Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte wedding

Nicolas Fouquet, Louis XIV’s superintendent of finances, bought the estate in 1641, and between 1656 and 1661 he built the château with three men: Louis Le Vau for the house, Charles Le Brun for its painting and André Le Nôtre for the garden.

On 17 August 1661 he gave the king a fête here, with Molière’s Les Fâcheux, written for the night, and fireworks over the garden. On 5 September Fouquet was arrested at Nantes, and the king took Le Vau, Le Brun and Le Nôtre to build Versailles.

The dome of the Grand Salon was never painted. Le Brun’s ceiling went unfinished when Fouquet fell, and the room has kept its white vault ever since.

The Maréchal de Villars bought Vaux in 1705 and the Choiseul-Praslins in 1764. In 1875 the industrialist Alfred Sommier bought it at auction and restored it, and the Vogüé family, who have held it since 1967, opened it to the public the following year.

Tony Parker and Eva Longoria celebrated their wedding here in July 2007.

The château’s rooms and its garden are the wedding’s from eight in the morning until one at night, and the day moves from the garden into the house.

Le Nôtre’s garden runs from the house for a kilometre and a half, past its parterres of box, its basins, the cascades and the grotto, to the gilt Farnese Hercules, seven metres tall, that closes the perspective. The ceremony goes here, on the axis of the château.

The cocktail goes through the state rooms of the west wing and the Salon des Muses, under ceilings painted by Le Brun.

The oval room under the dome, nineteen metres long and eighteen high, opening onto the garden, for a dinner of up to 200.

For a larger wedding we build a marquee in the grounds, to any size the guest list needs, with the château lit beside it.

The library and the state salons of the east wing open for the evening too.

The north and south façades are lit by candles for the wedding, and the garden can be lit by 1,200 more, from eight in the evening until one.

A private space on the first floor of the château is the bride’s for the day.

Vaux-le-Vicomte has no bedrooms, and nobody sleeps on the estate.

The château cannot put up a single guest, so the couple and the families stay close, in Fontainebleau or Barbizon, half an hour away, and the rest of the wedding in Paris, an hour off, which has the rooms and the Sunday. We hold the rooms a year out and run the coaches at both ends of the evening.

The château stands at Maincy, near Melun, in the Seine-et-Marne. Paris is an hour away by road on a clear run, the Château de Fontainebleau just over half an hour and Barbizon twenty-five minutes.

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

Melun, twelve minutes from the château, has trains from Paris Gare de Lyon.

The château’s rooms and its French garden are hired for the day, from eight in the morning to one at night, from just under €180,000 with VAT, with the façades lit by candles and a private space for the bride.

• The Grand Salon, the state rooms of both wings and the library
• The French garden for the ceremony
• The façades lit by candles, and the bride’s rooms on the first floor

The catering comes from one of the caterers the château works with, and the château’s staff and coordination and the garden lit by 1,200 candles are priced on top, as are the sound, the lighting, the dance floor, the flowers and the fireworks. The design, the photography, the rooms and the coaches sit outside the château’s figure.

A Magic Day wedding at Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte starts from €500,000 and lands near €1 million.

Light the garden. The façades are lit by candles with the hire, and the garden can be lit by 1,200 more from eight in the evening. We always take it: dinner under the dome with the garden burning beyond the windows is the evening Vaux is known for.

Build in a day. Set-up runs from eight in the morning to five on the day of the wedding itself. We design a wedding that goes in within that window, and schedule the florists and the lighting crew to the hour.

Plan backwards from one. The hire ends at one and the dismantling runs until six. We keep the last dance before one and the coaches at the door.

Ask for the date first. Vaux is a monument with a public programme, and it gives private dates around its candlelit evenings and its Christmas. We ask for the date before we design anything.

Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte gives a wedding the house that made Versailles: Le Vau’s dome, Le Brun’s ceilings and Le Nôtre’s garden lit by candles, for a day and an evening. What it leaves to the couple is the wedding itself: the caterer, the design, the flowers, the music, and the rooms and coaches for every guest, because nobody sleeps at Vaux.

That is a planner’s work, and at a monument that goes in at eight and comes out at one, the timings are most of it.

Magic Day plans weddings at Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte from the first conversation to the final farewell.