Allerton Castle

The house you see today is a nineteenth-century Gothic fantasy, built for one of England's premier barons and dressed to impress. Turrets, pinnacles, mullioned windows and a silhouette that reads, unmistakably, as a castle. It sits on a great sweep of North Yorkshire parkland, woodland and water, 200 acres in all, with 25 acres of grounds and gardens given over to the wedding. In any season it is theatrical: formal lawns and statues by the walls, long views across the park, the whole thing held privately for the day.

Inside, the castle is a sequence of great rooms, each grander than the last. The heart of it is the Great Hall, oak-panelled and Victorian Gothic, with a ceiling that soars some seventy feet, carved timber, stained glass and a spectacular staircase that seems built for an entrance. This is where most couples choose to marry, beneath the great roof, before their guests, with all the drama a castle can muster. Those who want something more intimate exchange vows instead in the sumptuous Drawing Room and sign the register there in private.

After the ceremony the day opens out. Drinks and canapes are taken in the Memorial Garden, guests wandering the grounds while the castle provides a backdrop no marquee lawn could match. Then everyone moves through to the Ballroom, vaulted and blue, its Gothic arches and chandeliers set over tables dressed in white linen, fine china and glassware. It seats up to 120 for the wedding breakfast, a room that feels, at once, enormous and warm.

Catering is by the castle's own exclusive partner, prepared and served on site, from the canapes through the wedding breakfast to the speeches and the cutting of the cake. Couples bring their own wedding cake and nothing else from outside, which means the whole day is in a single pair of expert hands. It is the kind of arrangement that lets a couple stop managing and start enjoying, confident that the castle has done this many times before.

When the light goes, the castle changes character. The Great Hall is transformed for the evening party, dimmed and dramatic, the staircase and the beams washed in colour, the first dance held in a room that has watched over a century and a half of grand occasions. Up to 120 guests carry the celebration into the night, and when it finally ends the couple retires to the gold-plated Palace Bridal Suite, alone in a castle that, for one night, is entirely theirs.

Accommodation is limited, and honest about it: the Palace Bridal Suite for the couple, a handful of grand state bedrooms within the castle, and recommended hotels nearby in Harrogate, York and the surrounding countryside for everyone else. What Allerton offers is not a hotel wedding but a castle wedding, the whole house and estate held privately, on a fairytale scale. For a couple who wants Gothic grandeur, real history and a day that belongs entirely to them, there are few addresses in Yorkshire to touch it.