Casale Doria Pamphilj wedding

The Casale stands in the old village of Testa di Lepre, in the comune of Fiumicino, on farmland that has belonged to the Doria Pamphilj since 1649.

That was the year Olimpia Maidalchini, sister-in-law of Pope Innocent X and the woman who ran the Pamphilj fortune, bought the estate. It is still a working Doria Pamphilj farm. Fruit and vegetables come off these fields, and the kitchen cooks with them.

The building itself was the granary.

It is long and low, two storeys of pale wings under terracotta tiles, bent into a U around the garden, with an internal balcony running the length of the upper floor. The restoration kept the beams and the farmhouse proportions and filled the rooms with simple country furniture. It is a farmhouse wedding, honestly made, with Rome forty minutes down the road.

A wedding here moves through the estate, and the Casale is built to be used over three days rather than one evening.

The garden beside the pool, quieter than the main lawn, where the civil or symbolic ceremony takes place. The comune’s officiant comes to the Casale, so the legal wedding and the one everybody watches are the same moment.

The lawn inside the U of the granary, with sailcloth canopies over the gravel. It seats 120 for dinner, and the sun goes down over the Roman countryside behind it. This is where we put every Casale Doria Pamphilj wedding dinner the weather allows.

Long whitewashed rooms with terracotta floors inside the granary, which take the dinner if it rains and carry the wedding in the winter months.

The old cellar, where the party moves after the cake. It has a full bar, and the dancing runs on there after the garden has gone quiet, until the bar closes at three.

The courtyard round the Casale’s bar, with games for the guests. It takes the welcome barbecue on the first night and the farewell pizza on the last.

A Casale Doria Pamphilj wedding starts from €100,000, and for optimal results we recommend budgeting €150,000 all-in for 60 to 120 guests.

The Casale prices by the head. The wedding dinner runs from €132 to €165 with VAT, falling as the guest count rises, and includes the aperitivo, two pasta courses, a main course, the dessert buffet and the cake, with wine, beer and prosecco poured until the cake is cut. The welcome barbecue, the farewell pizza and the open bar after dinner are priced the same way.

Three nights are compulsory from April to October, at €75 a head a night with breakfast.

The whole Casale for the length of the stay, from just over €2,000 to just over €5,000 with VAT depending on the guest count, and included from 80 guests. The Casale runs its weddings on a Tuesday or a Friday, and a Saturday is possible too.

Flowers, lighting, music, photography, the ceremony and transfers. Those are most of the budget here, and they are what lifts the farmhouse into a wedding.

Twenty-five rooms and apartments, sleeping 80.

Eighteen are rooms, three of them on two levels with a wooden stair up to a mezzanine under the beams. Seven are apartments, three of them junior suites on two floors looking onto the garden and four family studios with a second bedroom. The couple’s suite for the three nights comes with the wedding.

So a wedding of 80 sleeps on the estate entirely.

That is the Casale’s real advantage over a villa in the city. Everybody wakes up in the same place for three days, the pool is the afternoon, and nobody books a taxi home.

The Casale is on Via Onorato Occioni at Testa di Lepre, in the comune of Fiumicino, in the farmland west of Rome and north of the airport.

Piazza Venezia is 37 minutes by road and St Peter’s 33. The beaches at Fregene are 31 minutes, and Bracciano and its lake 32.

Rome Fiumicino is 34 minutes away, with direct flights from the United States and the United Kingdom, which makes this one of the easiest arrivals on any of our Italian pages. Ciampino is 43 minutes and Roma Termini station 40.

Taxis are scarce out here. We run the transfers ourselves, from the airport, to a church in Rome and back, and on the leisure day into the city.

The Casale is a working farm with a kitchen, and the money goes a long way here.

Spend the savings on the garden.

With the venue and the food this reasonable, we put the budget into the garden: lighting the trees and the U of the granary, a proper dance floor, and flowers that change the pavilion. It is what makes the photographs.

The legal ceremony is in the garden.

Fiumicino is not Rome, and its comune marries couples at the Casale itself. A couple who wanted Rome’s Sala Rossa for twenty can have the legal wedding in front of everybody instead.

A Catholic wedding means a church and a coach.

The little chapel on the estate cannot be used for a sacrament. We book the church, in Palidoro nearby or in Rome itself, and run coaches there and back.

The night has three rooms.

Dinner in the garden, the cake under the trees, and then the Cantinone until three. We build the evening around the move into the cellar rather than against it.

Magic Day plans weddings at Casale Doria Pamphilj from the first conversation to the final farewell, for 40 guests or for 120. The Casale provides the garden, the rooms, the kitchen and the bar. That leaves the design, the flowers, the lighting, the music, the ceremony with the comune of Fiumicino, the church if there is one, and the coaches to and from Rome with the planner.

What we know from working the estate is the shape of its three days: the barbecue in the courtyard on the first night, the wedding in the garden on a Tuesday or a Friday, the move into the Cantinone at half past ten, and the pizza by the pool before everybody flies home. We also know that Fiumicino marries couples in the garden, which removes the split day a Rome wedding usually has.

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