Say oui to the dress: Camilla Åstrand and Christopher Bastin's intimate inner-city nuptials

Not so long ago we were all dreaming of the day we would be sitting on a plane again, but for Christopher Bastin and Camilla Åstrand, their most memorable trip across the skies had nothing to do with a pandemic – just good, old-fashioned love across the Atlantic.

“After being friends and colleagues for years, one day we were on one of the regular flights on our way home from work and when we landed, neither one of us wanted to leave the plane,” says Camilla, a Stockholm-based communications consultant.

And just like that, friends became lovers, lovers became doting parents to three-year-old daughter Flora, and in August this year, husband and wife.

For this fashion-savvy couple, already accustomed to working on the other side of the sartorial red carpet (Christopher is global artistic director for GANT and Camilla was the personal stylist of HRH Princess Sofia of Sweden for six years and responsible for her wedding look to HRH Prince Carl Philip), what to wear at their own wedding day was as low-key classic and effortless as you’d hope.

“We both wanted to get married feeling comfortable and as our best selves, not dressed up as something we are not. It also had to be suitable for the French bistro wedding we imagined,” says Camilla. “I wanted a flowy, easy chic dress for the ceremony.”

Just like tearing out magazine pages of hairstyles you want your hairdresser to recreate, Camilla had been inhaling magazines like Vogue since she was a teen and loved tearing out the Chloé adverts in particular. “Especially the Chloé 2010 campaign; the flowy, bouncy hair and luxury vanilla colours stayed with me,” she says. While visiting Paris in December, the couple saw a Ulla Johnson dress at Samaritaine department store.

“We looked at each other and said, when we get married this would be perfect. It didn’t look like something I’ve seen before, but also reminded me of the Chloé campaign,” says Camilla. “But as no date was set, we left it and went for a three-hour lunch at Le Voltaire instead.”

When the wedding date was set months later, the dress came back to their minds. Camilla visited the designer’s site “without hope, but there it was. It was easy and I had it in my closet since May,” she says. Camilla paired the vanilla cream dress with gold “total perfection” shoes from Sweden-based designer Sania D’mina.

Before cutting the cake, Camilla changed into a silk crepe dress from Self Portrait “that gave me serious Julia Roberts '90s vibes,” she says. The dress was paired with electric blue slip heels from The Attico. “I’ll be wearing both dresses and shoes for other occasions in the future, which feels important to me.”

Having designed clothes every day for his whole adult life, Christopher has his own style nailed.

“He’s not a suit guy but he loves a tuxedo,” says Camilla. “His mens’ design team at GANT had a cream, double-breasted tuxedo jacket with wide peak lapels tailor-made for him, which he paired with black tuxedo trousers, all made from Italian wool. Underneath he wore a black plain t-shirt and a pair of Crockett & Jones patent tuxedo slippers – I think it’s the sexiest wedding outfit I’ve ever seen on a man.”

Just like their sartorial aesthetic, the venue for their nuptials had to have a certain je ne sais quoi: nothing too pretentious, nor fussy – just simple elegance with a cosy feel.

Christopher’s best friend (and best man) Daphne owns Daphne’s French bistro in Stockholm’s Östermalm district, which had the perfect vibe. “For us, it’s like our second living room and we spent so many nights here when falling in love,” says Camilla. The couple’s usual order: oysters and champagne, steak minute with French fries – “Daphne has the best ones in Stockholm” – and Pornstar Martinis, doubled as their reception dinner – bar one modification: “the wedding needed more French fries.” And of course, a fairy-tale wedding cake to finish.

“We love the classic Swedish strawberry cake with whipped cream, while adoring the aesthetic of French bistro cake,” says Camilla. Mattias who runs Tössebageriet, an iconic bakery in Stockholm, transformed the couple’s wish list into “the most exquisite cake, and the taste of summer and our childhood. Our guests loved it, and we were blown away by the result.”

Not trying to transform the bistro into a church wedding was key to the casual, intimate evening the couple were aiming for. “We kept the location and table settings untouched; bistros do bistro aesthetic best; we just added a galina rose to a water glass at each table. It has a true Parisian vibe we love and as you enter it’s like its own world filled with good memories,” says Camilla. “It felt natural, easy to manage as it needed zero decoration, and a perfect accessible spot for the guests.”

Casual and intimate may have been the order of the day, but when Flora, their flower girl, walked down the aisle – something she’d been practising for weeks – it all became real.

“Luckily my Dad, who I am so close with, held my arm and our friends and family’s faces made me feel so lucky,” says Camilla. “The ceremony was civil, to the point and all about our love for each other.”