Spanish Wedding – Medieval style (Architecturally Speaking – not dress up as Buxom Wench speaking)

This weekend I went to a wedding in the lovely, picturesque town of Ayllón en Segovia.  It´s only an hour from Madrid and the area is dotted with other, equally delightful little towns (Riaza is worth a stop).  We discovered you can still walk into a little tavern in a fortress wall or looking over a medieval plaza as the bullfighting plays on the television (or indeed, if you go at the right time, the town’s bullfighting or running of the bulls festival might actuall be going on live in the plaza) and buy a beer for one euro.  And you thought Spain was all beaches and 15 euro cocktails.

The wedding venue, The Cloisters of Ayllón, was breathtaking.  These are the kind of ruins you find all over Spain – there are so many medieval castles and ruins people literally don’t know what to do with them.  The volume is simply too big for a National Trust type scheme to meet the task of restoring them all. (The government runs Paradors as part of a conservation plan – historical buildings converted in to affordable hotels and you really should stay in at least one if you visit Spain).

So there we found ourselves, part of a picturesque wedding scene where breathtaking ancient ruins served as a dramatic backdrop to a lovely ceremony.  The evening sun brought out pink and orange hues in the bricks and the grass couldn’t have looked greener.  Here are some pics of the area where the ceremony was held.

Cloister walls in the evening sun

The ceremony

Pic from the venues official website www.losclaustros.com

Pic from the venues official website www.losclaustros.com

I think guests would travel to Spain for this, if you were planning an event and wanted to maybe consider expanding your choice from that between a few local reception centres.  You could tell them about the 1 euro beers.

After the ceremony we took drinks by a pond on the grounds (shown in the photo below).  There was some fairly precarious camera posing going on along the pond wall. After the dinner in the reception that looks back over the grounds everyone went back outside to a large atrium where a DJ on decks overlooked the crowd dancing under the stars.

The pond where pre-dinner cocktails were taken. Pic from the venues official website www.losclaustros.com

As an aside, I´d just like to have it out there, for the record that I stayed out until 4:30 AM in not very low heels whilst 6 months pregnant AND without alcohol (except for my one permitted glass, and perhaps another few sips).  I was helped along by some rocking tunes and a dancefloor under the stars.  Despite the heels and my awkward size, I think it would be fair to say I danced like a champion.  Cheers and little claps for me.

If you search for Ayllon on the internet you will most likely find a hilarious array of photos of people dressed up in medieval costume, such as this for the annual medieval festival.  If that’s your thing, good for you (you eccentric little character you) but if not, this website will give you a better idea of what you can expect.

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