Château Cartier Hotel & Resort

Château Cartier lets a wedding feel like a getaway without asking everyone to travel very far to get there.

Set in Gatineau only minutes from downtown Ottawa, the hotel and resort brings the practical pieces of a destination wedding together on one property: event rooms, accommodation, restaurants, golf and spa time for anyone clever enough to make a weekend of it.

There are more than 12,000 square feet of flexible event space, allowing the celebration to change scale depending on the guest list.

But the wedding does not have to begin when everyone takes their seats for dinner.

Guests can check into the hotel.

The wedding party can settle in.

People who have travelled can spend time together without immediately watching the clock.

Then everyone gathers for the reason they came.

The reception rooms can move from dinner into speeches and dancing while the hotel handles the hospitality around them.

Outside the formal wedding schedule, the resort adds its own possibilities.

A round of golf.

Time at Kōena Spa.

Dinner at one of the on-site restaurants.

Coffee the following morning with relatives who would otherwise already be halfway home.

That is what turns a hotel wedding into something more than renting a ballroom.

The building keeps everyone close enough for the unscheduled moments to happen too.

Eventually the reception finishes and guests disappear upstairs rather than into waiting cars.

Then morning arrives.

The wedding dress is packed away.

Someone is still discussing a speech from the night before.

And nobody had to cross the city to get there.

• Rooms for guests on site