Château Challain wedding

The château was built between 1847 and 1854 by the architect René Hodé for François Albert de La Rochefoucauld, comte de Bayers, and his wife, Louise-Ida Le Roy de La Potherie, in the Troubadour style of the day: sixty metres long, with towers that rise forty-five metres.

The count died in January 1854, before it was finished, and the countess completed the interiors by 1858.

In the twentieth century it passed through several hands, among them the town of Choisy-le-Roi, which ran holiday camps for its children here from 1948 to 1970. The Nicholson family bought it in 2002, restored it and have run it for weddings ever since.

Its façades, its roofs and its principal rooms have been listed as a historic monument since 1980.

The château and its 72 acres are the wedding’s for the weekend, and the day moves from the gardens into the house.

The lawns and the gardens around the château, with the lake below and the forest beyond, take the ceremony at five and the cocktail after it.

Dinner is inside, in the château’s Gothic Revival salons of carved wood and painted ceilings, for up to 100. In summer the tables can go out onto the lawn before the château instead.

A white salon of mirrors and carved panels is the bride’s for getting ready.

Twenty-one suites for 50 guests, and all of them come with the wedding, for the two nights of the package or the three of the longer one.

They run through the château and the coach house, from the Golden Tower Suite to rooms under four-poster canopies and carved beds, and the château’s housekeeping keeps them through the weekend.

We give the tower suite to the couple and the rooms around it to the families and the wedding party. The château cannot sleep a wedding of 100, so the other guests stay in the villages and towns nearby, which the château recommends, and we run the shuttles.

The château stands at Challain-la-Potherie, in the Maine-et-Loire, in the Anjou countryside between Angers and Nantes. Candé is ten minutes away, Angers three quarters of an hour, and Nantes and the Château de Brissac an hour each. Paris is four hours by road.

Nantes Atlantique is the nearest large airport, an hour and ten minutes by road, and Rennes about the same. The château has its own helipad.

Angers Saint-Laud, three quarters of an hour from the château, is an hour and a half from Paris Montparnasse by TGV.

The château sells its weddings whole, with the rooms, the meals and the wine in the price. Its Planners Package for 100 guests is €89,000 from mid-May to mid-October, with taxes and service included, and less in the winter and for smaller weddings.

• The château and its grounds, and the 21 suites for 50 guests, for two nights
• The welcome barbecue, the wedding day’s meals, the cocktail, a gastronomic dinner and the cake, with wine and beer until one
• An officiant and a harpist for the ceremony, the fireworks, and the farewell breakfast

The longer package adds a third night, a carriage for the bride, clay shooting or archery, a spirits bar and a farewell brunch. The photography, the rooms beyond the château’s 50 guests and the guests’ travel sit outside the château’s figure.

A Magic Day wedding at Château Challain starts from €150,000 and lands near €250,000.

Use the château’s team. Challain’s own kitchen and florists do what most venues bring in, and its package is built for a planner to work with. We design on top of what the château provides rather than replacing it.

Take the third night. The longer package adds a third night midweek in the high season, with the brunch, the carriage and the clay shooting. We recommend it for a wedding with guests flying in, who will not want to leave after two.

Dance inside after one. Music outside stops at one, or comes down to 90 decibels; inside there is no limit, though the late hours are charged. We move the dancing indoors at one and let it run.

Meet the TGV. Angers is an hour and a half from Paris by train and three quarters of an hour from the château. We meet the trains with cars, and the helicopter for anyone coming straight from Paris.

Château Challain gives a wedding a Troubadour château of towers and turrets above its lake, 21 suites, its own kitchen and florists, and a whole weekend in the Anjou countryside. What it leaves to the couple is what makes the wedding theirs: the design, the music, the photography, and the journey for everyone coming from Paris or further.

That is a planner’s work, and four hours from Paris, the journey is a large part of it.

Magic Day plans weddings at Château Challain from the first conversation to the final farewell.