Hayes Mansion San Jose, Curio Collection by Hilton 200 Edenvale Avenue • San Jose • CA 95136

There must be 1,001 places for romantic photographs in the award-winning Hayes Mansion San Jose, Curio Collection by Hilton. The front of the impressive mansion is an obvious choice, but there are picturesque inglenooks, gorgeous doorways with beveled glass insets and shining wood trim, graceful archways, mysterious stairways lit with art deco fixtures, and lawns and flowers a-plenty. And that's just in the daytime—by night it's a completely different and dramatic experience.

Built in 1905 for Mary Hayes Chynoweth and designed by architect George Page, it's a marriage of Queen Anne, Mission and Mediterranean styles. Oddly enough, these diverse architectures meld together well, resulting in a beautifully preserved jewel of a building.

Hold your ceremony on the front lawn and let the entire mansion, with its grand entryway and four-story central tower, create the backdrop. Or get married at one of the entrances to the East or West Lawns, each with a carved archway and sweeping steps. If an intimate indoor wedding is your preference, exchange vows in the Willow Glen Room, standing in front of a marble fireplace beneath a gleaming wooden arch. These are just a tiny sampling of your many ceremony options.

Reception possibilities range from several smaller rooms like the Parlors, all the way up to the Grand Hayes Ballroom, which enjoys its own separate building. Serve cocktails and hors d'oeuvres in the vast foyer of the ballroom, whose French doors open to a vista of the lawn and Mansion. Then dine elegantly in the ballroom, with its 20-foot ceilings, chandeliers, stage, drop-down screens, projectors, sound system, dance floor—the works.

Hayes Mansion San Jose, Curio Collection by Hilton offers several banquet packages with an amazing array of delicacies. Some of the featured dishes are: mini beef wellingtons with mushroom duxelles and a truffle reduction; dungeness crab crusted Pacific salmon; and pepper crusted filet mignon with lobster tail. The selection of vegetarian dishes is equally enticing.

Wedding packages include a luxury guest room in the mansion for the bride and groom (minimum guest count applies). Relaxing in your plush surroundings, you could easily imagine you're the privileged guest of Mary Hayes Chynoweth, enjoying the good life at the turn of the 20th century. There are also 214 spacious rooms for your guests, many with views of the Santa Cruz Mountains.

One of the charms of the Hayes Mansion San Jose, Curio Collection by Hilton is its lack of restrictions. The facility once hosted a wedding with a live elephant, so it's unlikely you can come up with anything that they can't accommodate (though the management says you're welcome to try). The range of event spaces runs the gamut from grand and impressive to intimate and homelike, and from enormous swaths of lawn and scenery to small, sun-dappled patios. The only problem you'll have is trying to choose between so many seductive possibilities.