Meryl Davis and Fedor Andreev's Wedding Was a Provencal Dream
It's a balmy evening in June, the air rich with the smell of fresh flowers, the breeze rustling the trees and wafting the distant lilt of music on strings. The magical is meeting with the practical here: the idyllic beauty of a Provencal wedding reconciled with the aching realities of spending an afternoon walking gardens and gravel paths in a pair of heels. Instead of slipping away to gaze lovingly into one another's eyes, the bride and groom excuse themselves for a quick wardrobe change so that she can be more comfortable at the reception—not a fairytale romance, but the real world kind.
But just as it seems that the evening might be coming back down to earth, wonder reasserts itself. As they make their way back to their guests, the blue kiss of twilight turns buttery yellow under strings of lights woven between a lane of stretching plane trees, their friends and family seated for a feast beneath the glow of the lights.
"We just kept taking deep breaths and trying to take it in because I think that was one of the most impactful moments," says the bride, Meryl Davis. "We'd been dating for a long time and we've loved one another for a long time, and yet the experience of sharing that moment with each other was so beautiful. It's probably my favorite memory ever up to this point."
And that's some stiff competition: after all, for an Olympic medalist and Dancing With the Stars champion, there are plenty of spectacular memories to choose from.
How Meryl and Fedor Got Together
Hailing from the suburbs of Detroit, an international hub for professional and competitive skating, Meryl Davis spent much of her young life training to achieve the heights of Olympics greatness that she reached with partner Charlie White at the 2014 winter Olympics, when the duo took gold in ice dancing.
"I didn't have to move away from my family or across the country or to a different country in order to pursue skating, which is pretty rare," she explains.
Meanwhile her now-husband Fedor Andreev, himself a professional skater, was in some ways the opposite—born in Russia, he moved to Canada as a child with his mother, Marina Zoueva, who would later go on to be Meryl's longtime coach. From there, he lived in a number of cities, including several years living and training in Detroit.
"We certainly got to know each other within the context of sport and within the figure skating community," said Meryl. "Fedor was five years older than me, and when you're young, that that feels like a big difference. So we are friends who've sort of blossomed over time."
With such busy lives, the couple didn't begin to date until 2010, around the same time Fedor was preparing to retire from competitive skating. Not that retirement slowed their pace down much; in the years since they got together, Fedor graduated from the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business (Meryl is getting her anthropology there as well), Meryl earned first a silver and later a gold medal at the Olympics before retiring from the competition, and both have continued managing active careers on and off the ice.
Starting Their Adventure Together
"Adventure and travel has always been a part of our lives," explains Meryl. "I've always traveled to with figure skating for competition and I think I just gained an early appreciation of how much a sense of place can impact your experience. And then with Fedor being from Russia and moving to Canada, New York, Hong Kong, Detroit, he's a worldly person, so that's really been a part of our lives as a couple; traveling and experiencing different places."
They brought that love of travel home with them, too. "When we were renovating our home in Detroit, I wanted to incorporate sort of a French countryside element. I stumbled upon this Instagram account where this woman was sharing the renovation of an 18th century farmhouse in Provence."
The property in question was Le Mas des Poiriers, a 65-acre farm outside of Avignon with a seven bedroom farmhouse and cottage owned by Connecticut couple Shauna Varvel and her husband, who spent three years renovating the property after purchasing it in 2015.
"I was just completely fascinated by her eye for design and authenticity of the renovation, making sure to maintain the integrity of the home and the property," says Meryl.
When Meryl and Fedor got engaged in the summer of 2017, the property felt like a natural fit for their ceremony.
"Fedor and I visited the property and we both just were completely in awe of this magical place," says Meryl. "There's something about that part of the world that inspires you to embrace a slower pace; just sitting down and enjoying a meal and a glass of wine with your family and friends. That's really what we envisioned for our wedding, just really trying to be present and be in the moment."
Planning a Wedding Overseas
Despite their love of travel and the dreamy locale, a wedding in Provence did require some careful consideration, though.
