Château du Grand-Lucé wedding

In 1760 Jacques Pineau de Viennay, baron of Lucé and a confidant of Louis XV, had the architect Mathieu de Bayeux build a neoclassical house on the site of his family’s medieval castle. It was finished in 1764 and laid out with its gardens on a single axis from north to south, and the king sent statues for the parterre, among them the Ceres and Pan that still close the central allée.

Its Salon Chinois keeps the Chinoiserie murals Jean-Baptiste Pillement painted on its canvas walls.

The French state sold the château in 2003 to the American designer Timothy Corrigan, who restored it as his home. In 2017 it passed to new owners, who opened it as a hotel of 19 rooms in June 2019.

Château du Grand-Lucé holds two Michelin Keys, the Guide’s distinction for hotels.

With the hotel taken whole, the wedding has the château, the old stables and 80 walled acres, and the weekend moves between them.

The formal court between the medieval wall, with its gates and its climbing roses, and the front of the château, for a ceremony or the welcome drinks for up to 100.

The promenade down the middle of the parterre, reached by the old stone steps from the Grand Salon, with Louis XV’s Ceres and Pan at its end. Ceres, goddess of the harvest, was a guardian of marriage to the Romans, and the allée takes a ceremony or a dinner for 100.

A crescent of buildings around an intimate court, with a gate onto the village square and the eleventh-century church across it, for the welcome drinks or a dinner for 100.

The kitchen garden and its orchard of apples and pears, down a stone staircase from the parterre, looking over the lake and the meadows, for a ceremony or a reception for 100.

The old stables, with timbers seven metres overhead, windows more than three and a half metres tall hung in green Pierre Frey velvet, an oak floor laid in point de Hongrie and crystal chandeliers. It seats 80 at dinner and takes 100 for the dancing, in any weather, until three.

The Grand Salon opens through French doors onto the parterre, under a signed Baccarat chandelier of the nineteenth century, and takes the welcome drinks for 44; the cake is cut on the marble table in the hall beside it. The Formal Dining Room, rose-panelled under portraits of Napoleon III and the Empress Eugénie, takes 60 for drinks.

The orangerie, 140 square metres under a vaulted ceiling, winters the citrus trees and hosts the brunch after the wedding for 80, with its doors open onto the round pool in the walled Exotic Garden.

The bar in the baron’s old private chapel, named after him in English, beside Le Lucé, the hotel’s restaurant.

Nineteen rooms and suites for 44 guests, and they all come with the buyout, with housekeeping twice a day and breakfast.

They are furnished with antiques, under fabrics and papers from Pierre Frey, Christian Lacroix, Jean-Paul Gaultier and de Gournay. The Baron’s Suite has its own library, a petit salon, a door to the garden and the Salon Chinois to itself, and two pieds-à-terre have their own small kitchens.

We give the Baron’s Suite to the couple and the pieds-à-terre to the families with children. The château cannot sleep a wedding of 100, so the rest of the guests stay in Le Mans, half an hour away, and come out by coach.

The château stands in the village of Le Grand-Lucé, in the Sarthe, south-east of Le Mans, with its gates onto the village square. Le Mans is half an hour away by road, La Chartre-sur-le-Loir twenty minutes, the Château du Lude three quarters of an hour, Tours an hour and Amboise under an hour and a half.

Le Mans is under an hour from Paris Montparnasse by TGV, and half an hour from the château by road.

Tours Val de Loire is an hour away by road. Paris Orly is two hours and twenty minutes, and Charles de Gaulle nearly three, which is why most guests take the train.

The hotel hosts a wedding one way: taken whole, for two nights at least. A weekend from May to September is €70,000, and the rate is lower from October to April.

• All 19 rooms and suites, for 44 guests, with housekeeping twice a day and breakfast
• The château, the ballroom, the orangerie, the spa, the gym and the pool
• The gardens and the 80 acres inside the medieval wall

The rehearsal dinner, the cocktail, the wedding dinner, the bar and the brunch are priced on top, from the kitchen of Le Lucé under its head chef, Maxime Thomas. The hotel can arrange fireworks, balloon flights and riding for the weekend. The design, the flowers, the lighting, the music, the photography, the rooms in Le Mans and the transfers sit outside the hotel’s figure.

A Magic Day wedding at Château du Grand-Lucé starts from €200,000 and lands near €350,000.

Plan three days, not one. The hotel is taken for two nights at least, so the wedding is a weekend: the rehearsal dinner in the Hemicycle, the wedding on the Saturday, the brunch in the orangerie on the Sunday. We design all three from the start.

Keep the dancing in the stables. Music outside stops at ten, and the ballroom goes on until three. We schedule the ceremony and the dinner in the gardens and move everyone to the ballroom as the light goes.

Put Paris on the TGV. Le Mans is under an hour from Paris by train. We meet the trains with coaches, and bring the guests who are not sleeping at the château out from their hotels in Le Mans.

Leave room for the Loire. The hotel arranges balloon flights, riding and visits to the vineyards and the châteaux of the Loire. We build the Friday around them for the guests who arrive early.

Château du Grand-Lucé gives a wedding a neoclassical house of 1764 with two Michelin Keys, its 19 rooms, a ballroom in the old stables and 80 walled acres of gardens, for a whole weekend. What it leaves to the couple is the wedding itself: the design, the flowers, the music, the photography, and the way in from Paris for everyone beyond its 44 beds.

That is a planner’s work, and for a wedding a train ride from Paris, the arrivals are most of it.

Magic Day plans weddings at Château du Grand-Lucé from the first conversation to the final farewell.