Aix-en-Provence wedding

An Aix-en-Provence wedding runs €100,000 to €1.7 million all-in: €100,000 to €350,000 for 80 guests, €200,000 to €500,000 for 150, and €350,000 upward at 300.

That range is not a gradient and it is worth understanding before looking at photographs. Bastide de Puget hires from €8,000. Château La Coste sets a floor of €1,000,000 for an evening with the space and the catering in it. They are half an hour apart and they are both, technically, wedding venues near Aix.

Magic Day weddings here start from €100,000.

Five, all within 35 minutes of the Cours Mirabeau, and three of them carry a Michelin distinction.

An eighteenth-century estate inside the Aix commune itself, with formal gardens, a vineyard and a Michelin star in the kitchen at Le Art. The garden seats 150, the restaurant terrace 120 and the cave 60, and all 25 rooms go with a wedding on a two-night minimum.

Read the full Château de la Gaude wedding guide for the spaces, the 93-decibel limit and what a wedding there costs.

A five-star Relais & Châteaux estate with a Michelin Key at Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade, twenty minutes north of Aix, with 50 rooms that sleep 110. Its ceiling is 130 seated and that is the kitchen rather than the ground: the south park holds 200.

It sleeps more of a guest list than any other venue in Provence.

Read the full Château de Fonscolombe wedding guide for the two-night rate, the catering ceiling and what a wedding there costs.

A house on an extinct volcano at Rognes, with gardens the estate rates at 350 for an outdoor event and twelve rooms sleeping 24. It is the only venue in this group that publishes no time limit for the party at all.

Read the full Villa Baulieu wedding guide for the three nights, the gardens and what a wedding there costs.

A bastide at Meyreuil, ten minutes from Aix under Montagne Sainte-Victoire, seating 180 outdoors under plane trees with salons that hold the same number. Four bedrooms sleep eight, or eleven with extra beds, and they are in every rate.

It is the least expensive venue on this page by an order of magnitude, and the dancing is indoors from the start.

Read the full Bastide de Puget wedding guide for the seasons, the salons and what a wedding there costs.

A working vineyard at Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade that is also an art and architecture estate, with buildings by Gehry, Ando and Nouvel standing in the vines, three Michelin Keys in the first French selection and a Michelin star at its gastronomic table. Two hundred seated is what we build to, and the Gehry terraces take 500 standing.

Its floor for an evening is €1,000,000 with the space and the catering included, and it stays open to the public around you.

Read the full Château La Coste wedding guide for the floor, the spaces and what a wedding there costs.

This is the argument for the town and it is a practical one.

Almost every wedding destination in Provence is a village with one good hotel in it. The Alpilles, the Luberon and the Vaucluse plain are all beautiful and all short of beds, so a wedding in any of them splits the guest list across an estate and two or three villages, and everybody drives.

Aix has 140,000 people, a university, a market every morning and a city’s worth of hotels at every price inside a walkable centre. A guest list of 150 can stay in one town, walk to dinner on the Thursday, and be collected from one pick-up point on the Saturday.

The estates are 10 to 35 minutes out. That is close enough that the coach run is short and far enough that the wedding is in the countryside, which is the combination the villages cannot offer.

The five venues here sit in one département and give five different answers to the same rule, which makes Aix the clearest place on this site to explain how the French system actually works.

The Bouches-du-Rhône arrêté of 23 October 2012 names no hour. What it does is ban loudspeakers outside a venue, in its courtyards and in its gardens, unless the mayor allows them.

So the hour you get is the venue’s own, and it depends on what it has negotiated and who its neighbours are. Bastide de Puget dances indoors from the start and runs to five in the morning. Château de la Gaude holds 93 decibels outdoors until eleven and then moves inside until three, an hour it sets itself because the villas around the estate are close enough to hear a band running hot. Château de Fonscolombe does the same at eleven, into Le Temps Suspendu until three.

