Castello di Celsa wedding

The castle stands on a ridge west of Siena, in the comune of Sovicille, looking back towards the city it was built to defend.

Its oldest part is thirteenth century, raised as a fortified structure guarding the approaches to Siena. For roughly four hundred years the ownership has passed down the female line: from the Sienese De Vecchi to the Florentine Antinori and then to the Roman Aldobrandini, who hold it still.

It is a private estate rather than a hotel, and it is let to one wedding at a time.

The property is a set of outdoor rooms with a castle in the middle of them, and the wedding moves between them.

The formal parterre below the castle, box-edged and symmetrical, with the Sienese hills falling away beyond it.

The lawn in front of the round chapel, which stands alone on the grass with the park behind. Most ceremonies happen here.

The Bosco inglese, a wooded garden laid out in the English manner, used for a ceremony or for the hour before dinner.

Two rooms and a loggia looking over the countryside. This is the estate’s stated plan B and the only roof a hundred people could sit under.

A Castello di Celsa wedding starts from €150,000, and for optimal results we recommend budgeting €200,000 all-in.

From Tuesday to Thursday the castle sells an event with no accommodation at all, for €14,000. That takes the property from nine in the morning until two the following morning, with the Italian garden, the park, the chapel, the barn and the castle courtyard, and two rooms inside the castle for the couple to dress and be photographed in.

From Friday to Monday that option disappears. The rooms become compulsory and the minimum stay is two nights: €22,000 for two or €29,000 for three, for up to 22 guests across eleven rooms.

A Saturday wedding at Celsa therefore starts at €22,000 before the wedding fee and a Wednesday one at €14,000. The difference is not a discount, it is a different arrangement.

A wedding fee of just under €3,000. Any further event across the stay, whether a welcome dinner, a pool party or a pizza night, is just under €2,000 each.

Suppliers and guests are on the property from nine in the morning until two the following morning, and each additional hour for setting up, breaking down or carrying on costs €350.

Everything else. The castle is let with its garden, its park and its chapel, and the catering, the furniture, the flowers, the music and the lighting all arrive with the suppliers we appoint.

The midweek option carries one condition we plan around from the start: access inside the castle is for a maximum of ten people, including the couple and all staff.

On a dry Wednesday that is irrelevant, because the wedding is outdoors and the castle is a backdrop with two dressing rooms in it. On a wet one the Granary becomes the whole wet-weather plan, and we dress it for that from the first layout.

It is the main difference between the two arrangements outside high summer, and we put that choice in front of a couple before a deposit rather than after.

The property is available from nine in the morning until two the following morning, and every hour past that is €350.

That is a generous window by Tuscan standards and it is a staffing and access arrangement rather than a noise rule. What it means in practice is that the end of the night is a line in the budget: four extra hours is just over €1,000 and the decision is better made in the spring than at two in the morning.

We agree the finishing hour with the family and write it into the contract before signature, along with the setup and breakdown windows that sit either side of it.

Twenty-two guests across eleven bedrooms, in two buildings.

Inside the castle there are three double bedrooms, a twin, a studio with a single bed and a single room. The Villa Limonaia beside it adds three doubles, a twin and a family suite with a double and a twin bed in it.

From Friday to Monday every one of those rooms comes with the booking, whether or not it is slept in. That makes Celsa a venue for a wedding whose core party is small: the family and the closest friends sleep on the ridge, and anyone beyond 22 stays in Siena, 39 minutes away.

The castle is at Celsa in the comune of Sovicille, in the province of Siena, west of the city.

Siena is 39 minutes and Villa Cetinale is a few minutes down the same road.

Florence Peretola is an hour and 32 minutes by road and Florence city centre an hour and 28. Pisa is two hours and 20, Perugia two hours and nine and Rome Fiumicino three hours and 45.

The day of the week decides which castle you are buying.

The Wednesday and the Saturday are different venues.

Midweek the castle sells an event at €14,000 with no rooms at all. At a weekend the rooms are compulsory and two nights is the floor, at €22,000. For a wedding whose guests are staying in Siena anyway, the midweek option is €8,000 cheaper and loses nothing except the beds.

The Granary is the wedding, not the fallback.

It is the only covered space that holds a party, and on the midweek arrangement the castle interior is kept to ten people. We design the dinner so the Granary works as a first choice rather than a retreat, which means lighting it and dressing it from the start.

Every hour past two is €350.

Access runs to two in the morning and every hour after is €350. We put three or four extra hours into the first budget so nobody is negotiating at one o’clock on the night.

One wedding at a time, two years ahead.

The family publishes availability two years ahead and the property takes one wedding at a time. We always go for the dates as soon as a couple is serious, because a castle with eleven rooms has very few Saturdays to sell.

Magic Day plans weddings at Castello di Celsa from the first conversation to the final farewell. That means the midweek and weekend arrangements priced against each other so the choice is informed, the Granary designed as the dinner rather than the fallback, the ten-person castle limit planned around, the extra hours past two bought in advance, the eleven rooms allocated and Siena blocked for everyone else, and the suppliers appointed for a property let as castle, garden and park.

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 two nights come to.