Wedding concept and creative direction: how to style your wedding in three words

Three words before a colour

Ochre, sage green, the white of limewash. Before any colour, though, there is a question I ask every couple at our first meeting, while the fabric samples are still closed in my bag: if you had to describe your wedding in three words, what would they be? Not labels such as ‘rustic chic’, which mean something different to everyone. Real words: ‘bright, slow, family’. Or ‘joyful, late-night, generous’. Or ‘simple, green, outdoors’.

Those three words are the concept: the idea that holds the whole wedding together. In my work it is also called creative direction, and it is less complicated than it sounds. You decide once what you want to say, then let the flowers, the table, the light, the paper and the food say the same thing, each in its own language. Planning from abroad, you will brief suppliers by email, often in a second language: three clear words travel better than fifty saved pictures.

A concept is not a theme

A theme is a subject you repeat: butterflies, travel, cinema. It works at a birthday party; at a wedding it can turn into fancy dress. A concept is an atmosphere. It does not ask you to print a lemon on every object; it asks whether that object is ‘bright’, ‘slow’, ‘family’.

Yes: ‘citrus, linen, summer evening’, so lemons with their leaves on the buffet, slightly crumpled napkins, candles as the light fades. Better not: ‘Puglia theme’, so trulli drawn on the invitations, coloured lights everywhere and ceramics of every style on the tables. Puglia is better told through its materials than through its postcards.

Finding your words, together

Often one of you imagines a full, noisy party, the other a quiet dinner. The concept is how you find the common ground. Try this:

• Each of you writes ten words alone about how you imagine the day: adjectives, places, memories, sensations.
• Put the two lists side by side and circle the words that are close: ‘warm’ and ‘welcoming’ can become one.
• Keep three words, four at most. With six, nothing gets decided.
• Look for an anchor image: one photograph, not necessarily of a wedding, that holds all your words. A family lunch under a pergola, a stone wall at sunset, a kitchen table with bread just out of the oven.
• Test the words against a flower, a tablecloth, a typeface for the invitation. If they help you say yes or no without hesitating, they are the right ones.

That image becomes the first page of your wedding mood board, the sheet of inspiration you will show your suppliers.

One idea, five languages

Take ‘bright, slow, family’ and watch each choice change:

• Flowers: white and green, in season, loose as if just picked from the garden. Why the season comes first is in seasonal wedding flowers in Puglia.
• The table: long and shared, bread in the middle, low candles, because at a ‘family’ table people look each other in the face. How to lay it is in the wedding table guide.
• Light: the sunset for the aperitivo, then only warm light, no coloured spotlights.
• Paper: a clear invitation without frills, whose design returns on the menu and the seating chart. More in the wedding stationery suite.
• Food: dishes to share, the pace of a Sunday lunch. Here the masseria's own kitchen and pastry make tailored wedding menus, so your three words can be given to the cooks too.

Puglia as a vocabulary

The place gives you many words ready-made. Tenuta Montevitolo is a masseria, a historic farm estate, in the countryside of Andria in northern Puglia, inland on the Murgia plateau, 50 minutes from Bari airport. A wedding here usually moves between places with their own character: the olive grove, silver-green and quiet; the vineyard for the aperitivo, in the low sunset light; the Corte Grande, the large courtyard, for dinner, among the luminarie (the traditional Apulian festival lights) and the trullo, the conical stone hut. Castel del Monte stands on the horizon, and on the plateau the evening often brings a breath of air. You do not have to invent a world; you choose which part of this one to bring forward.

The concept also helps you say no. When an idea you saw online is lovely but has nothing to do with your words, you can let it go without regret. This is the rule I leave you with: three words, one question: does this tell them? If the answer is no, it stays out, however beautiful.

When to decide it

Settle the concept early, right after the date and the place, before you meet the florist, the printer and the photographer: it is the first thing you will give each of them. It does not need to be perfect; it needs to be clear. If you would like to see the masseria while you look for your words, ask us for a visit: visits are by appointment, and the words often arrive on their own as you walk. To understand the place before you come, read what is a masseria.

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