Berghotel Alp Sellamatt

Sellamatt's wedding page names its chapel once, in the second sentence, then moves straight to logistics: the apéro, the dinner, the overnight rooms. Its general chapel page, one click further into the site, fills in the part the wedding page skips. Under a heading called "Rahmenprogramm," framework program, the operator lists what it will help organize for a ceremony there: "katholischer Priester oder evangelischer Pfarrer," a Catholic priest or a Protestant pastor. That line, together with the word the site uses for the chapel itself, "ökumenisch," ecumenical, is the entire denominational picture Sellamatt publishes: no parish, no diocese, just an offer to source one of two officiants on request.

A chapel the family built, not a congregation

The chapel is not an old parish church repurposed for weddings. Sellamatt's own site says the Lötscher family built it in 2001 and 2002, fulfilling what the page calls "einen lange gehegten Wunsch," a long-held wish, and named it after Lukas, the family's first grandson. The same family has run the mountain guesthouse for more than 60 years: Christiana Lötscher and her husband Heinz took over from her parents, Hanni and Valentin, on 1 November 2015, and her grandmother, Margaretha Lötscher-Jöhl, bought the property outright in 1953. A chapel built by a hotel family and named for a baby answers to no congregation of its own. Nothing on the site ties a booking to church membership, a home parish, or residency anywhere in Switzerland.

No parish, no membership test, two officiants on offer

The wedding page never explains what "ecumenical" commits the venue to beyond that framework-program line. It does not say whether a couple must use the priest or pastor Sellamatt offers to find, or whether they are free to bring an officiant of their own, civil, interfaith or otherwise. It says nothing about proof of church membership, banns, or permission from a home parish. What the site commits to, in writing, is narrower and more useful than a blanket promise of inclusivity: help finding either a Catholic priest or a Protestant pastor, on request, for a room that belongs to the hotel rather than to either church. Whichever officiant conducts it, the ceremony itself is the symbolic half of the day: Switzerland only recognizes a marriage performed by a civil registrar as legally binding, a fact of national law rather than anything Sellamatt's own pages state.

Free with dinner, priced on request alone

The rental fee lives on the general chapel page, not the wedding page, under a heading simply called "Miete." The rule is short: "Bei gleichzeitiger Buchung eines Aperos oder Essens mit Übernachtung kostenlos. Für andere Anlässe auf Anfrage." Book an apéro, or a meal paired with an overnight stay, at the same time as the chapel, and the room costs nothing. Book it any other way, for the ceremony alone, without an overnight stay attached, and the price is "auf Anfrage," on request, with no figure published anywhere on the site. A couple pricing a Sellamatt wedding from the wedding page alone would never learn this: the fee rule sits one click away, on the shared page that also covers baptisms, funerals and rehearsal bookings, not on the page written to sell the day itself.

Stone, wood and a Mathis organ at 1,400 meters

The building itself is small and specific. It measures 7.5 by 7.5 meters, built of stone and wood, ringed by tall pines the site calls Wettertannen, weather-firs, at 1,400 meters above sea level between the Chäserrugg and the Säntis. High windows open toward all 4 compass directions. Seated for a concert, the room holds 80 people, the same figure the wedding page quotes for a ceremony. Inside stands an organ the site credits to "des berühmten Orgelbauers Mathis," the well-known organ builder Mathis, and the operator markets the same room's acoustics for choir and music rehearsals and small concerts on the days nobody is getting married in it at all.

Weddings, baptisms and funerals share the same room

The wedding page is one of 4 that hang off the same "Bergkapelle" menu, and none of them frame the chapel as a wedding-only space. Its siblings show what the ecumenical label covers day to day: "Taufe," baptisms, held in what the site calls "den ungezwungenen Rahmen," an informal setting, to receive a child into the Christian community; "Abschieds- / Trauerfeier," memorial services, for a funeral service followed by a "Leidmahl," a funeral meal, with the same page also pointing grieving families toward an anonymous burial ground on the alp itself, a "Bergfriedhof" run by a separate operator, waldfriedhof.ch; and "Musik- & Theaterproben," rehearsals and small concerts, using the acoustics the wedding page never mentions at all. One chapel, one family running it, 4 different occasions, and the operator's own word for all of them, ecumenical, is doing real work: nothing here is reserved for one denomination's calendar.

Two tolls for the same road, a lift that runs year round

Getting up to the chapel does not depend on a single cable car the way it does at some other venues in this category. Sellamatt's own pages describe two routes. In summer, a private toll road climbs from Unterwasser, with 50 free parking spaces at the top; the chapel page prices the toll at CHF 13 a day or CHF 30 a week per vehicle, while the site's own arrival page gives a different daily rate for the same road, CHF 15 a day, though both pages agree on the CHF 30 weekly figure. Year round, a combined chairlift and gondola covers the climb from Alt St. Johann, at 900 meters, to the Alp at 1,400 meters, in 6 minutes, with free parking at the valley station. A couple does not need the lift to reach the chapel in summer at all, only a car and coins for the toll machine; in winter, the lift is the only way up.

One address for the whole day, not just the vows

After the ceremony, the wedding page's whole pitch is staying in one place: an apéro, then a festive dinner in what it calls "unserem neuen Festsaal," the new banquet hall, or in the regular restaurant, then a night in a hotel room or a dormitory bed rather than a drive back down the mountain. The site never gives a capacity for that Festsaal the way it does for the chapel, so a couple planning a reception bigger than 80 has no published number to plan against beyond the chapel's own concert-seating figure. What Sellamatt does put in writing, clearly and in one place, is the part most couples researching a mountain chapel actually need first: what the room is, who can conduct a ceremony inside it, and what it costs to book, free alongside a meal, priced only on request otherwise.