Rain, Doves and Rakı: A Turkish and French Wedding at Chateau

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Ecem Acar and Ugo Feracci married at a Provence chateau whose name hides the French word for dove, and by the end of the night two real doves had gone up into the September sky. TWO | WED shot both the film and the stills, and the way this Turkish and French crew reads a room is why a plan the rain rewrote still looks like the version everyone was picturing. Somewhere between the rakı cocktails and a 4am dance floor, a friend married them in three languages and nobody made it out dry.

Location: Provence, France
Style: Provencal, Romantic, Garden
Time of planning: 8 months
Number of guests: 185
Setting: Chateau and Gardens
Season: Fall

Ugo planned the proposal for Oslo in December 2024 and held the line on Oslo even after every other part of his plan fell apart. He proposed without the ring, since the ring was not there yet, and asked Ecem three times whether she was sure she wanted to say yes to a question with no diamond attached. The stone at the center of that ring came from his grandmother’s ring, so the yes was really a yes stretched across three generations. The ring itself turned up three days later, home safe after its own small standoff with customs.

Welcome Day

The couple ran the celebration as two nights with two moods, same estate, different corners, so the welcome evening got a full identity of its own before the wedding day took over. Ecem is from Istanbul, and she wanted the first night to carry Turkey in it, so she started from the nazar, the evil eye, and worked with Atelier Dea to pull it away from the souvenir version. Atelier Dea made the eyes by hand in four shades of green and blue, and those pieces did double duty, setting the palette for the evening and then going home with guests as favors.

The food ran the same play, a Turkish and French fusion menu that refused to pick a side. Every signature cocktail arrived with a backstory, including one built on rakı, the anise spirit, aimed straight at the guests who were not Turkish and a little put out that the party had not landed in Turkey. A friend of Ugo’s walked out with a sax to open Friday, and the after party ran on manti, the Turkish dumpling that, by the bride’s own rule, has to show up or it does not count as a party.

Getting Ready

Ecem knew her dress the moment she tried it, a two piece Ines Di Santo. She finished with Jimmy Choo and a Tiffany band, the rest of the jewelry from makers in Turkey and France, and the most loaded piece sat in her hair, an ornament rebuilt from her mother’s own wedding headpiece. Sinem Yavsaner did hair and makeup, and the bouquet came out of Flower and Twig‘s pastel work for the day.

Ugo could not choose between a black tux and a green set, so he wore both, opening in the black Cotton Society tux and changing into a green jacket later, the one he said his vows in, with the couple’s private nicknames stitched inside. Santoni handled the shoes, and his Piaget band spins on its outer ring, a discreet luxury fidget he uses to take the edge off. The look lands where a modern groom wants to be, dressed all the way up with a second act built into the tailoring.

First look

Before a single guest saw them on the wedding morning, Ecem and Ugo took a walk, just the two of them, to shake off the nerves and the weather anxiety that had been stacking up all week. They had done the exact same thing on their civil marriage day in London’s Kensington Gardens back in July 2025, which makes the walk less a photo moment and more a ritual they were repeating on purpose. TWO | WED stayed close for it without turning it into a production. Their instinct for when to disappear is what carried the rest of the day.

Ceremony

Château de Fonscolombe sits in Provence, an estate from the 1730s that comes with its own chapel, and the plan was to marry in front of that chapel, down a tree lined aisle, with flowers waiting at the altar. Rain rewrote all of it. Moving the ceremony under a tent was the hardest cut of the day for Ecem, who had been running the chapel version in her head for weeks, but keeping 185 guests warm and dry won the argument.

The trade paid off, since a tent packs everyone in close and the feeling in the room had nowhere to go but inward. Because the couple had already handled the legal marriage in London, this one was symbolic, led by their friend Nico across English, French and Turkish so that every side of the room caught every word. Two of their childhood best friends ambushed them with a duet of Can’t Help Falling in Love, one on piano and one on vocals, and the emotion in that surprise stuck. “I still get goosebumps every time I hear the song!” says Ecem.

At the close they released two doves into the open air. The dove was never a random flourish. The name of the estate hides colombe, the French word for dove, its turrets were built as dovecotes, and Ugo is a genuine bird person, so the release read like the venue and the couple finishing the same sentence. The rain that had ruined the picture in her head became the thing everyone talked about afterward, and France has a line saved for exactly this kind of day, mariage pluvieux, mariage heureux, a rainy wedding for a happy marriage.

Reception

The rain that chased the ceremony indoors also pulled the cocktail hour and dinner inside, which turned into an accidental flex, because it put everyone under the chateau’s 1700s Chinese wallpaper and a Genoa leather salon painted in 1768.

Dinner leaned on the details Ecem had been collecting for years. The escort display was single stems set in glass vials, so the thing that told you where to sit was also the flower you carried home, a Pinterest save she had guarded as a non negotiable. She and her mother designed the napkins themselves, printing everyday French words like bonjour, amour, bisous and bon appétit in a run of colors, and enough guests fell for them that they are still surfacing on friends’ dinner tables.

Dessert went lemon, but the bride’s real love is nuts and chocolate, so Ugo’s brother hauled chocolate covered nuts up from Cognac to sit next to the coffee. Helen Traiteur ran the catering and Flower and Twig carried the flowers across both the ceremony and the room.

Ugo built the entire soundtrack for both nights himself, and the verdict off the floor was banger after banger, with roughly forty people still dancing past 4am. Somewhere in there the champagne arrived as a coupe tower, the saucer glass stacked into a pyramid, which is the retro move couples keep reaching for now that the flute has lost its grip.

Advice from the couple:

• Weather is the one thing you can’t plan for, make sure you have a concrete rain plan to avoid last minute stress and everything else that comes with it! And if it is indeed raining like our wedding day, they say in French “Mariage pluvieux, mariage heureux” — means “Rainy wedding, happy marriage.”