Love Gracefully Team. We are both from Atlanta, Georgia and did not want to have a big wedding as we both have very small nuclear families and are somewhat distant from our other family members, and everyone has spread out over the years due to work, etc. We loved the idea of having our honeymoon in Paris and thought that eloping might be the best way for us to get married without all the stress of planning a wedding at home. We couldn't have been more right. We found Love Gracefully through a simple google search of Elopement Packages Europe/Spain/France/Paris/Seville as we weren't sure what city to have our ceremony. We liked what we saw on the website, and were further convinced by all the amazing reviews on YouTube, including a review by the former Atlanta Falcons/NFL player Tony Gonzalez, which was enough to convince us to book a date with Love Gracefully.
We initially contacted Love Gracefully in November 2018 about having a ceremony in mid-May 2019. We were interested in the Gold Package plan and wanted to add on a makeup service. We received responses right away from Bibiana, a member of the Love Gracefully Wedding Planning Team, who helped us choose the exact location in Paris for our service and time of day, giving us all the information we needed about how busy the location would be and what the lighting would be like. Based on their recommendations, and our interest in an Eiffel Tower ceremony, we went with a riverside ceremony around 6pm to catch the sunset, and we are so happy we took their advice, the lighting, location, and everything was absolutely perfect.
We then filled out a questionnaire together with lots of details about our relationship including when and how we first met, about our first date, our engagement, how religious and what faith we are, and what our favorite hobbies are and details about our personalities. This information was then used by the Lorena and Bibiana, who make up the Love Gracefully Wedding Planning Team and Pierre's Personal Assistant, to create a personalized custom wedding ceremony which was very touching and emotional. We chose the option to write our own vows, which made the ceremony that much more meaningful.
Closer to the ceremony we received details like how the bouquet would look, I opted for the standard white roses with baby's breath that comes with the Gold Package, which was beautiful! They also asked for photos of how I wanted my hair and make-up to look for the make-up artist to prepare. For our ceremony, they teamed me up with Wallace Woo (woowallace Hair & Makeup on Instagram) who regularly works with Love Gracefully clients to prepare them for their ceremony. He is amazing, I've never had better makeup in my life. While chatting with him I also learned that he also does work for fashion shows and is a fashion blogger (Dimiwally on Instagram), which explains all his experience and knowledge! I'm so happy to have had his help.
As part of the Gold Package, we had our own chauffeur for three hours, who picked us up in a gorgeous Mercedes with sunroof shortly after Wallace finished working with me to take us to the ceremony location. Our chauffeur, Renaud, was very courteous and knowledgeable about Paris, pointing out many monuments and interesting facts that we didn't know. He also had mints, candies, and water available for us in the car to help calm our nerves. We arrived in perfect time despite rush hour traffic to our ceremony location which had a beautiful view of the full Eiffel Tower and was very secluded, making it a perfect spot for us.
Pierre was there to greet us with all the charm and subtle humor he exudes in the videos from their website and YouTube. His delivery of the ceremony was fantastic and moving. He is an excellent public speaker from his former work at the France 5 TV station. Pierre is absolutely delightful, we are so happy he was the one to perform our ceremony.
Also upon our arrival to the ceremony location, we were met by our photographer, Jacques Mateos (http://myparisphotographer.com/, https://www.instagram.com/jacquesmateos/) who stayed with us for the whole ceremony and two additional hours as part of the Gold Package. His ability to work with lighting, framing, and different locations is uncanny. He made fantastic work of the sunset lighting and gorgeous blue skies that Paris had to offer that day and I couldn't be happier with how my husband and I looked. He worked quickly, with multiple lenses, to give us the best shots at 7 additional locations, besides the ceremony location, to give us multiple Eiffel Tower views, as well as views of locations we were interested in including the Bir Hakeim Bridge (which appeared in the film Inception), Pont Alexandre III, and shots of the Pantheon in the distance thanks to teamwork with our driver Renaud. read more