Castello di Montalto wedding

Montalto della Berardenga, as the castle was first called, is a fortress of about a thousand years, probably raised before the year 1000 by the first counts of Siena. It held for Siena through two and a half centuries of war with Florence.

The Florentines beat the Sienese at Montalto in 1207.

The Berardenga family rebuilt the walls higher and wider, and the castle withstood a siege in 1260. In the early 1500s Siena gave it to Count Giovanni Palmieri as a signoria with its own laws, on condition that he defend it against Florence at his own expense.

Then the Medici took Siena in 1555, and the fighting stopped. What a castle does in peacetime is visible in the courtyard: a Renaissance portico, frescoes of farm life in the Hall of Arms, and the chapel moved inside the walls and restored in a neo-Gothic hand.

Since 1970 Montalto has belonged to the Coda-Nunziante family, related by marriage to the last of the Palmieri. They live in the castle all year, farm 650 acres organically for grain, olive oil and honey, and have restored the old stone houses of the hamlet around it.

A Castello di Montalto wedding takes the whole place, which is the point of it. Nobody else is staying, and the castle’s spaces sit within a few steps of one another.

Consecrated, inside the castle walls, seating 40 to 60 with room to stand at the back. It takes a Catholic or a Protestant service, and it is €850 on top of the hire.

A garden on the estate kept for symbolic ceremonies, and for a civil one if the couple would rather marry at the castle than in Siena.

The aperitivo is served outdoors, and in summer dinner follows it in the castle’s open courtyard, seating 130 under the portico and the towers. We would put dinner here whenever the date allows.

The banquet hall, seating 100. It is where dinner goes outside the summer and where it goes if the weather turns, so for up to 100 guests the wet-weather plan is already in the building.

Above 100, the wet-weather plan for a Castello di Montalto wedding is a crystal marquee raised over the courtyard.

A Castello di Montalto wedding starts from €150,000, and for optimal results we recommend budgeting €250,000 all-in for 60 to 130 guests.

The hire covers the whole estate, all ten houses and every indoor and outdoor space, for three nights from Friday to Monday:

• May, June and September: just over €23,000
• July and August: just under €20,000
• The rest of the year: just over €14,000

Midweek weddings can take two days or three. Two days run from just over €8,000 in the quiet months to €12,000 in May, July, August and October and just under €15,000 in June and September. Three days run from just under €11,000 to €16,000 and just under €20,000 across the same months.

The chapel is €850. The caterer, the bar, the music and the flowers are all brought in, and a marquee over the courtyard is costed separately if the guest list passes 100.

That is where the Castello di Montalto wedding cost actually lives. The castle is the smallest line on the budget.

The pricing is for the whole estate and only the whole estate.

That is unusual at this level. A Castello di Montalto weekend costs less than a single night at many Chianti hotels with a fraction of the rooms, and every person sleeping on the estate is at the wedding. No hotel guests in the courtyard, no second party, no one to apologise to at midnight.

We prefer a midweek wedding here for guest lists of 60 or 70.

Two days in June cost just under €15,000 against just over €23,000 for the weekend. Guests give up the long weekend, but for a smaller wedding of people flying in anyway, a Thursday works as well as a Saturday.

Forty-four adults sleep at the castle, in 22 double bedrooms across ten houses and apartments: five independent houses, four apartments and a wing of the castle itself. Five extra beds take it to 49.

The houses are self-contained, with their own kitchens and sitting rooms, terracotta floors and beamed ceilings. Families take one between them, and the wedding party takes the wing.

Beyond 49, guests stay in relais and B&Bs within ten minutes’ drive, and we take rooms there for the overflow.

The welcome evening belongs at the barbecue area below the pool.

The castle stands in the comune of Castelnuovo Berardenga, east of Siena in the hills towards Arezzo, at the end of a road of its own. The last two and a half kilometres are a white road through the estate.

Siena is 37 minutes, the town of Castelnuovo Berardenga 18, Arezzo and Montepulciano 54 each, and Florence an hour and 22.

Florence Peretola is an hour and 34 minutes by road and Perugia an hour and 31. Pisa is two hours and 31 and Bologna two hours and 21, and Pisa has direct flights from London. Rome Fiumicino is about three hours, and carries the most nonstop flights from the United States.

Siena is the natural base for anyone arriving early, close enough for a coach to the castle and back in an evening.

A castle taken whole, a white road and one number that matters, which is 100.

One hundred in the hall, 130 in the courtyard.

The courtyard seats 130 in summer and the hall seats 100, and above 100 the wet-weather plan is a crystal marquee over the courtyard. We price the marquee at the start for any guest list over 100, so the budget carries it from the first draft.

The white road sets the transport plan.

The last two and a half kilometres to the castle are unpaved. We book minibuses rather than full-size coaches for that stretch and time the last run of the night with the estate, so nobody waits at the gate.

Everything eaten is brought in.

Catering comes in from outside, which leaves the whole menu open. We appoint the caterer and brief them on the hall, the courtyard and the walk between them, and the same supplier runs the welcome dinner and the farewell brunch.

October is the quiet rate.

A weekend in October falls into the lowest band, just over €14,000 against just over €23,000 in September. For a wedding of 100 or fewer that is happy in the great hall, we always put October on the table.

Magic Day plans weddings at Castello di Montalto from the first conversation to the final farewell. The castle hires its walls, its chapel, its courtyard and its ten houses, and nothing more. That leaves the caterer and the bar, the music and its hour agreed with the comune, the flowers, the marquee once the list passes 100, the civil paperwork in Siena or Castelnuovo Berardenga, the rooming across ten houses and the relais beyond them, and the minibuses on the white road at the end of the night.

Someone who has worked here knows that 100 is the number to plan around rather than 130, that an October weekend costs nearly €9,000 less than a September one, and that the welcome evening belongs by the pool.

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 days come to.