A Romantic Paris Elopement: Peter + Chen

To celebrate our first day in Paris for our European Vacation, I couldn’t think of a better feature then this magical elopement in the city of love – Paris! I also asked Chen to share the story of why they decided to elope in Paris (they are from Toronto), so please read that at the end as I think it really shows that this was the perfect wedding for them. During their three month engagement, they found a local officiant that spoke English (not such an easy thing in France!) and then contacted Sean Flanigan to see if he would be available + willing to fly out to Paris for a couple days to shoot their wedding. From Chen, “We knew he would be able to capture our love through his photographs.” And I have to agree that he did just that. Amazing photos + here is their story of an elopement in Paris…

The first day they explored the beautiful city…

From Chen: We were originally planning on tying the knot on a bridge but when we saw the roof top terrace of the apartment we rented, we knew we would do it there. We both love the Paris skyline with all of the beautiful roof tops and the view from this intimate terrace was perfect. 

We also organized to have a driver come to the house after our ceremony to take us around in a vintage Citroen. We had an amazing time going around the city – jumping out as we pleased (like when we saw a huge Ferris wheel at the Jardin des Tuileries and asked our driver to pull over because we had to go up for a spin!). We spent the afternoon exploring the city and then were dropped off at the restaurant right in time for our dinner reservations.

If you don’t know the story of the Pont des Arts bridge, it is tradition that couples will come and put a lock with their names on it and then toss the key overboard – symbolizing their everlasting love. So so romantic! Jason + I are planning to find this bridge tomorrow and leave our own lock! :)

What a fun filled perfect wedding day! Sean also shoot some video in between his photography because Peter wanted to make a video of their trip. Upon their return to Toronto, Peter (a television editor) surprised Chen with what he was working on – the most beautiful video she’d ever seen.

We’ve watched the video many times since then and every time we see it, we’re reminded of how happy we are we did our wedding our way. Just the two of us. In love. In Paris.

So beautiful! Thanks so much to Sean Flanigan for sharing their photos with us today. And Peter, amazing job with the video! Congrats to you both for having the wedding of your dreams!

And if you are curious how a couple from Toronto decided to elope in Paris, here is their story of that. :)

I guess telling you about our engagement will probably explain why we decided to elope and why we chose Paris.

Peter and I flew out to Hawaii for a trip and completely unplanned, Peter proposed. We’ve been together 10 years and getting married wasn’t something we were necessarily planning for, but somehow the moment on this beach in Maui got to him and he popped the question! After I accepted, Peter said ‘Ok, now let’s go buy you a ring!’ – when I say the moment was spontaneous – it was! So we went together and I got to choose the ring that I loved.

After he officially slipped the ring on my finger, we started to casually discuss what we both imagined for our wedding. We both have very small families but we started throwing some names out of who we would want to invite and suddenly an ideal wedding of 25 people turned into 50! We attended six weddings this past year and the more we thought about those weddings, the more we realized that as the bride and groom you really have to LOVE everyone’s attention being on you. And the more we thought about it, the more we knew that it just wasn’t for us. We both felt such anxiety about this future wedding and I suddenly just said ‘Forget all of that…. wouldn’t you just want to treat it like one of our vacations? Fly out somewhere beautiful and get married — just you and me?’ and immediately Peter agreed.

When we were discussing possible locations, we knew that we would want to treat this as a whirlwind love adventure – fly out somewhere for a few days, eat some delicious food, drink some great wine, enjoy the city as if we were locals. And that meant going to a city we’ve both been in (so we wouldn’t feel obligated to see the sites and turn this into a full fledged vacation) and that quickly led us to choose Paris since we’ve both been there but not together. Paris is the epitome of a romantic city – just the thought of walking around the city hand in hand made us both SO happy and we immediately knew this would be our plan.

Thankfully, our families were extremely supportive. After all, they know how we think.