Château La Coste is unconstrained outdoors because nothing is near it, and indoors runs to four. Villa Baulieu publishes no limit at all.

None of that is discoverable from the arrêté, and all of it belongs in the contract before signature.

Not in practice. Aix has a mairie on the place de l’Hôtel de Ville and French law puts the civil ceremony there, but the residency requirement attached to it rules out most foreign couples.

So couples marry at home first and hold a symbolic ceremony at the estate, which all five arrange.

Marseille Provence airport is 30 minutes from Château de la Gaude, 35 from Bastide de Puget, 45 from Fonscolombe and La Coste and 50 from Villa Baulieu.

The train is the better answer here and Aix is unusually well placed for it. Aix-en-Provence TGV is 20 minutes from la Gaude and 30 to 35 from the others, and Paris is three hours from that platform. For a guest list coming from London, Paris or anywhere in northern Europe, the train arrives closer to the wedding than the plane does.

Marseille is 30 minutes south, which matters for the Friday: a guest list with a spare day has a city, a port and the calanques within half an hour.

June or September.

July and August are hot enough that an outdoor ceremony before seven in the evening is uncomfortable rather than merely warm, and the estates here have less shade than the Alpilles do. April and October are cheaper and the light is good, with the risk that the evening cools faster than the party does.

The Mistral blows down the Rhône valley at any time of year and reaches Aix with most of its strength. It does not stop a wedding and it decides what can be hung: a suspended floral installation, a tall candle plan or an unstaked structure is a conversation with the florist in March rather than a surprise in June.

This is what the town is for.

The centre holds five-star houses in the old quarter, a spread of good four-stars, and a long tail of smaller hotels and apartments, all within walking distance of the Cours Mirabeau and a short taxi of one another. No village in Provence can put 150 guests in one place at four price points, and Aix can do it without anybody booking eleven months out.

The alternative is to keep the guest list on the estate, and two venues here can. Fonscolombe sleeps 110, which is more than any other property in Provence, and Château de la Gaude 66. For a wedding of 100 that is the whole list behind one gate, and the town becomes the Friday night rather than the accommodation plan.

Aix is the answer when the guest list matters more than the view. The Alpilles and the Luberon photograph better and they are short of beds, and every wedding in them is a logistics exercise dressed as a romance. Here the guests sleep in a town, walk to dinner, and get on a coach once. We always raise it with couples who have sixty guests over seventy years old, because it is the kindest version of a Provence wedding.

The second thing is the gap between the venues, which is the widest in Provence. Bastide de Puget hires from €8,000 and Château La Coste from a million, and they are both twenty-five minutes from the same station. La Coste is an art estate with Gehry and Ando in the vines and it stays open to the public around you, so what the million buys is a setting nobody else has rather than privacy. That is a real thing to want and it is worth being clear that it is what you are buying.

The third is Fonscolombe’s 130, which is a kitchen rather than a lawn. The south park holds 200 and the catering ceiling is 130, so a wedding of 160 there is a conversation about a second kitchen rather than a bigger tent. It is the most commonly missed number on this page.

Then there is the Mistral, which we plan around rather than hope past. It sets the floral structure, the lighting rig and whether the ceremony arch is staked or weighted, and those decisions are cheap in March and expensive in June.

Magic Day has been established in Aix-en-Provence since 2014.

Magic Day has run Provence from an office in Aix-en-Provence since 2014, and the company has planned weddings in Europe since 2008. This is the one town on this site where the office is in the place, and it shows in the things that are hard to buy remotely: the caterers we have worked with for a decade, the florists who know what the Mistral does to a suspended installation, and the hotels that will hold thirty rooms on a handshake in January.

What we do here is the venue against the guest list, the curfew against the neighbours, and the town against the estate. Five venues in half an hour range from €8,000 to a million, and the difference between them is not quality but what each one leaves for you to bring.

Tell us the dates you are considering and how many people are coming, and we will tell you which of the five the guest list has already chosen.