Abbaye des Vaux-de-Cernay wedding

The abbey was founded in 1118, when Simon de Neauffle and his wife Eve gave land in the valley to the monks of Savigny, and it joined the Cistercian order thirty years later. Saint Louis came in 1240, and the spring in its grounds drew pilgrims for centuries after. The monks left in 1791, in the Revolution.

In the 1880s Charlotte de Rothschild bought the abbey and had its seventeenth-century buildings restored, and her grandson, Baron Henri de Rothschild, inherited it in 1903. It has been a classified historic monument since 1926.

It became a hotel in 1988. Paris Society, Laurent de Gourcuff’s group, bought it in the early 2020s and reopened it in October 2023 after a long restoration, with every room designed by Cordélia de Castellane, and La Ferme, a hamlet in the forest, opened a year later.

In July 2026 the Paris Saint-Germain and France defender Lucas Hernandez married Victoria Triay here, with Kylian Mbappé, Ousmane Dembélé, Achraf Hakimi and his brother Théo Hernandez among the guests, and the banquet laid on the lawn under great white parasols.

With the estate taken whole, a wedding has the run of the Abbaye, the Haras and La Ferme, and the weekend moves between the three.

The monks’ refectory, five hundred square metres under Gothic arches lit by constellations of candles, and the room for the wedding dinner: up to 220 at banquet tables, with its terrace outside for the evenings of summer.

The lawns run from the Abbaye past the ruins of the abbey church, and they take a ceremony, a cocktail, or a banquet laid out under parasols.

The Rothschilds’ hunting room, now the estate’s most elegant restaurant, with a fire in winter and a great sunny terrace in summer: 76 inside and 96 outside, and the room for the welcome dinner.

Under the sloping roofs of the old building, with its tables set under the weeping willow by the pond in summer, for 70 inside and 94 outside. On weekends a pianist plays as the evening comes on.

Three salons, the Salon d’Été, the Salon Anglais and the Salon de Musique, with fires and deep sofas, and a terrace for 94. It is the room after dinner.

Salon 1900 takes 150 for drinks or 100 for dinner, and the Orangerie 130 in rows, for a ceremony indoors if the weather turns.

A hamlet of four buildings in a clearing, a quarter of an hour’s walk into the forest, with La Trattoria and its bread oven, Le Betty’s Bar by the fire and a farmyard of goats and donkeys. The Friday dinner or the Sunday lunch belongs here.

144 rooms and suites, and they all come with the wedding, in four houses across the estate.

The Abbaye’s rooms keep their period panelling and their Rothschild-era fabrics. Its signature suites are La Suite de la Baronne, 113 square metres with a view from the pond to the abbey church; La Suite du Baron on the great staircase; La Suite de l’Abbé over the Réfectoire; and La Pagode, on the lake itself.

Les Haras, the old stables around a grassy courtyard, hold attic rooms in toile de Jouy and stripes. The two Pavillons, d’Honneur in the forest and des Sources, have three bedrooms and two, and La Ferme has 38 rooms in four buildings, the five-bedroom Cottage among them.

We give La Suite de la Baronne to the couple, the Pavillons and the Cottage to the families, and La Ferme to the friends with children, who will not want to leave the farmyard.

In the Haras, seven cabins give Tata Harper treatments, with a sauna, a hammam, hot baths and a heated outdoor pool reached by a swimming corridor, the morning of the wedding’s natural place for the bridal party.

Beyond the spa the estate keeps rowing boats on the pond, tennis, clay shooting, a cinema, an arcade room and a kids’ club, which is what a weekend of three days needs between its dinners.

The abbey stands at Cernay-la-Ville, in the Yvelines, inside the regional natural park of the Haute Vallée de Chevreuse. Paris is fifty minutes by road on a clear run, the Palace of Versailles forty and the Château de Dampierre twelve.

Paris Orly is the nearest airport, 50 minutes by road, and Charles de Gaulle an hour and a quarter. The estate has its own helipad, twenty minutes by helicopter from Paris.

Saint-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse, at the end of the RER B, and Rambouillet, on the line from Paris Montparnasse, are both twenty minutes away by road.

The Abbaye hosts a wedding one way: the whole estate, from Friday afternoon to Sunday, for €700,000 to €900,000 by season, before the banquets.

• All 144 rooms and suites, across the Abbaye, the Haras, the Pavillons and La Ferme
• The four restaurants, the two bars and the spa
• The estate’s teams, from Friday afternoon to Sunday

The banquets are priced on top, from the hotel’s own kitchens, the only caterer allowed. Florists, DJs and other suppliers are welcome once the hotel has reviewed their work, and keeping the party until two adds the night team at its night rate. Design, flowers, lighting, music, photography and transfers sit outside the hotel’s figure.

A Magic Day wedding at Abbaye des Vaux-de-Cernay starts at €1.1 million to €1.3 million, depending on the season, and lands near €1.6 million.

The weekend is the venue. The estate is the wedding’s from Friday afternoon to Sunday, so we design three evenings rather than one: the Friday at La Ferme or in Les Chasses, the Saturday in the Réfectoire, and the Sunday brunch under its arches.

Put the extension in the contract. The music stops at midnight unless the night team stays on until two, at a supplement. We agree it at signing, so the dance floor never has to ask.

Send the suppliers early. The hotel reviews every florist and DJ before they work here. We submit the team’s portfolios with the first proposal rather than the last.

Bring Paris out by coach, or by air. The abbey is fifty minutes from the city and has its own helipad. We schedule coaches from the Paris hotels for the guests who arrive on the day, and the helicopter for the ones who would rather not drive.

The Abbaye des Vaux-de-Cernay gives a wedding a Cistercian abbey of 1118, the Rothschilds’ country house, 144 rooms, four restaurants and a spa, for a whole weekend. What it leaves to the couple is the wedding itself: the design, the flowers, the music, the photography, a team the hotel approves, and the way out from Paris.

That is a planner’s work, and on an estate that becomes a village of the wedding’s guests for three days, the running order is most of it.

Magic Day plans weddings at Abbaye des Vaux-de-Cernay from the first conversation to the final farewell.