Castell de Peralada Wedding Guide | Exclusive Empordà Castle
Written by Jordi Dalmau, Spain destination wedding photographer. Last update July 2026
Castell de Peralada is a 14th-century castle in the Alt Empordà that hosts weddings of up to 600 guests across five ceremony settings, eight hectares of gardens and a five-star hotel one kilometre away. I have photographed around ten weddings here; this is everything I would want you to know before you book it: the spaces, the numbers, how the pricing is built, and the handful of things that surprise couples once they are already booked.
Still comparing venues? I also keep a full guide to the best wedding venues in Spain, with real prices and capacities.
Where is Castell de Peralada, and what makes it different?
Castell de Peralada is a 14th-century castle in the Alt Empordà, seven kilometres from Figueres and about ninety minutes north of Barcelona, set in eight hectares of historic gardens.
What makes it different is that it is not only a wedding venue. The estate is a working resort: a five-star hotel, an 18-hole golf course, a wine spa, a casino, a winery with more than 600 years of history, and a museum, all on the same grounds.
That cuts both ways, and I will be honest about it throughout this guide. It means your guests have somewhere to go for three days instead of one evening. It also means you are not the only thing happening on the estate that day.
The gardens are the part people underestimate. Seventy-seven thousand square metres of them, laid out by François Duvillers, the same tradition of French landscape design you see in far more famous places. For photographs, that variety is the whole point.
What spaces does Castell de Peralada have for a wedding?
Castell de Peralada has five ceremony settings and several banquet options. The Mirador del Castell holds up to 600 guests indoors, outdoor banquets are capped at 300, and the Carmen church seats 350.
For the ceremony you can choose the Carmen church, a private Gothic chapel for up to 350 guests; the cloister, hidden inside the walls of the Carmen convent and surrounded by Gothic arches; the Carmen garden, presided over by the ivy-covered façade of the convent and reached by crossing a stone bridge; the Visual garden, a wide lawn flanked by dense trees with panoramic views of the castle; and the library, warm and full of books, for an intimate civil ceremony.
For dinner and the party there is the Mirador del Castell, the main indoor salon for up to 600, where furniture, tableware, printed menus and service are included; the smaller Petit Mirador; and the two terraces at the foot of the castle, for cocktails or open-air banquets.
One small detail that only matters once you are planning the day: the exit of the Carmen church opens straight onto the cloister, which makes for a very natural walk from ceremony to cocktail.
Worth flagging: the venue publishes capacities only for the main salon, the outdoor banquet limit and the church. For the library, the terraces and the individual gardens you will have to ask, because those numbers are not public anywhere.
Which ceremony can you actually have: civil, symbolic or religious?
You can hold a religious ceremony in the Carmen church for up to 350 guests, or a symbolic ceremony anywhere on the estate. A legally binding civil ceremony in Spain requires residency, which most international couples do not have.
This trips up a lot of couples planning from abroad, and almost nobody explains it. A civil wedding in Spain is not something you can simply book as a foreign visitor: the legal process runs through the local registry and effectively requires residency and paperwork well in advance.
So in practice, couples coming from outside Spain either handle the legal marriage quietly at home and then hold a symbolic ceremony at the castle, which can be anywhere on the estate and is entirely theirs to design, or they marry religiously in the Carmen church.
If you are Spanish and resident, the civil route is straightforward, and the library or either garden makes a beautiful setting for it.
For what it is worth, most of the weddings I have photographed here have been religious ones in the Carmen church. That is not a rule, and the castle hosts all three kinds, but it tells you something about the pull that chapel has once couples see it.
How much does a wedding at Castell de Peralada cost?
Wedding menus at Castell de Peralada are listed from €230 to €450 per guest. The space rental is quoted separately and varies with which spaces you choose, so the venue prices each wedding individually.
Let me be straight with you, because most pages about this venue are not. The castle does not publish its prices. Its own site says to consult the team about the cost of each space, and that is the honest answer.
What I can tell you is how the total is built, which is the part nobody explains. There is the space rental, which changes depending on which ceremony and banquet spaces you take; the venue states this directly, and it matches what I see on the ground, where couples typically book two separate spaces and what they pay follows from which two. There is the menu, per guest, published at €230 to €450 per person on the venue’s bodas.net listing, including appetiser, starter, main course, wine service, desserts, wedding cake and two hours of open bar. There is the ceremony, if you hold a symbolic or civil one on the estate. And there are the extras, which is where budgets usually move: additional open-bar hours, upgrades, and a service charge if you bring your own cake or wine.
You will find other numbers floating around on venue-listing sites. I am deliberately not repeating them, because they contradict each other by a factor of nearly three, and quoting a rental fee I cannot stand behind would not help you.
The same goes for pricing by day of the week or by season. It is a reasonable assumption that a Saturday in June costs more than a Thursday in October, and it is how most venues in the area work, but Castell de Peralada does not publish it and I am not going to invent it. Ask them for a quote on your specific date and spaces and you will get a real number.
Can you rent the whole castle exclusively?
