Farnham Castle

The castle wears its centuries lightly. It was the home of bishops from the twelfth century, extended and softened over eight hundred years into the Bishop's Palace, and it is now Grade I and Grade II listed and given over, one wedding at a time, on an exclusive-use basis. That is the first thing to understand about a wedding here: for the day, the whole castle and its five acres of grounds are yours, the halls and the lawns and the bedrooms, with no other event and no other couple.

The Great Hall is the room everyone remembers. Vast and timber-roofed, hung with centuries-old portraits, it holds a ceremony for up to two hundred and sixty-five and a wedding breakfast for up to two hundred and thirty-four, and it needs almost nothing done to it to look extraordinary. For lighter, smaller gatherings there is the arch-lined Lantern Hall full of daylight, and the intimate Winchester Suite with its arched window over the grounds, while the castle's chapels remain for couples who want to marry in one.

Outside, the East Lawn looks over the White Rose Garden, licensed for an outdoor ceremony with the castle and the keep behind, and the Great Lawn takes a marquee for the largest celebrations, up to two hundred and sixty-five and more. It means the day can move with the weather and the season: vows in the hall or on the lawn, drinks in the gardens, a banquet under the timber roof or beneath canvas on the grass.

Dining is done in house, by the castle's own chefs, and it is better for it. The menus are modern British and seasonal, drawn from the castle's own Kitchen Garden and a wood-fired oven, from £150 per person, with grazing boards and canapes through the drinks reception and a proper wedding breakfast beneath the portraits of the Great Hall. Nothing is brought in from outside; the food belongs to the place.

And because there are thirty-three en-suite bedrooms and a Honeymoon Suite, the wedding is never just a day. The party gathers in the Gatehouse and Pembroke preparation suites on the morning, guests stay the weekend within the castle walls, and the celebration spreads either side, breakfast in the old rooms, a wander through the grounds, a drink in the bar. It is a weekend at a castle, an hour from London, with eight hundred years of history holding all of it.

For a couple who wants the real thing, a true medieval castle rather than an approximation of one, Farnham Castle is a rare find in the south of England. Vows beneath a timber roof that has stood for centuries, a candlelit banquet under ancestral portraits, an outdoor ceremony beneath the Norman keep, and the whole castle, exclusively yours, for the weekend.