La Bastide de Marie wedding

The bastide is an eighteenth-century house below Ménerbes, standing in the middle of its own vineyard rather than at the edge of one. Domaine de Marie is the wine estate around it, twenty-four hectares of it, and the walk from the terrace into the vines takes about a minute.

The Luberon ridge is the horizon in one direction and the Abbey of Saint-Hilaire in the other.

Two villas sit a few steps away in the vines, Villa Grenache and Villa Syrah, each with five double bedrooms, its own kitchen, living room and a heated pool. The three buildings together are what you take for a wedding, and the arrangement is why a guest list of ninety feels like a house party rather than a hotel booking.

La Bastide de Marie belongs to Maisons et Hôtels Sibuet, the family group that also runs houses in Megève, Saint-Tropez and Saint-Barth, which shows in the service standard more than in the decoration.

Privatisation is compulsory and it is total. The Bastide, both villas, the gardens, the wellness area, the two swimming pools and the restaurant are yours for a minimum of two or three nights depending on the date.

Where the symbolic ceremony goes, among the lavender and the vines with the ridge behind.

Pebbled, shaded by a lime tree, and where the welcome dinner on the eve of the wedding usually happens. It looks straight out over the vineyard.

The restaurant, with exposed stone walls and beamed ceilings, seating up to 90. It is the wet-weather answer and the room for a smaller, quieter dinner in its own right.

Where the dancing goes, decorated to whatever the couple wants, and included in the reception rate until 3am.

Part of Domaine de Marie, and available for a cocktail reception among the barrels for couples who want one part of the weekend underground and cool.

A La Bastide de Marie wedding starts from €300,000 and lands near €450,000 all-in for 70 to 90 guests.

It covers the accommodation, the buffet breakfast and the run of the grounds, and the minimum stay is two or three nights depending on the date. The estate’s published 2027 dates are €50,000 for two nights in early October, €70,000 for two in late August or late September, and €90,000 for three in mid-September.

An all-inclusive flat rate from €220 per person, which covers the aperitif with appetisers, the wedding dinner, the Domaine de Marie wines, the water, coffee and tea, and the use of the reception venue until 3am. The rate moves with the number and type of dishes.

Billing is on a minimum of 70 adults, children excluded, confirmed fifteen days before. A wedding of 55 people pays for 70.

The estate requires at least two full meals during the stay: the wedding dinner and one other lunch or dinner. Cocktail lunches and dinners start at €105 a head and barbecues at €120, so on 70 guests that second meal is between €7,000 and €9,000 before anything is added to it.

The flowers, the decoration, the music, the photography, the transfers, the rooms for everybody beyond the 46 the estate sleeps, and the menus, table names and table plan, which the brochure asks the couple to supply.

Deposits run at 30 per cent on confirmation, 30 per cent three months out and 30 per cent two months out, and they are not refundable. The balance is due the day after the wedding.

Two things come the other way. The tasting menu for two is complimentary, and couples who come back for a second anniversary get a night free.

Twenty-two bedrooms sleeping 46: twelve rooms and suites in the Bastide itself, and five doubles with en-suite bathrooms in each villa. Breakfast is in the privatisation rate and so is the wellness area, with a heated pool on the patio side and a second pool on the garden side.

Forty-six beds against a billing minimum of 70 guests is the tension at this estate.

Mas Vermentino answers part of it. It is a renovated farmhouse a short walk across the estate with six double bedrooms, a dining room with a fireplace, a kitchen, a wine cellar and four hectares of garrigue around it, sleeping twelve more. That brings the estate to 58, and the last fifteen or twenty guests go into Ménerbes, Bonnieux, Lacoste or Gordes, none of them more than twenty-five minutes away.

An extension close to the main Bastide is due to open in early 2027, which the estate says will let it house more. No detail has been published yet.

The estate is on the chemin des Peirelles below Ménerbes, in the Vaucluse, in the heart of the Luberon regional park.

Gordes is 25 minutes, Bonnieux 15, Lourmarin 30 and Aix-en-Provence an hour and three. L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, the antiques town, is half an hour.

Avignon TGV is 53 minutes and puts Paris two hours forty from the platform. Marseille airport is an hour and eight, Avignon airport about the same, and Nice two hours fifty-eight, so most guest lists arrive through Marseille or come down by train.

The billing minimum decides who this estate is for. Seventy adults at €220 is over €15,000 before the second meal, and a couple planning an intimate wedding of fifty pays exactly the same as a couple planning seventy. If the guest list is genuinely small, the money buys more elsewhere in the Luberon, and we say so early rather than at contract stage.

The second thing is the gap between 46 beds and 90 guests. Half the guest list sleeps off the estate, which on a two-night privatisation means transfers in both directions on both evenings, at midnight and again at three in the morning. That is a real production line and it needs budgeting rather than assuming. We always ask about Mas Vermentino first, because it closes most of the gap, though even with it the last fifteen guests are still sleeping in a village.

The third is the 3am curfew, which is the longest we work with in the Luberon and the reason couples choose this estate over shorter ones nearby. It is worth knowing that it is the room rather than the estate that allows it: the party is indoors, the Vaucluse rule on amplified music outdoors stands, and the terrace empties before the dance floor fills.

The fourth is the two-meal requirement, which is easy to read as an upsell and is better read as an opportunity. A welcome barbecue in the gardens on the Friday, with the vineyard going gold, is the meal guests remember from these weekends more often than the wedding dinner is.

Magic Day plans weddings at La Bastide de Marie from the first conversation to the final farewell. That means the date and whether it needs two nights or three, the billing minimum and what it means for a smaller guest list, Mas Vermentino and the block in Ménerbes, the second meal and where to put it, the symbolic ceremony in the vines and the mairie paperwork behind it, and the transfers at three in the morning.

We have worked across Provence for years, and the Luberon is where couples who have already seen the Alpilles usually end up. Tell us the dates you are considering and how many people, and we will tell you what the weekend comes to.