Immodesty Blaize Wedding in Monaco

I first happened across Immodesty Blaize when she was performing in a hot and sweaty, smoke filled Cobden Club in London some ten years ago — back when clubs were still smokey and you watched the acts through a soft fuggy haze.  This was the height of The Whoopee Club, when burlesque was still kind of edgy and underground.  And it’s fair to say Immodesty stole the show.  I didn’t take any photos that night however, because, honestly… it never actually occurred to me. In fact, didn’t even own a camera at the time.  Fast forward those ten years and here I am photographing her wedding in the heat and keen crisp light of Monte Carlo.  It’s an absolute distillation of the truth that you can never tell where life will take you and what lies just around the corner — in this case the coiled roads made famous by the Monaco Grand Prix where you can’t help feeling that the ghost of Ayrton Senna still hugs the bends.  In the four years I’ve been doing this I’ve been lucky enough to shoot some amazingly stylish weddings and this, of course, goes straight up there with any of them. But Immodesty is the first to channel Sophia Loren for the first dress, wear an amazing Spanish mantilla veil with the second, and then change into a third outfit for Jimmyz night club around midnight.  Really, this had everything, Britain’s premiere showgirl, Immodesty Blaize, her impossibly charming Monegasque groom, Gregory, a romantic low key civil wedding in the morning presided over by the Mayor of Monaco (and attended by their little dog, Nifty).  Then in the afternoon, the glamour of a church wedding at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception (where Grace Kelly lies beneath the stone), and a beautiful reception overlooking the sea at Le Cap Estel.  Before the gang headed off to go clubbing late into the night.  All with a heightened Felliniesque feel to every the day.  Enjoy…

NB. Read more about one particular image here: Immodesty Blaize Wedding Nerves

Makeup by Sara Montovio