"We spent a lot of time going back and forth trying to decide whether or not a destination wedding made sense because obviously it's an investment for not just us and our families, but for our guests as well," says Meryl. "Ultimately we felt, especially after talking to a lot of our friends and family who were like, 'oh, we'd love to come,' that adventure is just such a part of our lives and we were excited to utilize this opportunity to do that, not just together, but with our friends and family."
However, the couple were mindful of the fact that the style of their wedding meant foregoing some of the now-standard wedding extras. "Once we made that decision that it was going to be the destination, we wanted to keep everything else as simple as possible," Meryl explains. "I didn't want to ask people to do anything or plan any other trips, so I decided not to do a bachelorette party or a bridal shower. We just wanted everyone to have a good time and enjoy it and not feel obligated to do anything other than show up and have a great time."
As for the technical aspects of the planning, the couple relied on event planners Matthew Robbins and Luis Otoya of Matthew Robbins Design for all of the details.
"Matthew is the preferred event planner of the homeowner, so she introduced us to him and Luis. They were the first wedding planners we really spoke to and we were sold right away," says Meryl. "It feels like planning a destination wedding in Europe for just under a hundred people should be really stressful and complicated, but our planners made it such a pleasure and so easy."
Breaking With Tradition
For two people who have spent much of their young lives globetrotting and competing on the world stage, it's hardly a surprise that Meryl and Fedor aren't exactly your typical couple, nor could theirs be your typical wedding.
"We really want the weekend to be a reflection of us and who we are as opposed to just sticking to tradition for the sake of sticking to tradition," explains Meryl. "We stayed together throughout the week in France instead of having separate rooms or not seeing each other the day of the wedding. We wanted to enjoy the day of the wedding together and, and enjoy what an exciting time it was in our lives."
Instead of a large bridal party, they chose to get their families involved in other ways. Meryl's uncle, Cam Davis, served as the officiant for the ceremony, and her brother Clayton was the man of honor. Fedor's cousin, Danielle Vincent, owner of beauty brand Kimiko, served double-duty as both his best lady and as Meryl's makeup artist.
"It was nice to have that personal touch, to have family doing my makeup," Meryl says. She adds, "I actually had the hairstylist that I worked with during Dancing With the Stars in 2014 come with us and she did my hair throughout the weekend, so that was really fun as well."
"For me it was all really pragmatic, tactical things that I cared about," says Fedor. "That probably tells you something about our personalities too, but I wanted to not draw the ceremony out too long because the summer gets pretty hot and people are wearing suits. So we wanted to keep it as intimate as possible—maybe 10 to 12 minutes total."
At the reception, the couple opted for a parent dance instead of the typical father-daughter dance. "My dad and I danced while Fedor and his mom were also dancing." Meryl laughs, adding, "That was more because my dad doesn't like being the center of attention."
The Proposal
Of course, their wedding wasn't the start of their less-than-traditional streak. "I think Meryl would not have loved a super traditional proposal," says Fedor, "So it was a bit of a challenge kind of planning it."
In July 2017, as the couple were planning a trip to Napa with Meryl's parents in conjunction with a business engagement in San Francisco, Fedor decided to use their shared love of the outdoors and hiking to create a unique memory.
"I decided that it was a good idea to pop the question on a hike that we had never done before," he laughs. "I had no clue how challenging it would be. Because I had never been on the trail, I didn't know where the perfect place to do it would be, so several times I started taking the ring box out of my backpack and then was like, 'Whoa, no, abort, abort.' It ended up working out on the back of the loop, right as we were going over a crest overlooking the ocean, I was like, 'Well, it's now or never cause there's only a quarter of a mile left.'"
"I always like taking pictures of the ocean and then when I turned around and put my phone down, Fedor was on one knee," Meryl explains. "That was a really beautiful emotional moment, just the two of us in the woods overlooking the ocean."
