Harlaxton Manor

The house announces itself from a distance: a skyline of pinnacles, gables and towers rising above 300 acres of Lincolnshire parkland, approached down a long formal garden with a reflecting canal that doubles the manor in the water. It is theatrical before you have even gone inside, and inside is where Harlaxton truly overwhelms, because the state rooms are among the most opulent interiors in the country.

There is the Great Hall, its black-and-white marble floor beneath a carved screen and a crystal chandelier. There is the Cedar Staircase, an astonishing baroque confection of carved woodwork rising through tiers of gilded fantasy, one of the great staircases in Britain. There is the Long Gallery, running along the front of the house beneath a painted ceiling, hung with chandeliers, a grand piano at one end. And there is the Gold Room, gilded from wall to ceiling, its painted ceiling glowing above a carved fireplace, a room that makes a wedding breakfast feel like a coronation.

Couples marry in these rooms, an aisle laid through the gilded grandeur, or out in the terraced gardens when the weather allows, and take drinks on the balustraded terraces among the statuary. The wedding breakfast is served beneath the painted ceilings, long candlelit tables and abundant florals set against carved oak and gold, and few settings in England make a dinner feel more like an occasion.

The gardens are the equal of the house, which is rare. Dramatic terraced Italianate and Baroque gardens fall away from the manor in balustraded steps, dressed with statuary, a garden pavilion and the long canal, and beyond them lie the 300 acres of parkland. It is a landscape built to frame the house, and for a wedding it means the photographs, of the couple against the canal, on the terraces, among the ruins at golden hour, are cinematic in the literal sense.

Harlaxton is a state-rooms venue rather than a hotel, so it is given to a wedding for the day and the accommodation is at hotels nearby in Grantham and the Lincolnshire countryside. It is also, less obviously, the British campus of the University of Evansville, a study-abroad site since 1971, which is why weddings are held on only a limited number of dates a year, around the academic calendar, rather than being open for booking every day. That suits the scale of the place: this is a house for the grand set-piece, the ceremony and the feast and the dancing under gilded ceilings, with guests staying close by and returning to the manor for the celebration.

And for all its grandeur, it is easy to reach: about ten minutes from Grantham, which is roughly seventy minutes from London by train, near the A1 and the East Midlands. Few houses of this stature are so accessible, which means a couple can offer their guests one of the most spectacular wedding settings in England without a difficult journey to get there.

For a couple who wants unabashed grandeur, a real palace of a house, gilded ceilings, a marble hall, a fabled staircase and terraced Baroque gardens, Harlaxton Manor is close to unmatched in England. It is one of the country's most spectacular houses, given for a day to one wedding, and it makes the occasion feel exactly as momentous as it is.