When Monet's Lily Pond Ran Away to Italy

A Closer Look

Relais La Foleia sits in Piedmont, a region long tied to France, and Sarah Lillie Designs used that history to move past the Tuscan look so many Italian weddings borrow. Two secluded villas face one another across a private lake, and its surface, crowded with lily pads and rimmed in reeds, had a famous precedent. Monet spent the last decades of his life painting a pond much like it in his garden in Normandy, beside a pink house with green trim. This editorial took the painter's garden as its sketchbook, and nearly every choice reads as a brushstroke borrowed from French art.

Hannah Turner Studio set out the palette of soft greens, antique pink and creamy white on paper. Green and rose cards were printed with loose watercolor blooms and edged in blush feathers that belong more to a Belle Époque dressing table than a stationery suite.

The pink villa became the ceremony setting. Ivory fabric was draped across its colonnade and left to fall in deep folds to the steps above the pond, blurring the neoclassical columns the way an Impressionist blurs a hard edge. Alberto Dell'Orto Flower Designer placed low mounds of pink hydrangea, peach garden roses and deep red anthurium at the stone edges, so the color sat right at the waterline.

Three bridal looks from Antonella Del Brusco, Le Spose di Gio and Sartorial Weddings each took a different side of the brief. The strapless gown with an oversized back bow and lace-edged veil played it classic. An off-the-shoulder dress carried a trailing cascade of blush callas for a romantic line. The most daring look went furthest, into Surrealism. A long-sleeved crepe gown with a deep V was worn with a headpiece shaped like an oversized white bloom that hid the bride's face entirely. Photographed in a rowboat out among the lilies, it recalls Monet's paintings of women rowing on the river near his home. The groom stayed in a classic black tuxedo, which gave the pastel scene a dark anchor.

At the table, the reference shifted from the painter's garden to the French interior. A vine-wrapped pergola at the water's edge was hung with lengths of olive silk and paper pendants, and pink velvet covered the table like upholstery. Brass lamps with pleated olive shades stood among the flowers as if carried out of a Parisian salon. Scalloped plates were decorated with green birds, and side plates came in rose toile, the pattern France has used to tell pastoral stories since the eighteenth century. Gilded figural butter knives added a Rococo wink, and wavy-edged napkins in pink and red kept it playful. Rentals came from BBJ La Tavola, Lola Valentina and Curated Events Charleston. The florals ran warmer here, with coral and peach roses, anthurium and clusters of grapes arranged like a still life.

Qualcosa Di Dolce's cake sat apart on the terrace. Piped in red and heaped with fresh berries, it rested on a table pooled in mauve velvet and ringed with roses, under olive silk gathered overhead. Behind it, the second villa looked back across the water, framed like the final canvas in a series.