Oui Did It: The Wedding Recap
This issue was originally published on August 22, 2025 on Substack.
It’s been three months since my wedding and I can finally talk about it. “Finally?” Yeah, finally. Immediately after, the thought of a wedding, any wedding, made me queasy—and no, not just because I was literally hosting a parasite. But time has passed. I’ve re-entered civilian life and feel strong enough to look back.
That PTSD-leaning language might upset my husband who describes May 10 as “the best day of his life.” So sweet. For me, the whole thing, while beautiful and full of joy, was struh-ESS-ful. “Boo hoo cried the girl about her destination wedding in France.” I know. Let’s continue.
RUNDOWN:
LOCATION…
Southwest France. A one-hour drive from Toulouse to be more specific. You know the beauty brand L’Occitane en Provence? Generally there.
“We thought it’d be better to bring the Americans to France than the Germans to California” was the script Mo and I recited in the lead up. It’s true. Europe is more exciting to Americans than the U.S. is to Europeans.
Also: My parents met and married in Paris. Mo lived in Lyon for six months. I was conceived in the country, allegedly. Mo’s hometown is half an hour from its border. We both speak shitty French. France wasn’t totally random, there were ~ties~.'
VENUE…
Chateau de Lartigolle, a charming, renovated 18th-century estate.
Considering how OUT OF WHACK I got with other parts of the planning process (see “DRESS…” below), choosing the venue was a breeze. I found it on Google. I liked the website.* I pitched it to Mo. We never looked back.
The chateau hosted all of the weekend’s events: a welcome dinner on Friday, a ceremony and reception on Saturday, and a farewell BBQ on Sunday. It sleeps up to 30 people, so our closest friends and family stayed with us, which gave the weekend a summer camp feel. Every morning, we woke to strong coffee, a breakfast spread including the butter-iest croissants you’ve ever smelled in your life, and a recap of the night before.
*The owners are from London. One founded a graphic design shop, another led an interior design business, Etc., etc. Then, in 2003, “disillusioned” with their busy lives, they decided to buy a property in France and the rest is history! The “brand” has enough big city sensibility to appeal to us yuppie folk. It also operates entirely in English, a big win in rural Europe.
TIMING…
May 10, 2025
After getting engaged in July 2024, Mo and I were originally planning a winter wedding for that December in Ischgl, Austria. WUDDA BEEN COOL, but it got vetoed by our families because of the cold. Alas, 5.10.25 is satisfying. (For Europeans, 10.5.25 is also nice.)
GUESTS…
75ish total, including a handful of children and babies.
Allowing—not necessarily inviting—offspring was a contentious topic. I was neutral-negative. Mo was neutral-positive. We ended up including them because I didn’t care enough to make a fuss. For a French garden party, it worked. There’s something romantic about cutie babies bopping around children running in the grass. Yes, one toddler was cranky during my mom’s speech, but it’s okay. I love that toddler! and I love my mom! and no one cared!
DRESS…
Jory by Pronovias. But can I tell you how I got there?
I tried on 70 dresses (a conservative estimate) at 11 unique bridal salons. I went back to one twice. Here’s everywhere, in order.
Bridal Galleria (SF)
Sarah Seven (SF)
Unveiled Bridal (SF)
Mon Amie (OC)
The Dress Theory (SD)
Jaxon James (LA)
LOHO Bride (LA)
Anthropologie (OC)
The White Dress (OC)
NEWWHITE (LA)
Styled by TC (OC)
This list does not include the online secondhand marketplaces I monitored: TAB Vintage, Happy Isles (I considered visiting in-store, but there is an $185 appointment fee that doesn’t count toward a purchase. I did not want to support such bad etiquette), Art Garments (where I got my second look), eBay (where I got my civil ceremony outfit), Etsy, and more.
I went a little off the rails, which is odd cause I’m not obsessed with fashion. I don’t know why The Dress was the sole expression of my bridezilla gene. But it was fun.
I liked Jory, but really, I had to make a choice. I wanted structured and with minimal or no embellishments. I tried her on relatively early at Mon Amie, but had to go “fuck around and find out” for another few dozen dresses before I came rushing back.
