Borgo Divino wedding

Borgo Divino is a wine estate in the hills at Montespertoli, the wine town west of Chianti, forty minutes from the middle of Florence.

It is an agriturismo rather than a villa: a cluster of farm buildings with twenty-three rooms, a park with an infinity pool, an olive grove, vineyards on the hills around it, and the estate’s own organic winery, Tenuta Maiano, producing the wine that goes on the tables.

The bridal suite, Suite Afrodite, sits apart from the main building with a terrace, a Jacuzzi and a 180-degree view of the hills.

The estate is hired whole, and the wedding moves from a garden to the pool, then to dinner, then down into the cellar.

A panoramic garden looking across the vineyards and the rolling hills, set up for the symbolic ceremony with the estate’s country chairs and a water station for €400. This is where we put the ceremony at Borgo Divino.

The other ceremony setting, among the rows of trees, with the same €400 set-up. It also takes the aperitivo.

The aperitivo by the infinity pool, and the pool area stays open to the guests until midnight on the night of the wedding.

The outdoor dinner, 250 square metres under 375 metres of fairy lights, with round tables and chairs, for €800.

A covered terrace of 190 square metres, seating up to 180 for dinner, with windows that roll up in fine weather and close in rain. It is the dinner room for the larger weddings and the weather plan for all of them.

Brick vaults lined with Tenuta Maiano barrels, and the after-party from midnight until three.

A Borgo Divino wedding starts from €120,000, and for optimal results we recommend budgeting €180,000 all-in for 80 to 180 guests.

All 23 rooms with a buffet breakfast run from just under €5,000 to just under €9,000 a night with VAT, depending on the month. Two nights is the minimum.

The estate asks for at least 50 paying adults. A wedding below that number pays €50 a head a night until the minimum is reached.

Everything is cooked by the estate’s kitchen, and no food or drink comes in from outside. The Borgo Divino wedding cost per head runs from €110 to €143 with VAT, depending on the menu, each with a Tuscan buffet, table service and a bottle of the estate’s own organic wine for every two guests.

Unlimited wine through the aperitivo and dinner adds €10 a head and extra bottles are €15. The wedding cake is €8 a head, children from two to eleven eat from €40, and a midnight snack runs from just under €9 to just over €16 a head with VAT.

An open bar is charged on every adult present for a minimum of two hours, at just over €13, just under €18 or €22 a head an hour with VAT, depending on the list.

A pizza party from €55 a head, a Tuscan grill from just under €64, a cooking class from €99 and a wine tour from just over €27, all with VAT and none on the wedding day itself. A gelato cart is €800.

Thirty per cent of the hire secures the date and is not refunded, and the rest of the hire is due by 15 December of the year before the wedding. The food and drink are settled 30 days before, on the numbers confirmed 15 days before.

Outdoor music stops at midnight.

That is a city ordinance rather than an estate preference, and it covers the pool and the gardens alike. The bar staff are rostered to midnight as well.

After that the party goes underground. The Historic Wine Cellar takes the after-party until three in the morning, with its own set-up and the open bar extended by the hour.

We book the cellar with the date rather than on the night, and we light it before dinner ends. The band stops at twelve, the guests walk down, and the second set opens under the vaults.

Borgo Divino accommodation sleeps 85 with the sofa beds in use, or 54 in beds only, across twenty-three rooms.

The rooms run from comfort doubles through superior rooms with patios and junior suites on two floors to deluxe family suites with two double rooms, and all of them have wifi and air conditioning. There is a room equipped for guests with reduced mobility.

The gap between 54 and 85 matters when the rooming list is drawn. The sofa beds sit in the suites’ living rooms, so they go to the families and the wedding party, and a list of 180 leaves most of the party in Montespertoli, Certaldo and Florence.

The estate is at Montespertoli, in the province of Florence, in the hills between the Val di Pesa and the Elsa valley.

Florence airport is 38 minutes and the city centre 40.

Florence Peretola is 38 minutes by road. Pisa is an hour and 15 and Bologna an hour and 29, and both carry more long-haul traffic than Florence does.

Siena is an hour and two and Rome Fiumicino three hours and 54.

Under forty minutes from the airport is unusually good for a wine estate, and it means guests arriving in the afternoon can be at the welcome dinner the same evening without a long transfer.

Midnight outside, three in the cellar, and a rate card that moves with the calendar.

The night runs in two rooms.

Outdoor music stops at midnight by ordinance, so we set dinner and the first dance against that hour and plan the walk down into the wine cellar as part of the evening, not as a rescue.

Early May and October.

The estate prices the first three weeks of May and the whole of October well below late May and the summer, for the same gardens and the same veranda.

The veranda is the plan, not the fallback.

For the larger lists we seat the dinner in the Panoramic Veranda from the start and open the windows if the evening is fine. The Courtyard is the dinner we choose when the list is smaller and the forecast is settled.

The SIAE licence before the band.

Live music or a DJ at Borgo Divino needs the SIAE licence paid and the receipt shown at reception before the event. We settle it weeks ahead.

Magic Day plans weddings at Borgo Divino from the first conversation to the final farewell, for 50 guests or for 180. The estate hosts: the rooms, the gardens, the veranda, a kitchen that cooks every meal with its own wine, and the bar. Everything else falls to the planner: the flowers, the music and its licence, the photographer, the civil ceremony at Montespertoli, the hotels for the guests the estate cannot sleep and the cars from Florence.

What we know from working the estate is the shape of its night: the ceremony in the Three Castle Garden, dinner under the veranda or in the Courtyard, the band outside until twelve and the cellar until three. We also know the open bar is charged on every adult present, so we price it on the full list from the first budget.

Tell us the dates you are considering and how many people are coming, and we will tell you what the nights come to.