Romantic Moulin Rouge Inspired Elopement

In the movie Moulin Rouge, there’s a scene where lead actor Christian is sitting in a room frantically typing out his and Satine’s love story. The walls of the room are covered in typewriter paper filled with the words that tell their unique story, and what a beautiful scene it is. Inspired by it, Chelsea Dawn Photography & Makeup Artistry knew she wanted to create a shoot to play off of this incredibly unique piece of work.

Chelsea then shared her idea with photographer friend Sabrina of Seriously Sabrina Photoggraphy and immediately the planning began. The idea they came up with was to turn this fun creation into an elopement. Soon after they met Bruno and Courtney, learned of their real life love story, (see below), and realized they were perfect for this shoot!

>Photographer: Chelsea Dawn Photography & Makeup Artistry // Hair Stylist: Hair by Dominique // Makeup Artist: Makeup by Bri // Second Shooter: Seriously Sabrina Photography // Submitted via Two Bright Lights

From Chelsea:

Courtney and Bruno met in Europe. Bruno is Portuguese and is a photographer. Courtney was travelling and upon seeing some of his work on Instagram, decided to contact him. It was casual at first, but texting followed, and then soon enough he was sending her music. She knew as soon as she heard his voice for the first time that he was the one. They maintained a long distance relationship for two years until March of 2014 when Bruno came to the United States and they saw each other in person for the very first time. They were married two months later and are truly living a magical modern day fairytale, tied together through music, their photography and undeniable love.

The entire shoot was DIY’d with Moulin Rouge in mind. We chose to work with the colours red, green, gold & of course had to include some glitter. Sabrina has a love of thrifting and so we were able to explore through her collection and find perfect details such as the old sewing table perfect for holding the vintage typewriter, old bottles, music paper etc. We created the cake and decorated it with icing, vellum papers and bits of nature from the yard and then mixed flowers and greenery were purchased to create a romantic cascading bouquet for the bride. One of my favourite DIY details we included was taking old vintage books, putting vellum paper on some of the pages and putting the vows on the pages, a beautiful way to keepsake the sweet words a couple wants to share on their special day. I loved the little typewriter letters we found and created the vows with. Sabrina found the stunning vintage dress only a day earlier and also created the twig centrepiece for the couple to stand below for the elopement vows while Chelsea covered old vintage doors with tons of hand picked ivy, music sheet paper and botanical papers for a unique, one of a kind backdrop that reflected the original inspired idea and made for gorgeous couples portraits! The black rings captured in the images are the couples real engagement and weddings rings and we had to include images of them holding their own vintage cameras since photography was such a huge part of how they met and fell in love. Lastly, we wanted to include glitter since there is so much glamour and glitz inside the Moulin Rouge. This is where the nighttime shots come into play and we captured Courtney and Bruno’s love amongst falling gold glitter and a night sky. It was the perfect end to an absolutely dreamy shoot. I couldn’t be more thrilled with how one simple idea transformed into this gorgeous Moulin Rouge inspired elopement.

Thanks for stopping by!