Lyubov once told Ivan that when they had a home of their own, it would have her “room of madness.” Her planners did not wait for the house. Bon Weddings took that one sentence to contemporary artist Ivan Shkulipa and built the room outdoors, across the entire sunken garden axis at Villa Michetti: a powder blue canvas the size of a parterre, scattered with silhouettes of the couple’s friends, family, and, because the painting would not be complete without them, their two mini dachshunds. The couple were the last figures added. They walked onto the blue and stood at the center of it to marry.
Photographer Pavel Golubnichy captured the day along with Kseniya Avgustovskaya and Bon Weddings planned and designed the whole day. All-blue weddings are rare, and one this committed to the color blue is something we haven’t seen before, so let’s check out all the details!
Lyubov and Ivan
The planners describe Ivan as bright, active, and, in a good way, unpredictable. Lyubov is the calm one: gentle, sensible, and creative, the kind of person you find in museums and exhibitions. They had known each other a long time before it turned into something more. He runs a business and lives life at full volume; she’s the one with the eye. And then there are the dachshunds, two of them, who dressed in lace and ended up in the painting too.
The Room of Madness
The installation fills the long central bed of the villa’s formal garden, between the hedges and the topiary, and rises into a ramp at the far end, so from the palace steps it reads as one blue plane running toward you. Shkulipa’s figures are flat black cut-outs, each one a person or a dog the couple loves, caught mid-stride, mid-gesture, mid-life. In direct sun they throw shadows nearly as long as they are tall, and the crowd on the canvas doubles.
“Why simply decorate a ceremony area when you can build an entire world?” says the Bon Weddings team of the brief they set themselves.
Lyubov saved the biggest of her three dresses for the ceremony, ivory satin with a skirt that pooled across the platform. Ivan went classic, black tux and bow tie, which on that floor made him read as one more silhouette until he moved. At the first kiss, the low sun threw their shadow onto the blue wall at the same scale as the cut-out figures, and for a second the painting had its last two people in it.
Cocktails on the Canvas
The planners counted stations the way other weddings count courses. A custom ping-pong table, bride’s side versus groom’s side. A football table with one team dressed as Ivan in a suit and the other as Lyubov in a veil. Éclairs shaped like dachshunds. A French fry bar built to look like a box of French fries. A tiered display upholstered in blue-teal fabric where every appetizer sat on its own mirrored tile in a white petal dish. A shelf of golden bear-shaped pastries, each one wearing a pale blue satin bow. A single amber coupe left on a granite balustrade post.
And on the lawn, a giant peach-colored hand with a diamond on its ring finger and PUT A RING ON IT across the base, with gold hoops for guests to throw.
The Reception
Inside, the blue kept going, and the room got a little stranger in the best way. The tables were mirror-topped and set on polished chrome cones, with a mirrored panel running the length of the ceiling above them, so the whole reception happened twice, once on the tables and once overhead.
After a ceremony staged inside a painting, dinner in a room that reflects itself felt exactly right. All that silver keeps the blue from going sweet. Powder blue on its own reads soft; next to chrome it turns cool and a little space-age. The centerpieces stayed spare, one white anthurium to a tall glass vase. Anthurium is the flower to know for a one-color room: it holds its graphic shape from across the floor in a way roses and ranunculus can’t, which is why designers working in a single color keep reaching for it.
The planners called Ivan the unpredictable one, and the champagne tower settled it: he skipped the pour and drank straight from the tower while Lyubov, the calm one, laughed beside him. She brought the art. He made sure nobody treated it like a museum.
The whole day grew out of one offhand line about a room in a house they didn’t have yet. It ended up the size of a garden, with the two of them standing in the middle of it. Whenever the real room happens, it has a lot to live up to. Congratulations, Lyubov and Ivan! All the best from GWS.
Wedding Vendors
Photography: Pavel Golubnichy // Venue: Villa Michetti // Event Design: Bon Weddings // Wedding Planner: Bon Weddings // Makeup Artist: Oksana Saraeva // Videography: Alexey Grankin // backstage photographer: Kseniya Avgustovskaya