TIP: Follow your intuition. I added straps at the last minute and I’m happy I did. (What I really would have liked was a long-sleeved dress, but that dream died with the winter wedding.)
ANOTHER TIP: Don’t spend a ton on the dress. Or, if you do, make sure it’s identifiable that you did (a Vivienne Westwood silhouette, that one Danielle Frankel that has everyone in a chokehold—I tried it on, it is HEAVY). Otherwise, not worth it.
ONE MORE: Don’t suck in too hard at fittings! I must have, because my dress came out too tight. I was doing breathing exercises before the ceremony to try and accumulate as much oxygen in the body before zipping up. I loosened the back at dinner so I could eat (even though I had six string beans and two bites of duck due to nerves and exhaustion). Like I said, it was not chill.
LAST ONE: Make a burner Instagram account to engage with wedding content. That way when it’s all over, your real feed is untouched. By the time a friend told me this, I was in too deep. My algo was already projectile vomiting dress try-ons, Vogue articles, DIY tutorials, and wedding trends every hour, on the hour. It definitely contributed to my mania.
HAIR & MAKEUP…
Sarah Fekir and her team. I did my trials two days before the wedding, and then changed up both hair and makeup day-of. God bless. The best style choice I made all weekend was adding pearl hair pins to add visual interest to an otherwise very simple look.
TIP: Focus on your skin. Good skin is half the look. The best MUA—including the one in Paris who quoted me $11k, not including trials—can’t fix acne or a dull complexion. I drank a lot of lemon water, moisturized, slept well, and did three Hydrafacials and three sessions of microneedling with exosomes. Bridal glow is real.
OFFICIANT…
Céline Larigaldie. We paid a premium to find, seemingly, the only German, French, and English-speaking officiant in the area for our multilingual ceremony. She began by accidentally pronouncing my hometown, Newport Beach, as “Newport Bitch.” Everyone laughed. She did a great job.
OTHER VENDORS…
Wildfire DJs for music, Jo Faires for florals, and Darek Smietana for photography. Food and beverage were provided by the chateau—another big win.
There was only one vendor, though, that I would shove in the face of anyone having their wedding in France and that is our videographer, Fran at Ordinary Day Films. Fran is cool. Fran is kind. This bit in her bio says it all: “My editing style is simple. The vibe of the wedding day sets the pace of the film and not the other way around.” Mo and I wept watching all of our films and we are not weeping people.
Whether a videographer is worth it is a common debate in the wedding community. My answer is yes. (Also, a good one will give you screen grabs from the film. Many of the photos in this post are Fran’s.)
TIP: Find vendors in your budget with a portfolio you like and hope for the best. Weddings are pretty copy and paste and most know what they’re doing.
“INVESTMENT”…
The journalist in me would like to tell you. But it’s been requested that I do not. I will say: It was costly, but less expensive than had we hosted the same wedding in California—and certainly in New York, where I was told by a 2024 groom that you cannot have a traditional wedding in the city for less than $100k. The American wedding industrial complex is out of control.
REGRETS…
Minimal, but— I wish I took more fashion risks. I could’ve zhuzh’ed it up more Friday. Then again, had I zhuzh’ed it, I might be writing that I wish I played it safer.
Second, I wish Mo and I put more thought into what photographs we wanted. We didn’t make a shot list and just let our photographer vibe out. He was good, but we didn’t get shots I would have loved.
And last, not a regret so much as my chief complaint: Three and a half days of festivities was a lot. (Thursday there was a dinner for guests in town.) I am an extroverted introvert, which means I can be fun in public but I need to recharge solo—a luxury I did not have all weekend. By the end, I was a shell.
AND WINS…
Our ceremony was 10x more beautiful than planned. Had the weather been what we hoped (sunny, very warm) and not what we got (partly cloudy, warm enough), the ceremony would have been in the “back pasture,” which is a field with rolling hills. Instead, because there was chance of rain, we moved it to the front courtyard under a blooming, billowy tree—and wow should that be the venue’s default location, in my humble opin!