The Ring
"The year prior [to our engagement] we had been on vacation in Santorini and Fedor was admiring some watches in a jewelry store," says Meryl. "I stumbled upon a ring I just loved, and apparently Fedor took note. When we got home from our vacation, he began designing and seeking out the perfect yellow diamonds."
Fedor jokes, "Apparently I was the only person to ever come to jeweler with a full PowerPoint presentation on what I wanted. I did a lot of research and I just wanted to make sure that it really captured everything that was important to Meryl."
Their Something Blue
While her engagement ring features yellow diamonds, the colors for the wedding went a different direction, inspired by Meryl's family.
"When I began telling [our wedding planners] Matthew and the Luis what I envisioned, it was sort of an elevated backyard dinner in the summer, with flowers that felt like they could be taken out of the garden," says Meryl. "Just very warm and welcoming. And for me, when I think of like warm and welcoming, I think of sitting down to family dinner around a table of blue and white Chinoiserie. That has sort of been our family tradition; my grandmother has collected those pieces for as long as I can remember."
Meryl's grandmother's collection served as the inspiration for the five-tiered wedding blue and white cake by Catherine Pierard from Provence-based Made In Cake, as well as the table settings in vintage china from Le Bazar de rêve by Veronique for the Brunet Frères Traiteur meal, with table linens from Linen Way and Juliska napkins.
For the flowers, they kept to the blue theme with an equally familial inspiration.
"My parents still live in the same house in Michigan that I was born in, and Michigan summers are truly spectacular," says Meryl. "We always had these gigantic blue booming hydrangeas that just for me are the epitome of, you know, running barefoot through the grass and just being in the garden in the summer. It just felt like home, and it was also elegant."
The Dress
In keeping with her style, Meryl and her stylist Cynthia Cook Smith chose a Monique Lhuillier dress in a subtle neutral instead of the classic white.
"It was an interesting experience picking the wedding dress, just because ice dance tends to be very theatrical and ornate and, and costume design has been a really enjoyable part of our sport for me; I've always designed costumes with my mom."
"Coming in, I thought, 'Do I really want something that looks like a skating dress or to purposefully gravitate away from what I would wear on the ice and make it very simple?' Ultimately, I just decided, I know what I feel comfortable in. We went shopping at a lot of really wonderful boutiques in Los Angeles, and actually the dress that I ended up picking was the very first wedding dress I ever tried on. It just felt like exactly what I had envisioned for the wedding. It was whimsical and it felt as though it would fit into the backyard garden setting."
"The one thing that was actually traditional [about the wedding]," Fedor adds, "was that I didn't get to see the dress or Meryl wearing the dress prior to the wedding day. It was absolutely breathtaking getting to see Meryl walking out of the house. It was just extremely, extremely elegant."
The Reception
"One of the things that we were most struck by was just how surreal it was to have so many of the people that we love most from different parts of our lives together in one setting," says Meryl.
Along with their families, the happy couple were joined for the celebration by friends from school as well as colleagues from the skating world including Brian Boitano, Kristi Yamaguchi, Madison Chock, Evan Bates, and Meryl's partner on the ice, Charlie White and his wife, Tanith Belbin White.
"We were really emotional and overwhelmed by just what a once in a lifetime experience that was;, that collection of people who meant so much to us," says Meryl.
To maximize their time with their guests, the couple chose to extend the festivities with a pool party at the venue on the day after the wedding as well as an extended wedding week with their nearest and dearest.
"It was a really nice way to connect with everybody in a very informal way," says Meryl. "Weddings go by so quickly, especially when it's just the wedding itself. We stayed in the house for a little under a week. Getting to experience the wedding weekend and then continue this celebration and spend time with our closest family was really special. We didn't want it to fly by, we really wanted to try to purposefully be present and take in as much as we could."
Photographs by Oliver Fly Photography; Event Planning by Matthew Robbins Design; Venue: Le Mas des Poiriers; Cake by Made In Cake; Catering by Brunet Frères Traiteur; Styling by Cynthia Cook Smith; Makeup by Danielle Vincent
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