No. Castell de Peralada cannot be rented in its entirety, because the restaurant, the casino and the museum keep operating inside the estate. You get exclusive use of the spaces you book, not of the whole property.
This is probably the most misunderstood thing about this venue, and the listing sites make it worse. One says the castle holds only one event per day. Another says it holds more than one. The venue’s own FAQ settles it: you cannot rent the whole thing.
So how much does that actually intrude on your day? Less than you would think. Couples book two separate spaces, and every one of those spaces is private and exclusively yours for the wedding. You will not cross paths with anyone.
There is exactly one exception, and it is worth knowing before you plan your portraits: the square in front of the castle. It is one of the spots couples most want to be photographed in, and it is also the way visitors to the castle and people heading to the casino come in. That is the only place where your day and the rest of the estate overlap. Everywhere else, you are on your own.
I want to be clear that this is not a problem, it is a different model. If your dream is taking over an entire private estate for a weekend where nobody else exists, this is not that venue, and there are Empordà estates that do exactly that. I have written about some of them in my guide to the best Costa Brava wedding venues.
Where do wedding guests stay near Castell de Peralada?
Most couples put their closest guests in the Hotel Peralada, a five-star hotel with 64 rooms one kilometre from the castle. With a maximum of 600 guests, the majority will sleep elsewhere in the area.
Let me do the arithmetic that nobody else does, because it matters. The Hotel Peralada has 64 rooms. The castle seats up to 600 guests. Even at a fraction of that capacity, the on-site hotel is not going to hold your whole guest list.
So the usual plan is the hotel for family and the wedding party, and a set of options nearby for everyone else. The Hotel Peralada Wine Spa & Golf is the anchor: five stars, 64 rooms, an 18-hole golf course, a wine spa and an outdoor pool, and if your wedding has more than 100 guests the venue gifts you your wedding night there. Castell de Vallgornera, a second historic castle belonging to the same group, has nine rooms and is lovely for the inner circle. Around Peralada there are small hotels and country houses, and Figueres, seven kilometres away, has the widest range and is where most of the volume ends up.
One practical note: the hotel is also where couples get ready on the morning of the wedding. That is worth knowing when you decide who sleeps where, because the rooms you book for yourselves are the rooms you will spend the whole morning in.
One thing I could not confirm anywhere, and you should ask directly: whether the hotel offers a room block for weddings, at what rate, and how long they hold it. It is not published, and with 64 rooms it is the first call I would make after booking the castle.
Can you turn it into a whole wedding weekend?
Yes. Peralada Resort hosts pre- and post-wedding events across the estate, so most couples add a welcome gathering at the hotel the night before and a relaxed brunch the day after.
This is one of the real advantages of marrying inside a resort rather than a private estate, and almost nobody writes about it. The pieces are already there: a five-star hotel, a golf course, a wine spa, a winery and a casino, all within a kilometre of the castle.
The welcome party is the one I would not skip, and there are two spots at the hotel where I have photographed them. One is the upper terrace by the hotel restaurant: stone tower behind, olive trees, wild grasses, everyone with a drink in hand as the sun goes down. The other is by the pool, which is the more relaxed of the two and works beautifully in summer.
Either way it sets the tone, and it is where guests who have travelled actually meet each other before the wedding day. The day after, a slow brunch at the hotel is the natural close. And in between, guests who arrive early have somewhere to go: eighteen holes, the wine spa, the winery, or Figueres and the Dalí museum fifteen minutes away.
What does the menu include, and can you bring your own caterer?
Castell de Peralada cooks in-house under chef Paco Pérez. External catering is accepted only exceptionally and on request, and you may bring your own cake or wine with a service charge.
The menus include appetiser, starter, main course, wine service, desserts, wedding cake and two hours of open bar. Special menus for vegetarian, vegan, coeliac and allergen requirements are handled as standard.
The kitchen is the venue’s own, run under Paco Pérez, which is a serious name in this part of Catalonia. For most couples that is a reason to book rather than a limitation. If you have your heart set on a specific caterer, ask early, because the venue’s position is that external catering is possible only exceptionally and by request.
Here is the part that surprises people: there is no supplier exclusivity for anything else. Your florist, your band or DJ, your planner and your photographer are all your choice. That is worth knowing, because an old forum thread that still ranks on Google claims you had to pick a DJ from their list. That is no longer the case.
What happens if it rains?
The Mirador del Castell is the rain plan. It is a covered indoor salon seating up to 600, the venue’s full capacity, so dinner and the party are never dependent on the weather.
I will be straight with you: across roughly ten weddings here I have never once shot a rainy one. That is not a promise, but it does tell you something honest about early summer in the Empordà.
The structural answer is the reassuring part. Because the main banquet space is indoors and holds the venue’s maximum capacity, a change in the weather does not threaten the core of the day. What has to move is the outdoor half: the ceremony in one of the gardens, and the cocktail hour on the Mirador terrace.
What I cannot tell you from experience is their exact protocol, how far in advance they call it and where each piece relocates to. That will depend on which spaces you have booked, so put the question to the venue directly when you visit. It is a fair question and they will have a clear answer.
