Château de Vallery wedding

The viscounts of Sens held a fortress here in the twelfth century, and its ramparts, its postern and its vaulted cellars still stand beside the house.

In 1548 Jacques d’Albon de Saint-André, marshal of France and a favourite of Henri II, bought Vallery, and from about 1550 Pierre Lescot, the architect of the Louvre, raised a new château there in white stone and brick, with a Renaissance garden of sixteen squares around a basin. The king and his court stayed in 1550, while it was going up, and again in 1556.

After the marshal’s death his widow gave the estate to Louis de Bourbon, prince de Condé, and the Condés held it for almost two centuries. Henri II de Bourbon-Condé lies in the village church under a marble mausoleum by Gilles Guérin, made in 1646.

Much of Lescot’s house was pulled down in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The architect Patrice Vansteenberghe has restored what remains since 1990, and it has been a classified historic monument since 2001.

Halle Berry married Olivier Martinez here in July 2013.

The whole estate is the wedding’s, and the Yew-Tree Park at its centre links the halls, lit at night by a thousand torches and with music in its trees.

Pierre Lescot’s gallery of about 1550, level with the park, six metres high under its vaulted ceiling and heated through the floor, with an Érard piano of 1923 on a stage. It takes the cocktail, the dancing or a dinner, and its parvis looks onto the fireworks.

The great room under the roof, painted with 400 square metres of trompe-l’oeil after the Field of the Cloth of Gold, where François I met Henry VIII in 1520: dinner for 140, or the cocktail for 240.

Eight pavilions joined into one hall on the edge of the forest, glass-fronted between columns with stone busts, for a dinner of up to 330 with a dance floor and a band. The Arbour beside it takes the cocktail or a dinner outdoors in fine weather.

The old stables, made into a riad at the turn of the millennium, with a zellij pond, moucharabieh screens and the heated Grand Bassin outside. The dinner the night before and the brunch the morning after belong here.

The vaulted cellars of the twelfth century, lit with a thousand candles, for a tasting of Burgundy’s wines before the dinner.

Four espaliered terraces of sculptures, century-old olive trees, fountains and a brazier, above five hectares of gardens and the forest beyond. The ceremony goes under the great chestnut tree or in the Rose Garden, and the night ends around the bonfire.

Twenty-eight rooms and suites for 60 guests, and they all come with the rental.

Sixteen are in the Renaissance château, with four-poster beds and seventeenth-century papers, named after the house’s kings and princes: Henri IV, Louis XIII, the Grand Condé, Charlotte de Montmorency. The Loft, a duplex of 150 square metres, and two more rooms sit above the Oriental Pavilion, four teak rooms open onto the sand garden of the Palm Grove, and four more are in the medieval part.

The Dovecote, rebuilt in 2006, is the bridal suite: three levels around 2,844 pigeonholes, a round bed under a glass roof and a bath cut from a single stone.

We give the Dovecote or the Loft to the couple, the Renaissance rooms to the families and the Palm Grove to the friends. The château cannot sleep a wedding of 200, so it finds rooms for everyone else in Vallery and the villages around, and arranges the shuttles.

The château stands in the village of Vallery, in the Yonne, on the northern edge of Burgundy, an hour and a half from Paris on a clear road. Sens and its cathedral are twenty-five minutes away, Fontainebleau forty, Vaux-le-Vicomte under an hour, and Chablis an hour and a quarter.

Paris Orly is the nearest airport, an hour and a quarter by road, and Charles de Gaulle an hour and three quarters.

Montereau and Sens, twenty and twenty-five minutes from the château, both have trains from Paris.

The estate is hired whole, from three in the afternoon on the wedding day to noon the next, with every hall and all 28 rooms: just under €50,000 with VAT from May to September. The rest of the year costs less, and midweek a second night comes free.

• The whole estate: the four halls, the cellars, the park and the gardens, the pool and the tennis court
• All 28 rooms and suites, for 60 guests
• The furniture, the caterers’ kitchens, the sound systems and the torch-lit park
• A night manager and the château’s team, who set out the furniture and receive the suppliers

The caterer is the couple’s choice, from the château’s recommended list or beyond it, and the wine can come with the couple, with no corkage. Stage lighting in the halls is an option. The design, the flowers, the music, the photography, the rooms beyond the château and the transfers sit outside the château’s figure.

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

Marry midweek and take two nights. A weekday wedding brings a second night free, and the estate is the wedding’s from the day before. We schedule the welcome dinner in the Oriental Pavilion and keep the great halls for the day itself.

Let the night run. There is no curfew and no decibel limit in the halls. We build the late hours around it: fireworks from the parvis of the Grande Galerie, dancing in the Music Room, and the bonfire behind the Arbour for the last guests.

Choose the caterer for the halls. Vallery leaves the caterer to the couple, with a kitchen beside each great hall. We choose one who has cooked here before, and the château’s own list is where we start.

Run the shuttles to dawn. The château sleeps 60, and everyone else stays in the villages around. We time the shuttles to the hour the party ends, which here can be sunrise.

Château de Vallery gives a wedding Pierre Lescot’s Renaissance house, the Condés’ estate, four great halls, 28 rooms, a torch-lit park and a night with no end, an hour and a half from Paris. What it leaves to the couple is the wedding itself: the caterer, the design, the flowers, the music, and the rooms and shuttles for everyone beyond its 60 beds.

That is a planner’s work, and at a wedding with no curfew, the morning after is as much of it as the evening.

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