Anya & VakhoJuly 2025

The day holds to a single colour. A white dress of crushed silk, a white suit, a white runner, linen cloths, white candles — everything else is given to the green of grass and the black frames of the windows. The groom's morning passes in a bright room with sheer curtains: hills and rooftops outside, a green sofa within, a white suit and brown loafers.

The ceremony was set outdoors, against a wall of tall black windows. Instead of an arch, a panel with a mountain and lotuses drawn on it: pink outlines and thin strokes of grass. On either side two columns of long grass, white poppies, narcissi and stock, with the odd blue candle of delphinium; the grass from the panel tangles with the living stems. The white runner lies straight across the paving.

The sun at that hour is hard: the guests sit in dark glasses with lace fans, a lawn behind their backs. The bride wears a smooth low bun and long tasselled earrings, the groom the same loafers as in the morning. After the words he catches her up so that the train stays on the runner.

Dinner is indoors, in a hall with a glass roof: moulded panels along the walls, black and white tiles set on the diagonal, glazed walls to the ceiling, trees in planters and one enormous crystal chandelier over the centre. One table, laid out as a rectangle, light bentwood chairs around it. Down the middle of it there are no arrangements but a strip of living grass with white flowers, white pebbles scattered alongside, the narcissi standing one to a shallow ceramic bowl.

At each place a menu on deckle-edged paper and a name card tied with a blade of grass. The food is Georgian: cheeses, pkhali, chashushuli, trout, Imeretian khachapuri and khabizgini, with qvevri and saperavi to go with them. At the foot of it a line that tells you in advance how the evening will go: chacha is served after ten.

By night the overhead light was taken down to candles. They are white and shaped like the pebbles, so the flame seems to come straight out of the stones lying on the cloth. Anya and Vakho walk back into the hall across the tiles, the guests following. Nothing was struck or changed all day — the venue lived through it with them.