Hotel Schloss Mittersill

Hotel Schloss Mittersill sits on a wooded hill above the Salzburg valley of Mittersill, looking out over the Hohe Tauern National Park. The castle looks back on almost 900 years of history and has hosted Coco Chanel, Clark Gable and Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, whose honeymoon suite is still named after her — so a wedding here comes with a story already written into the walls.

Ceremonies work in several ways: a civil wedding in the Bösendorfer Hall, the Gothic Room or the Fireplace Room, a church or free ceremony, or an intimate service in the castle's own chapel, which seats around 30 guests and holds 40 standing. The castle courtyard, surrounded by historic architecture with a fountain at its centre and a retractable awning overhead, takes up to 130 guests for a reception or dinner in the open air.

Dinner is handled by the castle kitchen, with regional seasonal cooking and menus written with head chef Martin Gabriel. Smaller groups can be seated in the vaulted cellar, the Fürstenzimmer, the Writing Room, the Glass House or on the panoramic terrace above the valley.

Guests stay on site in named suites and rooms, the couple in the Queen Juliana bridal suite, and the castle spa handles preparation the day before and the morning of. Winter weddings are a speciality here — snow on the mountains, fires lit inside — and honeymoon nights can simply carry on in the same house.