How do you get to Castell de Peralada?
Castell de Peralada is seven kilometres from Figueres, forty from Girona and 130 from Barcelona, around an hour and a half by road. The Figueres-Vilafant high-speed station is about fifteen minutes away.
For guests coming from within Spain, the AVE to Figueres-Vilafant is the easy answer, with direct high-speed connections from Madrid, Zaragoza, Barcelona and Girona. From Barcelona by car it is the AP-7 north, exit 4 towards Figueres.
If part of your guest list is coming from abroad, Girona-Costa Brava airport is the closest at about 60 kilometres, Perpignan is around 50 on the French side, and Barcelona-El Prat at 130 kilometres handles the long-haul flights.
Tell people to come by car. The estate has free guarded parking, and the Empordà is a region you want to be able to drive around: Cadaqués, Figueres and the Dalí museum, the coast at Roses, the medieval villages inland.
What is it like to photograph a wedding at Castell de Peralada?
The castle gives me more usable backdrops in one property than almost anywhere I shoot: a Gothic cloister, ivy façades, a library, formal gardens and open lawns, all within a few minutes’ walk.
I have shot around ten weddings here, so let me give you the three things I would tell a couple over a coffee.
Do the cocktail hour earlier than you think. This is my main piece of advice and it is a light problem. There are a lot of trees on the estate, and the sun disappears behind them well before it actually sets. Both the garden cocktail and the one on the Mirador terrace lose their light fast. Pull the whole thing forward and you keep it.
Agree the spaces with your photographer before the day. There are so many good options here that the couple session can turn into a slow debate about where to go next. With a route agreed in advance you spend that time being photographed instead of walking around deciding. This is the easiest half hour to lose at Peralada, and the easiest to avoid.
And an honest one about the library. Couples love it, and I understand why: books, history, that classical weight. I am the dissenting voice. It has no natural light and it is a very formal room, so without real art direction it can end up looking dated rather than timeless. If your heart is set on it, plan it properly and it can be beautiful. Just go in knowing it is the hardest room on the estate, not the easiest.
One last thing, and I mean it. The coordination team here, Cintia, Noelia and Bibiana, are the most attentive I have worked with anywhere. I have lost count of the weddings where the couple dedicated a speech to them and got emotional doing it. That is not something you can put in a brochure, and it is a real part of what you are buying.
I shoot weddings here the way I shoot everywhere: natural, intentional, led by what is actually happening and by the light. Have a look at the portfolio, or just say hi and we will check your date.
So, is Castell de Peralada right for you?
Castell de Peralada suits couples who want a real castle with genuine history, professional infrastructure and a large guest list, and who do not need exclusive use of an entire private estate.
It is right for you if you want Gothic architecture and formal gardens rather than a rustic masia, if you have a bigger guest list, if you like the idea of a resort where guests can golf, spa and eat well for three days, and if a five-star hotel a kilometre from the dance floor solves a real problem for you.
It is probably not for you if your dream is taking over a whole private estate where nothing else exists, or if you want total freedom over catering. For that, look at the private masias in my guide to the best wedding venues in Spain.
But if you want a wedding inside 800 years of history, with a professional operation behind it and gardens that photograph like nowhere else in the Empordà, very few places in Spain compete with this one.
Frequently Asked Questions About Castell de Peralada Weddings
How much does it cost to get married at Castell de Peralada?
Wedding menus are listed from €230 to €450 per guest according to the venue’s bodas.net listing. The space rental is quoted separately and depends on which spaces you book, so ask the venue for a quote for your date.
How many guests can Castell de Peralada host?
Up to 600 guests for a banquet in the Mirador del Castell, and up to 300 for a banquet held outdoors. The Carmen church seats up to 350 for a religious ceremony.
Can you rent the entire castle?
No. The castle cannot be rented in its entirety, because the restaurant, casino and museum continue operating on the estate. You get exclusive use of the spaces you book.
Where do wedding guests stay?
The Hotel Peralada, a five-star hotel with 64 rooms, is one kilometre from the castle. Larger guest lists overflow into Peralada, Figueres and the surrounding Empordà.
Can we bring our own caterer, cake or wine?
The castle cooks in-house under chef Paco Pérez, and external catering is accepted only exceptionally on request. You may bring your own cake or wine, with a service charge.
Are we obliged to use the venue’s suppliers?
No. There is no supplier exclusivity, so your florist, music, planner and photographer are your own choice.
Where is Castell de Peralada?
In Peralada, Alt Empordà, seven kilometres from Figueres, forty from Girona and 130 from Barcelona. The Figueres-Vilafant AVE station is about fifteen minutes away.
What does the wedding menu include?
Appetiser, starter, main course, wine service, desserts, wedding cake and two hours of open bar, with special menus available for dietary requirements.
About the Author: I am Jordi Dalmau, a wedding photographer specialising in Costa Brava celebrations, and I have had the privilege of photographing around ten weddings at Castell de Peralada over the years. This guide combines that firsthand experience with practical information to help you plan your day.
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