A CONSIDERED WAY TO DISCOVER

Rare places.
Clearer details.

Rare Venues is an independent guide to places in France, bringing wedding-directory listings and open-data discoveries into one place.

What is in the collection?

The 28 September 2026 snapshot contains 369 named directory listings, 458 descriptive listings whose identities need confirming, and 2,924 heritage and event-space records. These are research records, with possible overlaps; they are not 3,751 confirmed wedding venues.

We start the main collection with named wedding-directory listings. The separate discovery filter includes places whose wedding use has not been established. A directory mention is not an endorsement or confirmation of availability.

Photography with a source.

We combine venue gallery photographs, images from official venue sources and free licensed or public-domain photographs from Wikimedia Commons. The photo credit links lead to our internal photography register. It retains photographer names and required licence and source links. Optional external photo links are omitted. Venue photographs remain copyrighted and are not offered under a free licence. Web copies are resized and may be cropped; applicable share-alike licences continue to apply. Historical images may not show the venue’s current condition.

We withhold known mismatched photographs. A photo is not evidence that a building currently offers weddings, and imagery from another property is never used as its substitute.

Facts, dates and missing details.

Recorded prices and capacities are starting points for your research. Confirm their scope and current accuracy with the original listing. Missing fields are shown as questions to ask. Monthly climate guides use NASA POWER modelled area averages for 2001–2020, retrieved 28 September 2026. Suggested months are editorial calculations explained beside each chart. Climate is not a forecast; map locations can be approximate town coordinates. Booking availability is not verified.

Your shortlist stays with you.

Venue IDs are saved in your browser. If you choose “Connect my shortlist”, those IDs and update times are also stored in our Cloudflare database. Your private edit link connects other devices; the separate view link lets others see the list. Anyone holding an edit link can change or delete the list. We store no name or email for this feature. Links have no automatic expiry; you can delete the online list from the shortlist panel. Disconnecting stops synchronisation on that device and keeps its browser copy. Clearing browser data removes that device’s saves and connection, so keep your edit link if you want to return. Short-lived hashed IP counters protect the service against excessive requests. Loading maps connects to OpenStreetMap’s tile service. This site does not submit booking enquiries.

Optional analytics, your choice.

Google Analytics helps us understand visits, searches, filter use, map opens, venue saves, official-site visits and enquiry drafts. It loads only after you choose “Accept analytics”. You can reject it, or change your choice using “Analytics settings” at the bottom of any public page. Your choice is stored on this browser. Rejecting analytics does not affect browsing or shortlists.

When accepted, Google receives usage information and uses analytics cookies to distinguish visits. Advertising features and Google signals are disabled. We remove query strings and fragments from reported page and referrer addresses, exclude private shortlist pages, and do not send shortlist access keys, saved lists, names or email addresses. These events record the action and a fixed page-category label. Search text, enquiry text, dates, guest-list details and list identifiers are not sent. Automatic enhanced measurement is disabled. See Google’s privacy policy for how Google processes data. Analytics begins with consenting visits after installation; it does not recover earlier visits.

Sources and independence.

Directory source names and collection dates appear on each venue page. Original source URLs and evidence are retained in our records. Open-data references include © OpenStreetMap contributors and Wikidata. Rare Venues has its own identity and is not presented as Chateau Bee or any other source directory.

For current venue facts, follow the source links on the relevant page and contact that listing’s provider. A Rare Venues correction channel is not yet available.