Castelfalfi wedding

Resting on a ridge in the comune of Montaione, between Florence and San Gimignano, Castelfalfi is a medieval village that has become a hotel without ceasing to be a village. The lane runs from the castle to the church of San Floriano, past stone houses, a trattoria and the gazebo of the Medicean Park.

The estate around it covers 2,700 acres: an organic winery with its own cellar and barrel room, an olive mill pressing Toscano IGP oil, woods, a lake and the long hills of the Val d’Elsa. Its history reaches back to Etruscan settlement, through the Middle Ages and the Medici, to the restoration that made it what it is now.

Castelfalfi holds two Michelin Keys and a Forbes Travel Guide five-star rating.

The kitchens are led by executive chef Davide De Simone, who also makes the wedding cake. Olivina, the hotel’s restaurant under chef Matteo Cervini, sits in the main building with its terrace over the valley, and RAKxa, the spa, is in the hotel as well.

A Castelfalfi wedding moves through the borgo rather than staying in one room, and the walk between the spaces is part of the evening.

The castle at the head of the village, and the heart of a Castelfalfi wedding venue plan. Ceremony, cocktail and dinner can all happen here for up to 250 guests, with the panorama on three sides. We prefer La Rocca for the dinner above anywhere else on the estate, but past 250 guests the dinner belongs in Aria.

An open garden around its gazebo, looking out over the hills, for up to 250. This is where we would hold a symbolic ceremony, in the late afternoon, with the aperitivo moving straight on to the castle.

The new event centre, a minute’s walk from the hotel, takes 300 guests, with a cloister for the reception and 300 square metres of garden around it.

Aria is the Castelfalfi wedding venue for a guest list beyond 250, and the room where the dancing goes when the night moves indoors.

The trattoria in the borgo, for up to 200, is the room for the rehearsal dinner or the welcome party. Il Rosmarino serves the traditional Tuscan kitchen, which is what a guest arriving the night before wants to eat.

The Belvedere Terrace holds 35 and has the widest view on the estate. In the hotel itself, Olivina, the two pools and Bar Ecrù with its terrace take the buffet lunches, the pool party and the sunset drinks that fill the days around the wedding.

A Castelfalfi wedding starts from €250,000, and for optimal results we recommend budgeting €400,000 all-in for 100 to 200 guests.

The welcome aperitif and wedding dinner start at just under €240 a head, with VAT included. That covers the canapés and drinks for the aperitif, three courses, the wedding cake by the executive chef, and the estate’s own white and red wines with water and soft drinks through dinner.

A dessert buffet is €44 a head. The Champagne or sparkling wine for the toast is priced on its own, and so are any themed food corners at the aperitif.

The estate asks that at least half the guests stay at the hotel for two nights or more, and the couple guarantees the block to secure the dates. In June and September the calendar is held for weddings that need more than 50 rooms for at least two nights.

For a wedding of 150 guests, that is the line in the budget that moves most, and the Castelfalfi wedding cost is decided by how many rooms are taken and for how long.

Flowers, music, photography, the ceremony, transfers and the production of the evening sit outside the estate’s figures. They are the larger part of a €400,000 budget, and they are ours to plan.

At Castelfalfi the wedding lives inside the hotel. The commitment that holds the date is to the estate itself: half the wedding sleeping on the estate for two nights, guaranteed in advance.

That changes the arithmetic of the guest list. A wedding of 120 needs 60 of them on site, which is 30 rooms or more for two nights, and every guest above that number who chooses to stay is a guest the couple has already planned for. We always build the rooming list before the seating plan here, because the block is the commitment that holds the date.

The hotel has 146 rooms, including 20 suites and four signature suites, among them the Castelfalfi Suite, the Penthouse Suite and Stefano Ricci La Rocca, a two-bedroom penthouse inside the castle. Many of the rooms open onto terraces or private gardens with the countryside below.

Every one of them counts towards the wedding’s room block.

Beside the suites, Castelfalfi keeps private villas across the estate, among them Casa Medici and La Pergola, with their own gardens and the hotel’s service. The Castelfalfi villas suit the families, the grandparents and the wedding party, who want a front door of their own and a kitchen table for the morning after.

With half the guests required on site, the rooming list is a planning job in its own right. We usually suggest a signature suite for the couple, the villas for the families and the hotel rooms for the friends, which keeps the noise and the early risers apart, and we map it out with you.

Castelfalfi is a hamlet of Montaione, in the province of Florence, on the western edge of the Val d’Elsa.

San Gimignano is 28 minutes away, Volterra 37 and the village of Montaione 14. Florence city centre is an hour and 13, and Siena an hour and 14.

Pisa is the airport to use, 55 minutes by road, and it carries direct flights from London through the year. Florence Peretola is an hour and 11, Bologna two hours and three, and Rome Fiumicino just under four hours.

Guests from the United States connect through a European hub into Pisa or Florence, and we time the coaches from Pisa on the routed 55 minutes.

Firenze Santa Maria Novella, for guests coming by train, is an hour and nine.

The estate is generous with space and precise about rooms.

The room block is the contract.

Half the guests on site for two nights, guaranteed by the couple, is the term that secures the date. We build the guest list and the rooming list together from the first conversation, so the guarantee is a number the couple already knows they can fill.

June and September go to weddings of more than 50 rooms.

Both months are held for weddings that take more than 50 rooms for two nights. A wedding of 100 guests or more reaches that easily, and a smaller one is better placed in May or early October, which we would recommend in any case for the light and the temperature.

La Rocca for dinner, Aria for the party.

The castle holds 250 for dinner and is the room everybody remembers. When the evening moves indoors, Aria is a minute’s walk from the hotel, and we design the night so the move happens once, with the band already playing.

The welcome dinner belongs at Il Rosmarino.

The trattoria takes 200 and serves the food guests came to Tuscany to eat. We use the Belvedere Terrace for the family dinner the night before, which at 35 is the right size for it.

The music hour is in the contract.

The music curfew is agreed with the estate for the date and written into the contract before signature. We brief the band and the DJ against it when they are booked and plan the late hours indoors at Aria.

Magic Day plans weddings at Castelfalfi from the first conversation to the final farewell. The estate hosts: it provides the castle, the park, the ballroom, the kitchen and 146 rooms, and its own staff serve the hotel side of the stay. Everything else falls to the planner. That means the guest list built against the two-night room block, the dates chosen with the 50-room rule for June and September in mind, the civil ceremony arranged at the comune of Montaione and the symbolic one set in the Medicean Park, the flowers, music, photography and production appointed and managed, the coaches timed from Pisa on the routed 55 minutes, and the evening designed so it moves from La Rocca to Aria once.

We plan Castelfalfi weddings from 80 guests to 300. Tell us the dates you are considering and how many people are coming, and we will tell you what the days come to.