Alexandre Assouline and Solange Pin Assouline’s Three-Day Wedding Exuded Parisian Elegance
Alexandre “Alex” Assouline and Solange Pin met in 2007 as two French teenagers in Manhattan. Both their families had relocated to New York City from Paris for their jobs, and in turn, enrolled their children in the bilingual Lycée Français de New York on the Upper East Side. The new kids met in the hallway, backpacks full of books.
It was just the first time life would bring them together. They ended up attending neighboring colleges in Montreal, where they hung in the same student circles. After graduation, Alex moved to New York, where he worked alongside his family’s eponymous luxury publishing house, Assouline, and Solange went to London. Yet a few years later, in 2020, both found themselves waiting out the pandemic in Paris. Alex reached out to Solange and asked if she wanted to go on a walk along the Seine. They met on the Place de la Concorde, and 15 years later, they finally fell in love.
In November 2022, Alex proposed to Solange, who works in business development at Lightbox Jewelry, a lab-grown diamond brand owned by De Beers, at Cuixmala Resort in Puerto Vallarta over a bonfire dinner on the beach. “On the night of the proposal, there was another couple around, and Solange thought the setup was for them, so it really came as a surprise when I proposed,” Alex says.
“I was speechless,” Solange adds. “It was the most magical moment of my life.”
Initially, the couple wanted to get married in Morocco. However, in February, they switched to the place where their romance began: Paris. “Paris was a destination wedding for us, as we don’t live there, but it still felt like home, which was the best of both worlds,” Alex says. A slight problem? Since they wanted to wed in the summer, they only had six short months to pull everything off.
With the help of Joanna Ascher and Lisa Cohen from Social Studio, they did so in fantastic fashion with a three-day July wedding across the French city. On Thursday, they legally married in a civil ceremony at the 8th arrondissment’s grand City Hall. Solange wore a vintage Valentino dress and natural diamond jewelry lent to her by De Beers. At the last minute, she decided to tuck a silk flower into her hair that her mother had worn on her wedding day. She paired it all with a custom Olympia Le-Tan clutch embroidered with the couple’s wedding invitation—a surprise gift given by Alex moments before. “It was so special, and I will cherish it forever,” Solange says. Alex, meanwhile, opted for a Dolce Gabbana Alta Sartoria blue suit.
Afterward, they drove a vintage Porsche back to the Assouline family’s apartment at Palais-Royal for cocktails with their families and closest friends.
On the second day, the party began. Alex and Solange held a spiritual ceremony at the Maison de l’Amérique Latine on Boulevard Saint-Germain. Thanks to its grand neoclassical facade and jardin à la française, Alex says they chose the setting because it felt quintessentially Paris: “We just fell in love with it the first time we saw it. The place really embodies Paris, and it felt very special both for Parisians and guests coming from all over the world—in a way, we all rediscovered the beauty of Paris during the wedding,” he says.
The bride wore a custom gown by Patricia Voto of One/Of, a New York–based atelier that focuses on bespoke fashion made from sustainable or recycled materials. Solange looked to her favorite fairy-tale movie, the Catherine Deneuve–starring Peau D’Âne, for inspiration. “In everyday life, I usually dress simply, but for this occasion, I wanted to feel like a princess,” she says. “We picked some silk taffeta from a French mill (a nod to my home country) that felt very light and soft. The draping in the corset was all handmade, giving the dress couture details. The skirt was finished with a bubble hem and filled with over 50 layers of ruffles and a crinoline to have the maximum amount of volume with the minimal amount of weight. It kept the dress so light and airy that I danced all night in it,” she said. Meanwhile, she asked her bridesmaids to wear various shades of blue dresses along with blue lab-grown diamond pieces from Lightbox Jewelry—a nod to the age-old tradition of “something blue.”
Solange and her father walked down the aisle to Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” The bride describes feeling extremely emotional upon seeing the groom, wearing a custom tan suit by New York-based atelier Angel Ramos, under the floral chuppah. “I will never forget locking eyes with Alex as I arrived next to him—it was the most powerful moment of my life,” Solange says.
Afterward, cocktail hour—or hours, as the guests lingered there until past midnight—began in the maison’s magnificent garden. Aperol spritzes and Negronis were served from a replica of the Swans Bar from Maison Assouline in London, whereas children flocked to the ice cream truck and face-painting station. Both the father of the bride and father of the groom made speeches, and the couple had their first dance to the sounds of Chico the Gypsies, who had played at Alex’s parents’ wedding 30 years before. As the night grew later, the guests migrated to a dance floor inside the villa, only stopping to eat from the Ladurée choux pièce montée. Stacks of Assouline’s glamorous coffee-table books, including Lake Como Idyll, Tuscany Marvel, and Paris Chic, doubled as decor.
On Saturday, the newly married Assoulines hosted a black-tie dinner at Maxim’s, the famed Paris restaurant whose clientele Jean Cocteau once described as “an accumulation of velvet, lace, ribbons, diamonds, and what all else I couldn’t describe.” Two hundred people, Champagne flutes in hand, milled around the Art Nouveau interiors, dotted with ornate chandeliers and rare Tiffany lamps, before sitting down for a formal meal of steak and lobster.
Solange wanted to exude both elegance and fun with her dress, so she opted for a gold sparkling gown by Jenny Packham paired with gold-and-diamond jewelry from De Beers’s Talisman collection. Her sisters and mother made sure to coordinate. “My sisters and my mom also wore gold, and I loved seeing us all dressed up like this, ready to party,” she says. Alex opted for a classic Thom Sweeney tuxedo.
Despite the grandiose setting, the couple’s friends made sure it still felt like an intimate celebration. Alex recalls a moment, at just around 2 a.m., that “gave him goosebumps”: His wedding planners asked him and Solange to step into a private room, under the guise of discussing the evening’s details. Instead, they presented them with a heartfelt guest book. One of Alex’s childhood confidants began to play the piano, and their bridesmaids and groomsmen began to sing along. “Hearing the music, more and more guests came up and the planners then gave everyone small electric candles,” says Alex. “It turned into a mini concert with everyone singing and dancing together. I loved how spontaneous that moment was—the perfect way to end the wedding.”
As guests stepped (or, due to the late hour and several libations, stumbled) back into the night onto the Place de Concorde—the very place Alex and Solange had their first date years before—they did so with a special memento in hand: a custom Solange and Alexandre Assouline coffee-table book, with cameos of the bride and groom as the cover. It was, both on paper and reality, the perfect love story.
Julien Scussel1/52Taking in the moment, right before the civil ceremony. The silk flower in my hair was worn by my mother at her wedding. —Solange
Julien Scussel2/52Getting ready with the help of my best man, Yohann. —Alex
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