Maria Baibakova and Adrien Faure’s Ballets Russes–Inspired Wedding
Photo: Robert Fairer1/25Last year, we celebrated my husband Adrien’s 30th birthday at a stunning hotel called Baumanière. We loved it so much that we decided to get married there exactly one year later. We organized a welcome dinner on Friday night and chose the pool and garden on the Baumanière property as the setting so that our guests could enjoy views over Les Baux, the famous rock formations in Provence. Because we wanted our guests to get to know each other in advance of the big day, we decided against a sit-down dinner, opting instead for stations, and Michelin star–winning chef de cuisine Glenn Viel created a menu of regional delicacies.
Photo: Nikolay Zverkov2/25The theme of our wedding was the Ballets Russes, a period between 1909 and 1929 when impresario Sergei Diaghilev staged radical Russian ballets in Paris. As an art history student, I was always fascinated by this moment of French-Russian cultural history, and it felt like an appropriate way to frame our cultural backgrounds. To reflect this theme, I asked Olga Vilshenko to create my Russian folk motif–inspired dress for Friday night’s event, and commissioned Olympia Le-Tan to make a clutch that incorporated a costume design drawing by Léon Bakst and is embroidered with our names and wedding date on the back. I also wore my great-grandmother’s ring, which has been passed down through our family for generations.
Photo: Robert Fairer3/25We wanted to give our guests a true taste of Russia in France on the first night, so we served Russian vodka with black bread and pickles from Caviar Kaspia in Paris. We also offered all of the ladies traditional Russian Pavlovo-Posad shawls. For the florals, I asked Thierry Boutemy to create bouquets in vases covered with the trunk of a birch tree to evoke the Russian countryside.
Photo: Robert Fairer4/25Working on my wedding dress with Giambattista Valli was creatively one of the most interesting and rewarding parts of the entire wedding experience. He gave me these drawings of the two dresses I had made as a keepsake.
Photo: Robert Fairer5/25I love Giambattista’s signature full skirts, and I knew I wanted to get married in a dress that celebrated his unique vision. For my wedding, he decided to create a dress with a bustier and skirt out of 300 meters of tulle in five tones, ranging from white to ivory. The lightest parts of the skirt were on top, with it becoming gradually darker toward the bottom. Since our wedding was inspired by the Ballets Russes, this dress felt very appropriate—it reminded me of tutus from Swan Lake. In this image, I am getting ready in my room with my friends and family before the big moment.
