Peckforton Castle

The heart of a Peckforton wedding is the Great Hall. Ceremonies take place beneath its stone vault, one of five licensed rooms in the castle, and the room needs very little to look extraordinary: a candle-lined aisle, towering florals against the old sandstone, and the guests gathered close under the arch. It is the kind of space that makes people go quiet when they walk in, and it gives a ceremony a weight that a marquee or a hotel ballroom cannot.

What makes it work as a wedding, rather than simply a spectacular building, is exclusive use. Peckforton takes one wedding a day, and that wedding takes the whole castle: the hall, the reception rooms, the staircases, the courtyard and all 48 bedrooms. There is no other party in the building, no strangers in the corridors. From the first arrivals to the last dance, the castle belongs entirely to a couple and their guests, which is rarer, and more valuable, than it sounds.

The reception rooms carry the day from the ceremony into the night. Tapestries hang on the walls, chandeliers and tall candelabra light the round tables, and the castle's own kitchens do the cooking, the 1851 Restaurant for contemporary fine dining and the 2010 Brasserie for something more relaxed. Wedding breakfasts seat up to 165, and the evening reception opens the doors to as many as 350 for dancing beneath the old stone.

Then there are the grounds. Peckforton sits on the crown of its hill, red sandstone towers rising above the Cheshire plain with the ruins of Beeston Castle across the valley. The courtyard, the gatehouse and the wooded approach turn every photograph into something cinematic, and the grand sandstone staircases within the walls do the same by candlelight, so the day looks, from every angle, like the castle wedding it is.

And because there are 48 individually designed bedrooms, from four-poster rooms to suites, with The Lodge and The Retreat in the grounds for the wider family, nobody has to leave. The party stays the night within the battlements, breakfast is served the next morning in the same grand rooms, and a wedding at Peckforton becomes a weekend in a castle rather than a single day in a beautiful hall.

For a couple who wants a real castle, the whole of it to themselves, and a wedding with genuine drama, Peckforton is a rare thing in England: authentic, grand and taken one wedding at a time. Vows beneath a stone vault, a feast in tapestried rooms, photographs on the battlements, and 48 bedrooms to fall into, a Cheshire castle set entirely to your own celebration, from the towers down.