Castello di Vicarello wedding

The castle stands at Poggi del Sasso in the comune of Cinigiano, in the hills of the Maremma, with Monte Amiata behind it and the sea an hour west.

It was built in the twelfth century as a fortress and restored by the Baccheschi Berti family, who still own it and still make the wine. What that produces is something closer to a private house that takes guests than to a hotel: ten suites, a courtyard, a roof terrace, three pools and a vineyard, run by a family who have been doing it for more than twenty years.

The estate holds one Michelin Key.

The estate is designed so that each part of the weekend happens somewhere different, and the brochure sells that sequence rather than a single room.

The open field below the castle, taking up to 220 seated. This is where the wedding dinner goes, under the stars and with no roof over it.

The historic courtyard for the aperitif after the ceremony, and the panoramic roof terrace above it for the hour before dinner. The terrace holds 70.

A hundred seated among the planting, used for the rehearsal dinner or for a smaller wedding that does not need the field.

Three pools, one of them an infinity pair looking over the hills, and an olive grove pool used for the brunch on the morning after.

A Castello di Vicarello wedding starts from €150,000, and for optimal results we recommend budgeting €250,000 all-in for 60 to 120 guests.

Just under €33,000 a night in March, April and November, and just over €42,000 a night from May to October, for 24 guests, with VAT already included. Three nights is the minimum.

That buys the privatisation of the whole estate, the ten suites, the two-bedroom villa, breakfast every morning, parking, the soft drinks in the minibars, all three pools, daily housekeeping and a concierge on hand. Extra beds are €165 a head per night.

A minimum spend across the three days, and it changes shape at 66 guests.

At 65 guests and below it is a flat €50,000. At 66 and above it becomes €770 a head, which at 66 guests is just under €51,000 and rises from there. That means the flat figure is not a ceiling and a guest list of 70 is already paying more than a list of 65.

Within that, the wedding dinner is €310 or €355 a head depending on the menu, the rehearsal dinner €255 or €310, a barbecue €180 or €250, an Italian party €165 or €180 and brunch €150 or €200. Beverage packages run €40, €60 and €80 a head by consumption, and an open bar for a minimum of fifty people is €100 or €120 a head for three hours.

Table setting with lights starts just under €4,000 and wedding coordination just over €3,000. A five-metre dance floor is just under €4,000 and a ten by five just under €5,000. Bar structures start at €700.

The estate’s own lighting is mandatory for certain events, so this is a cost to plan for rather than a supplier to shop around.

Service from midnight to one in the morning is €500 an hour. From one onwards it is €800 an hour.

The brochure puts it plainly: with no curfew, the celebration flows.

No hour and no volume limit apply here at all, and on a private estate in the Maremma with the nearest village some distance off that is a genuine freedom rather than a form of words. It is the thing that separates this castle from most of the Chianti, where a municipal ordinance decides when the band stops.

What replaces the curfew is a staff rate. Midnight to one is €500 an hour and everything after one is €800 an hour, so dancing until four costs just under €3,000 in service alone.

That is a far better problem than a curfew, and it is still a number. We put four hours into the first budget so that the decision is made in spring rather than at half past midnight on the night.

Every meal at Castello di Vicarello is cooked by the estate’s own team, and there is no route to an outside caterer.

For a family-run castle that has been doing this for twenty years, that is less of a constraint than it sounds, though it does remove a lever couples often expect to pull. The menus are priced per head and published, the wine is the family’s own, and the service staff and basic tableware are included in each catering service.

What it means in practice is that the food budget cannot be shopped. It can only be designed, and the place to do that is inside the €770 a head rather than around it.

Twenty-nine beds, which is the number to understand before anything else about this venue.

Ten suites sit in the castle: Levante, Grotta, Sprone, Giardino, Vicario, Sassi, Mezzatorre, Torre, Chiesina and the Spa suite, holding 24 between them with four of them able to take an extra bed. Villa La Vedetta adds two bedrooms and a private pool for four more.

A dinner for 220 therefore sleeps 29 people on site. The estate keeps a network of houses between three and twenty kilometres away and can place more than 180 guests across them, with shuttles arranged to bring everyone in and take them home.

That split is the normal shape of a wedding here rather than a failure of it: the castle holds the family, and the village holds the party.

The castle is at Vicarello near Poggi del Sasso, in the comune of Cinigiano, in the province of Grosseto.

Grosseto is 40 minutes and Siena an hour and seven. This is the Maremma rather than the Chianti, and the landscape is wilder, emptier and less photographed for it.

Florence Peretola is two hours and thirteen minutes by road. Rome Fiumicino is three hours and eleven, Pisa two hours and 28 and Perugia two and a half.

For a guest list arriving from outside Europe, Rome is worth putting on the invitation alongside Florence, because the drive north from Fiumicino is straightforward and the flights are better.

Sixty-five guests is the number that decides the catering budget.

Build the list to 65 or commit past it properly.

Below 66 guests the food minimum is a flat €50,000 across three days. At 66 it becomes €770 a head and never looks back. A list of 68 pays more than a list of 65 for three extra chairs, so we either hold it under the line or accept the per-head basis and design three real events to spend it on.

Buy the hours after midnight in the spring.

There is no curfew, which is the reason to come here, and the staff rate after one in the morning is €800 an hour. We put four extra hours into the first draft of the budget, because a couple deciding at midnight whether to spend another eight hundred euros is a couple being asked the wrong question at the wrong time.

Use the civil ceremony.

The estate can hold a legal ceremony on the property, which most of the great Tuscan houses cannot, and it removes an entire morning of logistics in a town hall an hour away. It is the quietest advantage this castle has and almost nobody asks about it.

Plan the shuttles as part of the design, not the admin.

Twenty-nine beds against a dinner for 220 means most of the wedding is sleeping somewhere between three and twenty kilometres off. We fix the houses and the shuttle times before the invitations go out, because a guest who does not know where they are sleeping books a hotel in Siena and spends two hours a day in a car.

Magic Day plans weddings at Castello di Vicarello from the first conversation to the final farewell. That means the three nights and the whole estate, the guest list drawn against the 65-guest line in the catering minimum, the civil ceremony held on the property instead of in a town hall, the hours past midnight bought in advance, the menus designed inside the per-head minimum rather than shopped around it, the mandatory lighting costed from the start, and the outlying houses and shuttles fixed before anyone is invited.

We have worked Tuscany and the Maremma for years. Tell us the dates you are considering and how many people are coming, and we will tell you what the three nights come to.