Château La Tour Vaucros wedding

The château stands at Sorgues on the plain north of Avignon, behind a gate on the chemin de Vaucroze, with vines on one side and a park of century-old pines on the other. It is a private house rather than a hotel, pale-rendered with blue-grey shutters, and it is let whole or not at all.

Six houses stand in the park around it, which is what makes the place work.

The château sleeps fifteen, La Chapelle fourteen, the Mas des Vignes ten, Les Lauriers Roses six, and two cottages take two each. Forty-nine people sleep on the estate when all of them are taken, which is a large proportion of a wedding of a hundred and almost all of a wedding of sixty.

The estate has indoor rooms that actually work, which in this part of Provence is the thing that separates venues.

Four hundred square metres cut into the garden for the ceremony, seating 200. The pine alley and the courtyard are the alternatives, and the Salon d’Été is the answer if it rains.

Five hundred square metres enclosed by the château, taking 250 for a cocktail or 200 for dinner under the sky.

Where the brunch goes the next morning, looking straight down the rows.

A hundred and eighty-five square metres under a timbered roof with glass on two sides, seating 150. It is the wet-weather ceremony room and the second dining room.

Two hundred and twenty square metres with chandeliers and beams, seating 200 with a dance floor. This is where the night ends, and it is why the night can run to four.

A Château La Tour Vaucros wedding starts from €150,000 and lands near €250,000 all-in for 80 to 200 guests.

Not the guest list. Every figure on the château’s card is quoted for the number of people sleeping, 33 or 49, and for the season, the day of the week and the length of the stay. The reception size is separate, which takes a moment to get used to and then makes the budget easier to model.

In high season, from June to mid-September, a Friday-to-Sunday weekend with 49 people staying two nights is €29,000, and three nights just over €36,000. The same stays taken from Monday to Thursday are €22,000 and just under €28,000. In the middle season, mid-April to May and mid-September to mid-October, a midweek two-night stay for 33 people is €15,000. Out of season an evening reception on its own starts just over €7,000.

The estate, the two reception halls, both heated pools, the outdoor spa and the tennis court; the team on site through the wedding day and night; deliveries and suppliers received; guests met at the car park, which holds 170; and the whole property cleaned when you leave. Rectangular and round tables with wooden chairs for the dinner are free. So is the lighting of the park, the drives and the parking, a projector and screen, and a sound system with two radio microphones.

The catering, from the château’s own list of seven houses; furniture for the ceremony, the cocktail and the brunch; festive outdoor lighting; the flowers, the music and the photography; and the transfers.

Twenty-four bedrooms sleeping 49 across six houses, all of them in the park and none of them more than a walk from the Grande Salle. The château takes fifteen in nine rooms, La Chapelle fourteen in five, the Mas des Vignes ten, Les Lauriers Roses six, and La Restanque des Oliviers and Les Lavandes two each.

Some of the bathrooms are shared, though the brochure states which room by room, and it matters when the rooms are being allocated.

Beyond 49 the answer is a partner mill two minutes’ walk from the gate, and after that Avignon, which is 27 minutes and has a city’s worth of rooms. We always take the 49-person rate rather than the 33 when the guest list is over a hundred, because the difference is smaller than a night in Avignon for the same sixteen people.

The château is on the chemin de Vaucroze at Sorgues, in the Vaucluse, on the plain between Avignon and Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

Avignon is 27 minutes and Saint-Rémy-de-Provence 40. Gordes is 49, Aix an hour and seven, and Nice close to three hours.

Marseille airport is an hour and seven. Avignon TGV is 30 minutes, which is the arrival to build a guest list around: Paris is two hours forty from there, and most of northern Europe is a single connection.

The beds are what you are buying and the guest list is a separate conversation. Every line of the château’s card names 33 people or 49, and until that number is settled nothing else can be priced. We always start there, because the jump from 33 to 49 is about €4,000 on a weekend and moves sixteen people off a hotel shuttle and onto the estate.

The second thing is the curfew, and the Grande Salle is the answer to it.

The Vaucluse does not allow amplified music outdoors at venues, so every château in this département ends its night in a room. What decides the wedding is how good that room is. Two hundred and twenty square metres with chandeliers under a beamed roof, seating 200 with a floor, and a licence to four in the morning is as good an answer to that rule as the département offers.

The last thing is the train, which is undersold. Thirty minutes to Avignon TGV and two hours forty from Paris means a guest list that does not have to fly, and on a three-night wedding that changes who can actually come. We build the arrivals around the station here rather than around Marseille.

Magic Day plans weddings at Château La Tour Vaucros from the first conversation to the final farewell. That means the dates and whether the rate is taken at 33 beds or 49, the symbolic ceremony in the green theatre and the mairie paperwork behind it, the caterer from the château’s list, the furniture the rate does not cover, the allocation of 24 rooms across six houses, and the trains into Avignon.

We have worked across Provence for years, and the Vaucluse plain is the part of it guests reach most easily. Tell us the dates you are considering and how many people are staying, and we will tell you what the estate comes to.