Borgo Stomennano wedding

Stomennano is a hamlet in its own valley below Monteriggioni, in the Chianti hills north of Siena.

It is a villa with its outbuildings rather than a village: a house, a colonnaded loggia that frames the valley like a window, formal gardens, and a cypress avenue lined with statues running away from the front of the building. The whole of it is let to one wedding at a time, for 38 people.

Monteriggioni itself, the walled town Dante used as a simile for the giants ringing the pit of hell, is a few minutes up the hill.

The hamlet is small and the wedding has all of it, moving between the garden, the loggia and the avenue.

The colonnaded terrace above the garden, with balustrades and a view down the cypress avenue. This is the picture everyone knows the place by.

Statues on either side and the valley beyond. Ceremonies happen at the top of it with the hills behind.

Terraced, with lemon pots and clipped box, looking across the olive groves to the Chianti hills.

A house of its own in Monteriggioni, four double bedrooms over two floors with a garden, let alongside the hamlet for eight more guests.

A Borgo Stomennano wedding starts from €150,000, and for optimal results we recommend budgeting €250,000 all-in for 60 to 90 guests.

Every figure below already includes 10% VAT, which the estate states plainly and which is rarer than it should be in Tuscany.

• Two nights, Monday to Thursday: €22,000
• Three nights, Monday to Thursday: just under €27,000
• Three nights, Friday to Monday: €29,000
• Four nights taking in a weekend: just under €35,000
• A weekday event with no overnight stay: €14,000

Charged on top and banded by guest count: just under €4,000 from 40 to 50 guests, just over €4,000 from 51 to 70, and just under €6,000 from 71 to 90.

Ninety is the top of the bands, and the steps between them are narrow enough to matter. A list of 72 pays the top band for two extra chairs.

Any further event across the stay for more than 40 people is just over €1,000. That covers the welcome dinner, the pizza night or the farewell lunch, and it is a modest figure against what those evenings cost at a hotel.

The catering, the furniture, the flowers, the lighting, the music and the SIAE licence. Stomennano is a bare hire with beds, and the budget is built from the suppliers up.

Three numbers govern this venue: 50, 70 and 90.

The wedding fee steps at each of them, and because the sole-use rate does not move with the guest count, those steps are the only thing the headcount changes in the venue’s own bill. The jump from 70 guests to 71 is about eight hundred euros, which is small; at 90 the bands reach their top.

So the planning question here is not whether the hamlet can hold the wedding. It is whether the list sits under 90, because that is the number the estate’s own pricing is built around.

We always draw the list against those three numbers before anything else is agreed, because they are the cheapest thing a couple can control.

Stomennano sits alone in its valley with the hamlet, its gardens and nothing else in earshot.

That is the argument for a late finish and it is a good one: on sole use every person within hearing distance is at the wedding, and the nearest neighbour is over the ridge. What governs beyond that is the comune, as it does everywhere in Tuscany.

We agree the finishing hour with the estate against the date and write it into the contract before signature, and arrange the SIAE licence alongside it.

Thirty-eight on the property, and eight more in Monteriggioni.

Sole use is quoted against 38 people, so the number is not a maximum the estate hopes to fill but the basis of the price. Rooms are spread through the villa and its outbuildings rather than along a corridor.

La Casa della Zia sits in Monteriggioni itself: four double bedrooms, three shower rooms, two floors and a garden, for eight. Taken with the hamlet it brings the party sleeping together to 46.

A wedding of 90 therefore has about half its guests off site, and Monteriggioni and Siena between them solve that within half an hour.

The hamlet is on the Via Matteotti at Monteriggioni, in the province of Siena, in the Chianti hills between Siena and the Val d’Elsa.

Siena is 23 minutes and Florence city centre an hour and one, which puts both cities within an easy morning.

Florence Peretola is an hour and five minutes by road. Pisa is an hour and 53, Bologna an hour and 53 and Perugia an hour and 55. Rome Fiumicino is three and a half hours.

An hour from Florence airport for a private hamlet in its own valley is as good as this gets in Tuscany, and it means guests can arrive and be at the welcome dinner the same evening.

The hamlet is small, the rate is flat, and the guest list is the only lever.

The wedding fee steps at 50, 70 and 90.

Those are the wedding-fee bands, and because the sole-use rate does not move with the headcount they are the only place the number changes the venue’s bill. We always price the guests between one band and the next, so the cost of each step is on the table before the list is drawn.

Four nights buy a proper welcome.

Four nights taking in a weekend is just under €35,000 against €29,000 for three, so the extra day costs about six thousand euros and buys a proper welcome evening and an unhurried morning after. At these numbers that is the strongest value of any night on the stay.

The weekday option suits a guest list already in Siena.

A location rental with no overnight stay is €14,000 and weekday only. For a couple whose guests are all in Siena anyway, that is less than half the price of a weekend with the rooms.

The hamlet is a bare hire.

Nothing is included beyond the walls, the gardens and the beds. The catering, the furniture, the lighting and the music all arrive with suppliers we appoint, and the venue line is the smallest part of this budget rather than the largest.

Magic Day plans weddings at Borgo Stomennano from the first conversation to the final farewell. That means the nights chosen against the four-night value, the guest list drawn against the three fee bands, the weekday no-accommodation option priced if it fits, the caterer and the furniture appointed because nothing comes with the hamlet, La Casa della Zia allocated to the people who most need it, rooms blocked in Monteriggioni and Siena for the rest, and the finishing hour agreed in writing.

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.