Borgo Laticastelli wedding

Laticastelli is a stone hamlet on a hill east of Siena, in the country between Chianti and the Valdichiana.

It is a village rather than a villa: lanes between the buildings, a square in the middle, a restaurant with a terrace that runs along the valley side, a fountain garden, a pool with a patio above it, and 32 rooms and suites spread through the houses. A wedding takes the whole of it.

Rapolano Terme below is a thermal springs town, and Siena is 32 minutes west.

Sole use opens the whole hamlet, and most of the spaces carry no additional fee.

The square between the buildings, used for the aperitivo and for dinner, with the hamlet closed around it.

A long terrace on the valley side of the restaurant, with the view, and the other place dinner is served at no extra cost.

A walled garden with the fountain at its centre, included in the sole use and the third of the three dinner settings.

A newer terrace and patio by the water, which carry a supplement: €700 for an aperitivo there, and €1,000 for the dinner.

A Borgo Laticastelli wedding starts from €100,000, and for optimal results we recommend budgeting €150,000 all-in for 80 to 120 guests.

Sole use, with the rooms, breakfast and the pool inside the figure, and VAT included:

• March to the start of May, and from 21 October: just over €8,000 a night
• May, and from 21 September: just over €11,000 a night
• June to 20 September: just under €14,000 a night

Three nights are the minimum in high summer and across any weekend. Midweek in the shoulder seasons the minimum drops to two, and a midweek event takes a 10% reduction on the rent.

Just over €3,000 on top of the nightly rate, for the wedding day itself.

The hamlet’s own kitchen caters the wedding and the arrangement is not optional. The wedding dinner starts at just over €170 a head with VAT, drinks excluded, and the lighter evenings start at just over €60 a head for a pizza party, just over €65 for a pasta party and just over €70 for a barbecue.

The kitchen asks for a minimum of 50 guests, and we plan every wedding here from that floor upwards.

A symbolic ceremony on the viewpoint is €700 and the celebrant €700. A civil ceremony on site with a celebrant is available for an additional fee. The aperitivo and the dinner are free of charge in the square, on the restaurant terrace and in the fountain garden, and carry a supplement only by the pool.

This is the fact that separates Laticastelli from its neighbours, and it is the estate’s own wording rather than our reading of it.

Outdoors, the music and the dessert buffet stop at two in the morning. Indoors, the terms set no closing time at all. For a hamlet held in sole use, where every person inside the walls is a guest at the wedding, that is as open a position as Tuscany offers.

What it changes is the shape of the night. Most Tuscan weddings end when the outdoor hour runs out, and here the outdoor hour is the moment the party moves rather than the moment it stops. We design the evening with that move built in, so the band finishes outside at two and the room indoors is already lit, warm and waiting rather than being improvised at the last minute.

The nightly rate here swings by two thirds between the quiet months and high summer, and the minimum stay moves with it.

A Tuesday in May takes two nights at just over €11,000 with a 10% reduction on the rent. A Saturday in June takes three nights at just under €14,000 with no reduction at all. The second wedding costs roughly twice the first on the venue line, for a difference of three weeks in the calendar and two days in the week.

May and the second half of September are where that arithmetic lands, and both are better months in this part of Tuscany than July in any case. We always price the shoulder midweek option alongside the summer Saturday, because couples are usually surprised by the size of the gap.

Thirty-two rooms and suites for 74 to 80 people.

Twelve are classic doubles, seven are superior suites, five are garden suites and three are deluxe suites. Five junior suites take two extra beds each, which is where the margin between 74 and 80 comes from, and we reserve those extra beds at contract stage whenever a wedding needs the top of that range.

Breakfast and the pool are inside the sole-use rate, so the accommodation is not a separate negotiation.

A list of 120 leaves about forty guests off site, and Rapolano Terme below the hill and Siena half an hour away absorb them comfortably.

The hamlet is at Laticastelli, in the comune of Rapolano Terme, in the province of Siena.

Siena is 32 minutes and Florence city centre an hour and 23.

Perugia is an hour and 20 and Florence Peretola an hour and 34, so the nearer airport is not the Tuscan one. Rome Fiumicino is two hours and 56.

Pisa is two hours and 26 and Bologna two hours and 22.

For guests flying from outside Europe, Rome is usually the better arrival despite the distance, because the flights are direct and the drive is a single motorway run.

A whole hamlet, a kitchen you must use, and a room indoors with no closing time.

The night moves indoors rather than ending.

Two in the morning outdoors and no closing time indoors means the party does not end at two, it relocates. We light and dress the indoor room before the wedding starts so the move takes four minutes rather than forty.

A shoulder midweek is close to half a summer Saturday.

The rate swings by two thirds and the minimum stay drops from three nights to two outside high season. A Tuesday in May is close to half the venue cost of a Saturday in June, and in this part of Tuscany it is also the better weather.

The hamlet’s kitchen is the only kitchen.

Catering here is the hamlet’s own and cannot be brought in, so the menu conversation is a venue conversation. We run it at the contract stage rather than six months out, when the room to shape it has gone.

Fifty guests is a floor, not a target.

The kitchen serves weddings from 50 guests upwards. We set that floor out at the first conversation, so the guest list and the hamlet are planned together from the start.

Magic Day plans weddings at Borgo Laticastelli from the first conversation to the final farewell. That means the hamlet taken on sole use for the right season and the right nights, a shoulder midweek priced against a summer weekend, the civil ceremony arranged on site rather than in town, the menu settled with the hamlet’s own kitchen at contract stage, the dinner placed in the square or the fountain garden rather than paying for the pool patio unless it earns it, the indoor room dressed in advance for the move at two, the extra beds in the junior suites confirmed, and rooms blocked in Rapolano Terme and Siena for the rest.

We have worked Tuscany for years. Tell us the dates you are considering and how many people are coming, and we will tell you what the nights come to.