Natalie & Miriani

A large wedding of two hundred guests and three scenes in one day: a church crowning ceremony, a civil ceremony in the Tsinandali park, a banquet at the estate. The task was to carry a day of this scale without waiting or rush.

The church rite came first in the brief: for the couple it was the heart of the day, and it had to be kept quiet, liturgical, unstaged.

Then came geography: the city and Kakheti in a single day, two hundred people in motion, and a couple who had to make it to the evening ceremony ahead of everyone. Transport had to be designed as part of the programme.

The whole wedding was gathered into one colour, and the colour was held to the end. White dresses against a wall of white flowers at the morning first look, a white dinner jacket, white stone, white silk. With two hundred guests and three scenes, a single colour is the discipline that keeps the picture whole: texture did the work, not contrast.

The day opened with the crowning rite: candles, crowns held above the couple, a long stone nave. The church part we make a point of leaving untouched by production: no staging, only light. It is the quietest hour of the day, and it should stay that way.

From the city to Kakheti the couple flew: vineyards below, a landing on the estate's own pad, doors opening into the park. Two hundred guests were already seated by the rotunda, and the arrival became the entrance.

The civil ceremony waited in the Tsinandali park: a rotunda of white fabric at the end of an aisle banked with white flowers, one straight line from the park to the couple. Her father led her through the applause; the couple walked back through petals.

The banquet hall answered the park in white and gold: long tables under chandeliers, a Georgian choir on stage beneath the couple's names, and a multi-tier cake taller than the two of them, cut in a storm of confetti. Late at night the band took the stage in red light, the one hour the palette was allowed to break.