Singer-songwriter Tamar Kaprelian and Chris Stang, the co-founder and CEO of the restaurant-rating website and app, The Infatuation, became romantically involved while they both were working in the music industry. “I was out with a friend from Atlantic Records for her birthday,” remembers Chris. “Another one of our friends who worked for Interscope came to meet up with us, and Tamar, then an L.A.-based artist who was signed with them, was with her. From the second she walked into the room, I was enamored with her. We hit it off immediately—and also she had Momofuku Milk Bar cookies in her purse. That’s when I knew we would one day marry.”
In the beginning, the two were just friends, but a work trip sent Chris out to Los Angeles a few months later, and then they started dating. Tamar moved to New York about a year after that. The two had been seeing each other for five years when Chris proposed.
“Just like any healthy marriage, it all started with a lie,” he jokes. “I had been telling Tamar for a few months that I was going to Detroit for a weekend in September to go watch a Denver Broncos/Detroit Lions game with The Infatuation’s Chicago Editor. Once that weekend arrived, I packed a bag and left the apartment early in the morning. But instead of going to Detroit, I went to a coffee shop near the apartment and waited. I was waiting for Tamar’s friend to take her out for coffee, which I had arranged as a diversion. Once Tamar got to the coffee shop, I ran back to the apartment. I had about an hour window to set up the living room—stringing photos from the five years we had spent together across the ceiling and lining the floor with roses. When Tamar got back, I was there, standing in the middle of the room with a ring. Once the shock wore off and she accepted, I helped her quickly pack a bag so we could head for the airport to spend the weekend in Charleston.”
As soon as the two started talking about where they might want to get married, France was at the top of their list. “Chris and I knew that we wanted the focal point of our wedding to be food and wine, and that neither of us wanted a 400 person event,” explains Tamar. “Had we done it in either Los Angles or New York, that would have been the case. Back in 2012, we spent a week in Paris over Christmas and jumped on a train to Normandy for a few days just to get out of the city. That’s how we discovered the town of Honfleur and Ferme Saint Simeon, both of which we fell in love with instantly. The second we got to the property, we knew we had stumbled upon something special. The aesthetic of the space is warm, but regal, and the whole property smells like apples and firewood. Once we realized doing it there, was something we could maybe pull off, we didn’t really consider any other options.”
Tamar did most of the planning herself, but also relied on the staff of the Relais & Chateaux property. “We could never have pulled this wedding off without Ferme Saint Simeon’s event planner, Pauline Parizot,” says Tamar. “She really made sure that everything came together seamlessly and helped so much in dealing with the church, the flowers, the restaurants for the cocktail reception and the rehearsal dinner—basically everything.”
Because she was having a fall wedding, Tamar felt strongly about wearing a dress with long sleeves. “I also wanted something timeless and that had lace,” she says. “The Monique Lhullier gown that I chose was one of the first dresses I saw in a photo. We went to every single bridal boutique you can imagine. I must have tried on every long sleeved dress ever made, but I could never get that Monique gown out of my mind.” Tamar didn’t want anything to take away from the dress, so she kept her jewelry simple and only wore the diamond drop earrings that her mother wore for her own wedding.
The service was an important part of the celebration for Tamar. “I am Armenian and wanted to have a traditional Armenian ceremony,” she says. “But Honfleur did not have an Armenian church. In fact, the nearest Armenian Church was in Paris, which is about 2 hours away. The local Catholic Church, however, was nice enough to let us have an Armenian ceremony, which is very different from the Catholic ceremony. They also let us fly in our own clergy. We flew an incredible Bishop in from Armenia, Bishop Bagrat Galstanyan, who really made our ceremony special with his warmth and humor.”
After the ceremony, there was a cocktail hour that featured fresh oysters from the local harbor. The group then moved into the main dining room, where there was a six-course meal in the property’s Michelin Starred restaurant. The menu included local scallop carpaccio with caviar, hot foie gras and apple, a traditional Norman palate cleanser of apple sorbet and Calvados called Trou Normand, beef filet, a cheese course, and everyone finished the meal with vanilla cake with seasonal fruits and other traditional French pastries.
Throughout dinner, toasts were given by family members and a local jazz band played. “We also wanted our guests to have a unique experience, so we brought two Armenian dancers in from Leon to perform during dinner,” says Tamar. “In full Armenian color and dress, they performed several traditional dances, one of which included Chris and I dancing with them. They taught us moves on the spot, and we got up there and had a great time.” The two kept dancing until around 2:00 A.M. “At that point, we went to our suite and passed out!” laughs Tamar.