Picture Perfect — Liza & Jean-Luc’s Cambridge Wedding

I can’t quite remem­ber how I found out about Jean-Luc’s own wed­ding to the beau­ti­ful Liza, but I was delighted to see they’d cho­sen Geoff Rear­don to be their wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher.
Jean-Luc and Liza have writ­ten their wed­ding report to share with you, and the images of their wed­ding day are breath­tak­ing — so I’ll leave you in their capa­ble hands to enjoy today’s wed­ding blog.

Cam­bridge Col­lege wed­ding blog: Liza and Jean-Luc Benazet

Liza had two beau­ti­ful dresses for the dis­tinct parts of the wed­ding day. In the morn­ing she wore this Mon­soon Fusion sum­mer dress with Irreg­u­lar Choice shoes from Schuh. For the after­noon bless­ing & recep­tion she wore Vic­to­ria Jane by Ronald Joyce (Sable 17014 ivory) bought from Karen Forte in Bass­ing­bourn with shoes from Mon­soon, a bracelet and hair acces­sories from Acces­sorize and neck­lace from Ernest Jones.

Jean-Luc wore a Cer­ruti black suit, ivory waist­coat and cra­vat, Ted Baker shoes, plain white shirt bought from Savoy Tay­lors — and Arse­nal cuff links!

The day began at 10AM with a small civil cer­e­mony at Cam­bridge reg­is­ter office with imme­di­ate fam­ily and close friends. We had spent the pre­vi­ous night apart, Liza at the hotel and JL at home, we arrived with our respec­tive fam­i­lies and Liza was given away by her Dad, we pur­pose­fully kept this cer­e­mony small & sim­ple which turned out to be very spe­cial.



We then went our sep­a­rate ways to get ready for the bless­ing to be held at St Benet’s church in Cam­bridge at 2PM. Liza back to Hotel du Vin, Cam­bridge with the brides­maids and JL to his family’s hotel. The French con­tin­gent (22 peo­ple) had taken over a whole B&B: Wark­worth house in Cam­bridge.
The sec­ond part of the day was very dif­fer­ent from the first part. With over 80 guests, the cer­e­mony itself was quite short but exactly what we wanted. We entered the church the same way as it is done in France: First JL with his Mum, fol­lowed by the two flower girls, fol­lowed by Liza and her Dad, fol­lowed by the brides­maids. We had three read­ings as well as our favorite hymn, Jerusalem. It was packed with emo­tional moments that we will remem­ber for­ever. At the end of the bless­ing we had organ­ised bell ring­ing, which helped to send us off in style.
Every­thing was per­fect, the weather, the venue, the music, the cham­pagne cock­tails (Hedgerow Fizz), the canapés, and above all hav­ing all our friends and fam­ily in one place. We felt very spe­cial that peo­ple had trav­elled so far to spend our big day with us.

As our vin­tage Rover 10 car came to pick us up, we decided to walk around the cor­ner in the sun­shine (in the mid­dle of a busy Sat­ur­day in Cam­bridge city cen­tre, sur­prised by the num­ber of passers by who stopped to wish us good luck) to the col­lege where the recep­tion was to take place: Cor­pus Christi col­lege.

We were greeted at the gate by our mas­ter of cer­e­mony who then led us to the Master’s Gar­den, we felt very priv­i­leged to be able to host our drink recep­tion there as we were not asso­ci­ated with the col­lege.


At about 5PM, we were then called into the mag­nif­i­cent din­ing hall for the wed­ding break­fast, which looked out of this world, with an amaz­ing arrange­ment of vin­tage flow­ers. Although we did not have a par­tic­u­lar theme for the day, we tried to incor­po­rate both French and Eng­lish ele­ments, with a slight vin­tage glam­our touch.

Jean-Luc and Liza’s most mem­o­rable wed­ding moments

* Greet­ing most of our French and British guests the evening before in a pub (The Old Spring, Cam­bridge), and observ­ing how some of them used hands to com­mu­ni­cate… Not under­stand­ing a word they were say­ing to each other!

* JL not being able to utter his vows, after becom­ing emo­tional as he saw his bride arrive.

* Liza walk­ing in the cer­e­mony room with her dad, nerves dis­ap­pear­ing when she saw her hus­band to be.

* Com­ing out of the Reg­is­ter office… mar­ried! Even before every­thing else got started!

* The atmos­phere in the hotel room, as (the bless­ing) prepa­ra­tions unfolded…

* Liza and her Dad being totally sur­prised when they arrived at the church in the car, being cheered by the whole crowd in the street, and peo­ple hang­ing out of the pub win­dows oppo­site (The Eagle).

* A friend included a ref­er­ence to our cat in her read­ing of The Owl and The Pussy­cat, which brought much laughter.

* Hav­ing our organ player adapt then play one of our favorite songs as we left the church: La Ritour­nelle by Sebastien Tellier.

* Enjoy­ing spend­ing some time alone whilst hav­ing pho­tos done and pinch­ing our­selves that we are now married.

* Liza’s Dad jiv­ing on the dance floor like a 16 year old.

Wed­ding day advice

* Don’t beat your­self up about not spend­ing loads of time with every­body. If you work it out, 80 guests = no more than 5 min­utes per person!

* Enjoy every minute as the day goes very quickly.

* Have a back up CD of the songs needed for your cer­e­mony as the reg­is­trar snapped ours in half min­utes before Liza was due to make her entrance!

* Don’t be afraid to plan the day as you want. In the week lead­ing up to the wed­ding, we sud­denly wor­ried that hav­ing two parts to the day would mean that things would not flow as well as they would have if every­thing had hap­pened in one place. In fact, doing it that way made it even more spe­cial for us!

The meal itself was per­fect as com­mented by all our guests, but the “crème de la crème” had to be our tra­di­tional French wed­ding cake: a Cro­quem­bouche!
The party con­tin­ued into the evening, with extra guests arriv­ing and a live band play­ing our favorite tunes, includ­ing “Feel­ing Good” by Muse for our first dance. Our pho­tog­ra­pher set up a photo booth in one of the rooms which was a hit with our guests.

We ended the day sober and very happy and strolled back to our hotel…

Rec­om­mended wed­ding suppliers

* Pho­tog­ra­phers: Geoff Rear­don — www.geoffreardon.com and assis­tant pho­tog­ra­pher Char­lie — Very pro­fes­sional & friendly. Geoff came up with great ideas. We were very happy with the final images, and so were our guests. www.facebook.com/GeoffReardonPhoto

* Florist: The Flower Bou­tique — www.theflowerboutique.co.uk — Very happy with Leen flex­i­bil­ity and her vin­tage style theme.

* Cake: Michelle Gillot @ Chocoshells — http://chocolateshells1.com — Michelle can cre­ate any cake from scratch, just ask her!

* Pianist: Ben Cork — www.youtube.com/BenedictMusic — Ben was very pro and ami­ca­ble, great at play­ing and singing. Book him!

* Band: Happy Daze — www.functioncentral.co.uk/acts/happy_daze

* Venue: Cor­pus Christi Col­lege, Cam­bridge — www.corpus.cam.ac.uk

* Make-Up & Hair: Ash­ley Kay Gif­ford — www.primppowderpout.com — Great make-up, she was very flex­i­ble and brought assis­tants with her, to be able to look after the bride, brides­maids, flower girls, and some fam­ily members.

* Car: Brooks Vin­tage Car Hire — www.brooksvintagecarhire.co.uk