Rustic chateau gates?! A winding, white gravel road?! Vive la France!
A PEEK INTO MY BRIDAL ERA…
I listened to The Prenup podcast religiously. The host, Adriana, kind of looks like a hunting wife and the conversations are frivolous and girly. But let’s be real—that’s the world of bridal and exactly why it’s fun to be a part of it for a while.
I didn’t follow a strict diet or change my workout routine drastically. I got a walking pad to get more steps in. I joined a gym, but didn’t really go. I leaned into the “you want to feel and look like yourself on your wedding day” mindset because I think it’s healthy and the most manageable.
My favorite parts of wedding planning were game-planning with Mo in the evenings. Candle? Lit. Laptops? Out. Google Docs? Messy. Bloated emails to the planner: Sent. Arguments? Sometimes. Civil resolution: Always.
And…
Dress shopping with my mom, and texting her all day every day about the weekend’s outfits. Having access to four top tier counties to shop in—SF, LA, OC, and SD—did not help my paradox of choice, and having an opinionated mother who is not afraid to roast me made it even harder. To the left is her response to an option I was probably excited about.
In this FLD: A 24-year-old who hooked up with her crush thanks to ChatGPT, penis filler, performative men, and legacy media is kind of boring.
Have a story or topic I should look into? Write to me at: fendiliudufner@gmail.com 💌
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Have a story or topic I should look into? Write to me at: fendiliudufner@gmail.com 💌 〰️
Illustration by Mike Kim
A 24-year-old asked ChatGPT to describe her future husband. It pointed her in the direction of someone she knew in real life. So she hooked up with him bare-assed on a marble counter. This is a provocative piece of writing, no doubt, but really, all this writer did is use AI as confirmation bias toward someone she already had a crush on. I will admit I’m tired of reading about AI encouraging humans to do something risky (hook up with a friend) or awful (commit suicide). I have empathy for people mishandling AI and I understand why media covers these stories like flies on poop. (I think mostly for headlines that have never, ever been written.) But I do hope it stops.
Some people with AI “companions” (yes, gf/bfs) are upset after OpenAI rolled out ChatGPT-5 because its personality is less loving. “GPT-4o is gone, and I feel like I lost my soulmate,” one user said. In the near future, I intend on falling DEEP within this rabbit hole: r/MyBoyfriendIsAI. The movie Her was so ahead of its time!!!
Aubrey Plaza spoke publicly for the first time about how she’s coping after her husband’s suicide. She compared her grief to scenes from the movie, The Gorge: “At all times, there’s like a giant ocean of awfulness.” Full podcast here.
Support “indie” media, or whatever, because legacy media can be pretty boring. The NYT published 800 words on the most basic dating advice: Go out in public and don’t be on your phone. The Times wrote about the paradox of choice as it relates to dating apps, citing the “jam study” that everyone knows. The WSJ covered Raya, an app my friends in LA have been on since before the pandemic. (Now there’s a 2.5 million person waitlist.)
Penis filler is a thing. And given how many women modify themselves, men should be able to do whatever they want. “I’m batting a thousand every time we hop into bed together.” — Rick, 50, Alabama
The Performative Male might sip on iced matcha lattes, wear wired headphones, and carry a tote bag. So, a hipster? The great irony about TPM is that I think a lot of women, including myself, are more attracted to men who do not perform at all, or are at least very subtle about it. I guess that’s why the whole thing’s a joke. I appreciate that society identified the male “Pick Me Girl.”
Less women are taking their husband’s last name than before. Because of feminism, identity, and paperwork.
“Weaponized incompetence” is the term for when someone doesn’t complete a requested task because they a) fake incompetence or b) genuinely are incompetent and unwilling to learn. The article is way too long, don’t bother reading it, but the terminology is compelling. Also, lots of heteropessimism in it; all the perpetrators are straight men.
44% of Gen Z and Millennials have skipped a social event to save money. The term “friendflation” has been around for a while, but it’s making rounds. The Financial Times covered it last week too.
Finally, one of my favorite creators has a message for us girls: Be weird! It’s all we have.
