A destination wedding in the European countryside at Chateau Saint-Martin in Vence, France

Kate Pickett and Andrew Davis met during a 4th of July yacht club party on an island in Maine, where they both spent their summers growing up. While Andrew’s grandparents were friends with Kate’s parents, the two had never encountered each other before. When they did, however, it felt as if they had known each other for a long time.

“I think having a common background in our love of Seal Harbor, Maine, and Acadia National Park made it feel as if we were starting from a place we both understood,” says Kate. 

“We connected immediately, and began texting until our first date in August that same summer. Although Andrew lived in Santa Fe and I lived in NYC, we found a way to continue seeing each other through the year, and of course, the next summer back in Maine. Andrew proposed on the anniversary of our first date, in August, in Seal Harbor.”

The couple knew they wanted a small destination wedding, and Kate had always loved the South of France. After discovering a wonderful old chateau and chapel in the quaint little town of Vence during one of Kate’s summer vacations, the wedding planning process began. With Kate owning a wedding invitation design and printing business, Pickett's Press, she custom drew the chateau where the ceremony would take place, and printed it in French blue letterpress on each invitation. Each invitation also included a separate invitation to dinner under the olive trees – with a custom illustration of the olive grove – an invitation to a welcome lunch, an invitation to brunch before the ceremony, and an invitation to a late-night pool party after the reception.

Another special touch was the couple’s out of town guest bags. Kate hand drew an itinerary for every guest, with a timeline and illustrations of each event, which she tied to straw Moroccan-inspired tote bags for the beach. Inside, guests found Turkish European-style beach towels that said “Vence France” along with the date, and a large sun hat embroidered with “En vacances avec K&A.”

The guest list consisted of 50 people, with 19 of them being children. “We were the opposite of a ‘no children’ ceremony,” Kate describes. “In fact, we had children sitting all up and down the aisle. Of the 19 children, 16 were little girls, so we invited them all to be flower girls and junior bridesmaids, and they all wore white and floral crowns.”

Since they planned a traditional European ceremony in the middle of the day, Kate and Andrew hosted a dressy dinner celebration the night before. Their reception after the ceremony was a casual lunch, followed by swimming off the deck at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc. During their lunch, a traditional French mille-feuilles cake was served, which said “Bonne Anniversaire,” because it also happened to be the groom’s birthday. As he says, he received “the best birthday present ever – Kate.”