Château Saint Jeannet wedding

The château stands on the slope under the Baou de Saint-Jeannet, the limestone tooth that gives the village its outline, at a little over two hundred metres with the village above it and the Var valley below. It is an eleventh-century Villeneuve fortress, ruined for centuries and rebuilt in pale local stone with crenellations, arched gateways and a tower at the corner.

Three hectares of terraced garden fall away from it in four levels, planted over the years with more than twelve thousand trees and shrubs.

The view is why the terraces are arranged the way they are. From the pergola you look down the valley towards the sea; turn round and the snow on the Alps is behind the house. Matisse and Chagall both worked within a few miles of here, and Saint-Paul-de-Vence is twenty minutes down the road.

The estate is taken whole, and a wedding works down through the terraces as the evening goes on.

The ceremony space: a wide lawn cut into the slope with the valley beyond it, which the estate’s older plans call an amphitheatre of nine hundred square metres. It holds three hundred standing, and it is also where the helicopters land.

A covered terrace of two hundred and eighty square metres facing the Baous, and the room that sets the seated number at a hundred and thirty. Being covered matters on a hillside this open.

An eighteen-metre pool with an infinity edge and a lounging terrace for thirty, a jacuzzi above it and the pool house at the far end. The château sells a pool party on the second day as an event of its own.

A permanent outdoor stage of a hundred and fifty square metres with dressing rooms behind it, built for shows rather than added for weddings. A band of any size fits on it without a truss being hired in.

Above the château and reached through the house, with the Baou on one side and the valley on the other.

A Château Saint Jeannet wedding starts from €150,000 and lands near €350,000 all-in for 80 to 130 guests.

The château charges for the ground and for the rooms, and a wedding takes both. Together they are €18,000 before tax, with a minimum stay of one night and a cleaning charge on each line. French VAT of 20% goes on top of all of it. A pool party on the second day is under €5,000 before tax.

Anything at all, which is the thing to understand here. This is a private house that is let, not a hotel: there are two Bulthaup kitchens on site and nobody standing in them, no tables, no chairs and no staff beyond the people who hand over the keys.

The caterer brings the food, the cooks and the service, and the housekeeping, the concierge cover and the breakfasts are charged as staff on top of the hire.

The catering and the staff to run it, which is the largest line on the page; the furniture and the lighting, because the hire is ground and rooms rather than a set-up; the flowers, the music and the photography; the transfers; and the hotel rooms for everybody beyond the twenty-four the house sleeps.

Twelve suites sleeping twenty-four, eleven in the château and one in the pool house. Each has its own bathroom in marble and an oversized bed, and the interiors are plain rather than decorated: white walls, timber and stone floors, with a large salon opening onto a terrace over the valley.

They are let with the estate as one block rather than room by room.

Twenty-four beds against a dinner for a hundred and thirty is the honest limitation of this venue. Vence is 14 minutes away and Saint-Paul-de-Vence 21, both with hotels, and Nice at 35 has everything else. We always take the house for two nights rather than one where the budget allows, because a single night means the family arrives, dresses, marries and leaves inside twenty-four hours.

The château is at 320 Chemin du Château above the village of Saint-Jeannet, in the Alpes-Maritimes, on the hills between Vence and the Var.

It is known locally as the Château de la Gaude, which is not the Château de la Gaude near Aix-en-Provence that shares the name.

Nice is 27 minutes and takes flights from everywhere, which is an unusually short run for a château rather than a hotel. Two helicopters can land on the lawn.

The village of Saint-Jeannet is six minutes, Vence 14 and Saint-Paul-de-Vence 21. Nice is 35 minutes, Antibes 40, Cannes 45 and Monaco 46. This is inland rather than coastal, and the sea is in the view rather than at the bottom of the garden.

The airport is the strongest argument for this place. Twenty-seven minutes from Nice means guests land and arrive inside the hour, and a hilltop château that close to an intercontinental airport is rare on this coast; the properties that match it for quiet are usually an hour inland. It also makes a two-day wedding work, because nobody spends half of the first day in a car.

The second thing is that this is a house and not a hotel.

Nothing comes with the hire except the ground, the rooms and two empty kitchens. The caterer, the staff, the furniture and the lighting are all bought in, which is why a wedding here lands near €350,000 on an €18,000 hire. That is not expensive for what it is, though it does mean the headline figure tells you very little on its own.

The hours are the last thing and they need settling in writing. The Alpes-Maritimes arrêté names no hour for music and leaves exceptions to the mayor, so the number that binds comes from the commune, and Saint-Jeannet is small enough that it comes from the mairie rather than from a rate card. We always get the hour and the decibel limit into the contract before the music is booked.

Magic Day plans weddings at Château Saint Jeannet from the first conversation to the final farewell. That means the nights and whether one or two, the caterer and the two kitchens they will be cooking in, the staff the house does not provide, the furniture and the lighting for a lawn with nothing on it, the symbolic ceremony and the mairie paperwork behind it, the hotel block in Vence and Nice, and the hour the music has to stop.

We have worked the Alpes-Maritimes for years, with an office in Nice. Tell us the date you are considering and how many people, and we will tell you what the house comes to once it is furnished and staffed.