Dimora delle Balze wedding

A noble family from Palazzolo Acreide built this as a farm and a summer house in the nineteenth century, on the ridge between Noto and Siracusa where the Iblean plateau breaks into gorges. Balze are exactly that: the cliffs and crags the land falls away into.

The masseria worked for a century and a half and then stopped, and the restoration that followed left the fabric alone. Lime walls, stone floors, three internal courts, a tower with battlements, a citrus grove behind a wall and twenty-seven hectares of country around it.

What was added is deliberate and modern: a long glass-walled dining room standing in the fields, a saltwater pool on the terrace above the valley, and a spa cut into the stone.

Eleven rooms, each named after a Sicilian work of art or film or song, and a kitchen that cooks what the estate grows, certified organic.

The estate takes a small number of weddings a year and gives each of them the whole property, which is the argument for it.

The courts at the heart of the masseria, walled in lime and stone, where the aperitivo goes and where a wedding of a hundred can dine between the buildings with the lanterns lit along the walls.

Lemon and orange behind the old wall, with a gate at the end of the avenue. The ceremony belongs here, and so does the long lunch on the day after.

The glass dining room, lit at night and reflected in the water. It is the wet-weather answer and the winter one, and it is better looking than most indoor options in this part of Sicily.

The drive in, under old carob trees, which is where guests understand what kind of place they have come to. We use it for the arrival and for photographs at the end of the afternoon.

Above the valley, with the countryside running away below it. The pool party on the second day happens here, and the spa is a few steps away.

Smaller rooms for the welcome dinner, the family lunch, or the part of the night that wants a roof and a fire.

Eleven rooms sleeping 22, and up to 26 with extra beds. They come with the estate rather than being booked one by one, and each is named after a Sicilian artist’s work, furnished in the local way: iron beds, carved headboards, linen, stone.

Twenty-two beds against a wedding of 150 is the arithmetic to face early. Noto is 26 minutes away and is the obvious answer, a Baroque town with hotels and a UNESCO listing; Siracusa and Ortigia are 37 and 40 minutes, and hold more.

The estate is not a hotel that also does weddings. It is a house that takes a few, which is why the eleven rooms go to the family rather than to the guest list.

The estate is on the SS287 at kilometre 6.3, in the comune of Noto, in the province of Siracusa, in the middle of the Val di Noto.

Catania is an hour and a quarter by road, 79 kilometres, and carries Delta’s non-stop flight from New York from mid-April into October. Comiso is an hour away and takes low-cost European routes.

Noto is 26 minutes, Siracusa 37, Ortigia 40, and Marzamemi, the fishing village where the tuna traps were, is 53. The whole of the late Baroque that UNESCO listed in 2002 is inside an hour, which makes the day between the wedding and the flights home an easy one to plan.

The estate is taken whole, three nights at least from June to October and two in the shoulder months: just over €60,000 with VAT for the high season, with the eleven rooms inside that figure.

• The whole estate, with no other guests on it
• The eleven rooms, sleeping 22
• The outdoor spaces: the carob avenue, the manor court and garden, the citrus grove
• The Lumìa restaurant, the winter garden and the lounge
• The pool and the grounds for the days either side of the wedding

The catering, which is the estate’s own and priced by the menu; the design, the flowers, the lighting and the sound; the music, the photography and the transfers; and any marquee. The spa treatments, the cooking classes, the ceramics and the horses are all bookable and all extra.

A Magic Day wedding at Dimora delle Balze starts from €200,000 and lands near €350,000.

Three nights, not one day. The high season sells the estate for three nights at a time, so the wedding is a weekend whether you plan one or not. We design all three days from the start: the welcome in the courts, the wedding in the grove, a pool day to finish.

The kitchen is the estate. Everything is grown here and cooked here, and the menu changes with what is ready. We build the food around the week of the wedding rather than choosing dishes a year out, and it is the meal most guests remember from the week.

There is no curfew to work around, and that is worth using. The estate publishes no hour and has no neighbour within earshot, so the music can run outdoors as late as the comune of Noto allows. What it cannot do is move 150 people indoors at short notice, because the rooms take 80, so a structure is held from the start against the one wet evening in a season.

Put the ceremony in the citrus grove at six. The light comes through the trees at the end of the afternoon and the walls keep the heat out. Earlier than that, in July, nobody is comfortable.

Budget the beds honestly. Twenty-two sleep here and the rest are in Noto or Siracusa, half an hour each way on a dark road. We plan the coaches before we plan the party, and we keep the estate’s own rooms for the people who need to be there at eight in the morning.

Ask for the civil ceremony early. Noto will register a marriage on the estate, which is rarer in Sicily than couples assume, and the paperwork takes months rather than weeks. We start it as soon as the date is held.

Dimora delle Balze gives a wedding a whole masseria for three days: courts, a citrus grove, a glass dining room, a pool above the valley, eleven rooms and a kitchen that grows what it serves. It takes a handful of weddings a year and it is run by people who are on the property while yours happens.

What still has to be built is everything the estate does not farm or cook. The design and the flowers, the sound, the lighting, the furniture beyond its own, the coaches from Noto and Siracusa, and a second and third day that need shape rather than filling. Twenty-two beds against a wedding of 150 decides the logistics, and the estate’s silence on capacity means the layout has to be drawn and agreed before the invitations are ordered.

Magic Day plans weddings at Dimora delle Balze from the first conversation to the final farewell.