COMO Le Beauvallon wedding

Le Beauvallon opened in 1914, a Belle Époque palace on the hill above the Gulf of Saint-Tropez, and it soon became one of the Riviera’s addresses: Winston Churchill, Colette and Audrey Hepburn all stayed here. More recently it stood closed for nearly a decade, before reopening as a COMO hotel with a first season in 2025 and a full opening in April 2026, its interiors by the designer Dorothée Delaye.

Ten acres of terraces and gardens, under palms and umbrella pines, run down from the palace to the sea. There the hotel keeps its own beach club, a 25-metre mosaic pool and a pontoon for the boats from Saint-Tropez, and more than three hundred works of art stand in the house and the grounds.

Yannick Alléno directs all of the hotel’s food, and its restaurant on the shore is Beauvallon Sur Mer by Yannick Alléno.

Eleven spaces come with the hotel, and they fall into two halves: the palace on the hill, with its terraces and its Ballroom, and Beauvallon Sur Mer on the shore below. A wedding here usually uses both.

The terrace along the south front of the palace, 874 square metres with the gulf beyond the balustrade, and the largest room on the estate. It seats 400 for dinner without a marquee, or takes a ceremony for 300. Some of the hotel’s papers call it the South Terrace.

The garden below the terrace, set with olive trees, where a ceremony for 300 faces the sea.

A room of 186 square metres for 150 at dinner or on the dance floor, and the room the party moves into at midnight, when the music outdoors stops. Indoors there is no limit on sound, and the dancing can run long after midnight.

The conservatory on the north side of the palace, for 90 at dinner or 180 for drinks, with the Winter Terrace beside it for 120 at dinner.

The restaurant on the shore, and two spaces around it. The Poolside, 976 square metres by the mosaic pool, takes 300 for dinner and 250 dancing; the Rotunda, which dates from 1912 and stands over the beach, takes a ceremony for 100 or dinner for 120.

The pavilion Toyo Ito designed for London’s Serpentine Gallery in 2002, now standing by the sea at Beauvallon: 289 square metres of white angles and glass, for 100 at dinner and then 100 dancing.

Forty-two rooms and suites, and they sleep eighty. With the hotel taken whole, all of them belong to the wedding, from the fourteen rooms over the Provençal hills to the twenty-eight suites, most of them over the sea.

The COMO Suite, the penthouse of 199 square metres with the gulf across its windows, goes to the couple. The two Two-Bedroom Suites and the Two-Bedroom Terrace Suite go to families travelling together.

With more than eighty at the wedding, we book the rest into Sainte-Maxime, seven minutes away, or across the gulf in Saint-Tropez, and bring them to the party by road or by boat.

COMO Le Beauvallon stands at Beauvallon, in the commune of Grimaud, on the north shore of the Gulf of Saint-Tropez between Sainte-Maxime and Port Grimaud, with the Golf Club de Beauvallon beside it. Saint-Tropez is across the water: eight minutes by boat from the hotel’s pontoon, or under twenty minutes by road on a clear day.

Nice Côte d’Azur is the airport most guests use, an hour and a half by road, with direct flights from the United States and the United Kingdom. Toulon-Hyères is nearer, under an hour, and Marseille Provence about two hours.

The hotel has its own helipad, subject to the local rules, and Nice is under half an hour away by helicopter. La Môle, the Saint-Tropez airfield, is under twenty minutes by road and takes light jets.

Les Arcs-Draguignan, on the TGV line from Paris, is 35 minutes by road, and Saint-Raphaël-Valescure about the same.

The hotel runs a boat to and from the harbour at Saint-Tropez by day, and its pontoon takes the tenders of yachts anchored in the gulf.

COMO Le Beauvallon hosts a wedding one way: the whole hotel, for two nights at least.

• The hotel taken whole: all 42 rooms and suites, the eleven spaces, the beach club and the pool
• The food and drink, from the hotel’s own kitchen, which is the only caterer allowed
• The breakfast and the city tax, on top of the rooms

Housekeeping and turndown, pantries of drinks and snacks through the day, the boat to Saint-Tropez by day, security around the clock, parking for 70 cars and the helipad.

Liability insurance, any moving of the furniture, and every supplier a wedding brings: design, flowers, lighting, sound, music, photography and transfers. An independent inspection of the property is made before the event, its cost shared with the hotel.

The hotel hosts weddings in May, June, September and October, for two nights at least. June and September go first.

A Magic Day wedding at COMO Le Beauvallon starts at €400,000 and lands near €500,000.

The party moves inside at midnight, and the Ballroom is ready for it. Outdoor music runs until midnight, held to 85 decibels, and then the celebration carries on in the Ballroom with no limit on sound, long into the night. We design the dinner outside and the dancing inside, so the move feels like the next act rather than a curfew.

Bring the guests across the gulf by boat. The hotel’s boat to Saint-Tropez runs by day, but for the evening we book private boats to the pontoon for the guests staying in the town. Eight minutes on the water beats the coast road on any June Saturday.

Eighty beds, so shape the guest list around the rooms. Up to eighty, everyone sleeps in the palace. Beyond that we hold rooms in Sainte-Maxime before the save-the-dates go out.

Two nights is the minimum, so use them. The first evening belongs at Beauvallon Sur Mer or in the Ito Pavilion, and the second on the Riviera Terrace. We schedule the welcome dinner by the sea and the wedding on the hill.

Suppliers get four hours either side. Set-up can start four hours before check-in and breakdown runs to four hours after check-out, so we plan the build tightly and bring the large pieces in first.

COMO Le Beauvallon gives a wedding a Belle Époque palace, eleven spaces from a ballroom to a Toyo Ito pavilion, a beach club, a kitchen under Yannick Alléno and eighty beds, for two nights. What it leaves to the couple is the wedding itself: the design, the flowers, the light, the music, the boats and cars around the gulf, and the guests who stay beyond the hotel.

That is a planner’s work, and on an estate split between a hill and a beach, the running order is most of it.

Magic Day plans weddings at COMO Le Beauvallon from the first conversation to the final farewell.