It was, by its own admission, a tale of two castles. One, a national historical landmark on 127 acres in San Simeon, California, begun in 1919 and completed in 1947. The other a seductively notorious hotel loosely based on a French royal retreat set on a slight elevation off Sunset Boulevard. But that was the kind of wedding it was, a fairy tale that ended with happily ever after and Paris Hilton in the DJ booth.
The bride: Amanda Hearst, great-granddaughter of Hearst Castle mastermind William Randolph Hearst and founder of sustainable fashion website Maison de Mode. The groom: Joachim Rønning, Oscar-nominated director of Kon-Tiki and, more recently, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, starring Angelina Jolie.
“Joachim and I came up with the idea of ‘a tale of two castles’ together,” says Hearst. “We were talking about places that were important to us, and we realized that two of those spots happened to be ‘castles’: Hearst Castle, which I grew up visiting, and Château Marmont, where we met and later had our first date.”
Rønning had a personal stake in one of the properties as well. “I lived at Château Marmont for a couple of years, so it’s kind of my castle. Then, obviously, Hearst Castle is Amanda’s, so we thought it would be fun to play on the two families—the two castles—coming together, in a Dickens kind of way.”
At one point in this fairy tale, a reindeer appears. “We wanted to have a different mood for every night,” Hearst says. “The first evening was intimate and Norwegian-themed, in a wooden barn.” (Enter reindeer, from Windswept Ranch, a local fallow deer shelter where a third of the animals are rescues.) “The main evening was at the Castle: black tie and elegant. Then the last party was at the Château, where people could just let their hair down.”
Hearst’s childhood friend Paris Hilton helped (her sister Nicky too), and Alison Mazzola, a family friend and PR guru who arranged the wedding, which took place last August, somehow oversaw all the invitations, kept everyone calm, and engineered the 3 a.m. delivery of vegan ice cream–filled donuts.
But after the reindeer and before the donuts, there was a ceremony, a private one for the immediate family, overlooking the Pacific at the Castle’s guest cottage, which is officially Casa del Mar but is referred to by almost everyone at the Castle as “A-House.”
“A-House is my favorite of the three guesthouses,” Hearst says of the first structure completed on the property by William Randolph Hearst and his architect, Julia Morgan; he stayed in A-House during much of the construction of La Casa Grande.
The sitting room’s Spanish Renaissance style, as well as the tapestries and brocades, are said to have been inspired by McKim, Mead & White’s design for the Payne Whitney living room in New York (first published in T&C in 1911). “It’s so ornate,” says Hearst, “with gold leaf everywhere. And then there’s the view! The wedding itself was small and intimate, but we had that vista behind us.”
David Monn, the event designer behind the ceremony, the dinner in front of the Castle, and the dancing under a Moroccan-themed tent, describes what followed: “The guests arrived on the north side of the Castle and ascended the 52 steps of the grand staircase,” he says. “The carillon was playing Te Deum Laudamus. Cocktails were on the South Terrace facing the sea under Aegean-blue umbrellas inspired by the color in one of the tiles Julia Morgan used on these stairs. The carillon rang again at sunset, playing Handel’s Solomon HWV 67, as guests ascended to the main terrace for dinner.”
Author Jay McInerney, the bride’s stepfather, announced the couple, who entered through the enormous gilded doors of the Castle to a cheering crowd of about 175. Dinner was locally grown (no red meat), as part of Hearst’s commitment to sustainability—though she says, “I had to accept that a wedding party is inherently unsustainable. But I tried to weave in sustainability whenever I could. The flowers and leftover food were all donated locally as well.”
After dinner there was a serenade. “I’ve played piano since I was six years old, and I come from a musical family,” Rønning says. “However, it does not come naturally for me to perform, so I had to go a couple of rounds with myself. In the end it was worth it, seeing how much Amanda loved it.”
Then there was dancing. “Guests walked the candlelit paths of the rose garden, past the Neptune Pool to the base of Casa del Sol,” Monn says, “which had been transformed into a Moroccan fantasy complete with two 24-foot-tall chandeliers comprised of several hundred antique Moroccan lanterns. There were Moroccan sofas, carpets, pillows, and exotic foliage, all to take you under three large pavilions painted in Majorelle blue. The bride and groom left just before the last dance in a 1936 Ford Phaeton convertible.”
Did anyone, at any point during the festivities, make it into the famed Neptune Pool? Why, of course they did. It was a moment that stands out in what Rønning describes as three magical days. “I remember seeing my childhood friends from Norway in the blue water,” he says. “Laughing and enjoying themselves, and I’m thinking, ‘This is pretty amazing.’ ”
In the top image, Hearst wears an Oscar de la Renta custom wedding gown and veil; Fred Leighton custom earrings and headpiece.
Editor-in-Chief Stellene Volandes is a jewelry expert, and the author of Jeweler: Masters and Mavericks of Modern Design (Rizzoli).
