Vaux le Vicomte

 This is a Château I've been wanting to visit for a while now - and when I heard they had a candlelight visit AND also put on a fireworks show every other weekend during the summer, I knew we had to go.  

Except the summer flew by in a flash and all of the sudden it was September.  There were two last fireworks shows - one this past weekend and the other our wedding night, so off we went this past Saturday night.

 We were lucky to have absolutely beautiful weather:

 The château was also relatively empty, giving us ample time to look around:

 This candle-holder cracked me up:

 And these made me want to cancel the cake order and have a macaron tree for the wedding:

 This guy however was creepy - he had a video screen as his face and was actually "talking":

 Then it was back outside for a lovely picnic in the forest while the employees lit up all of the candles

 And when we came back, it looked like this:

 I was a bit disappointed though, because while it looked beautiful from the outside, the lights were still on inside, so the candles really didn't make much of a difference.  So we went back outside after just a few minutes and found a good place to wait for the fireworks and finish the last of the champagne:

After the other fantastic fireworks shows we've seen this summer, theirs were a bit boring, but it was still a lovely way to finish the evening.

Practical info:

The château is about a 45 minute drive from Paris, otherwise if you don't have a car, you can take a train to Melun and they have a navette from there.  There is also a company called Paris Vision that will bring you by bus from the center of Paris to Vaux le Vicomte for 49€ (entrance ticket and audio-guide included).

Ticket prices range from 14-16€ for the normal visits, or 17-19€ for the candle-light visits.  (Student discounts are available).