Dimora Ghirlandaio wedding

The estate sits on Colle Ramole in the comune of Impruneta, on the first hills south of Florence where the city gives way to the Chianti.

It is a private property rather than a hotel: five villas, a suite in an old limonaia, a frescoed chapel, a Renaissance garden, a restaurant for the people staying and a pool looking north over the countryside towards Florence. It is let to one party at a time and nobody else is on it.

Twenty minutes separates the gate from the middle of Florence, and roughly nothing separates it from open country in the other direction. That position is the whole proposition.

The estate is taken whole, and the wedding uses its gardens, its terraces and its chapel in turn.

The formal garden with its box hedging, pool and long walks, which is where the dinner goes and where the lights are strung.

A small frescoed chapel in the grounds, with a painted altarpiece. The ceremony happens here when it is religious and the photographs happen here whatever it is.

A glasshouse with iron framing and long windows over the valley, used for a seated dinner and for the wet-weather plan.

Panoramic terraces above the countryside, with the pool below them, where the aperitivo and the morning after both take place.

A Dimora Ghirlandaio wedding starts from €200,000, and for optimal results we recommend budgeting €350,000 all-in for 70 to 100 guests.

€18,000 a night in June or September, with a minimum of three nights, which is €54,000 for the stay.

For a private estate twenty minutes from the Duomo that is a contained number, and it is the reason this venue sits lower on the budget scale than most of what surrounds Florence.

More than most estates at this level:

• Private use of the whole estate, its panoramic walkways and its gardens
• A welcome drink on arrival and a tour of the property
• All twenty rooms across the five villas and the Suite Limonaia
• Full daily buffet breakfast at the estate’s private restaurant
• Daily housekeeping and an evening turndown
• The wellness area, with its sauna, steam room and jacuzzi, and the pool
• A professional music curator for Villa Ghirlandaio and the Renaissance Garden

That last line is unusual enough to dwell on and it has a section of its own below.

Quoted separately through the estate’s own banqueting team, which has documents for the wedding dinner and for the pizza party and barbecue most couples use for the night before.

Flowers, photography, the cake, and any music beyond what the curator arranges. Transport for the guests sleeping in Florence.

The nightly rate includes a professional music curator who tailors the music for Villa Ghirlandaio and the Renaissance Garden to what the couple wants.

No other estate on our Tuscan list includes anything like it. At most venues music is a supplier a couple finds, auditions and books, and the venue’s involvement ends at telling them when to stop. Here somebody whose job is the sound of the place is already inside the price.

It does not replace a band or a DJ for the wedding itself.

We always brief the curator around the band rather than instead of it. What it does is handle everything around them: the hours before the ceremony, the aperitivo, the dinner before the dancing starts, and the mornings. Those are the hours couples usually forget and they are most of the weekend.

This is an estate that pays for a music curator and hands the whole property to one wedding, so the hour is a conversation rather than a rule.

Impruneta is a comune like any other and has an ordinance of its own, and that is what governs amplified music outdoors after midnight. It is also where Tuscan ordinances usually bite, so it is the part worth settling first.

We agree the finishing hour with the estate against the date and write it into the contract before signature, together with the position on amplified music outdoors. The curator is briefed at the same time.

Twenty rooms sleeping 37, spread across five villas and a suite.

Villa Ghirlandaio holds five king bedrooms including the one in the tower. Villa Frantoio and Villa Studio each have three kings and a single, Villa Fattoria two kings, a queen and a single, and Villa Bottega two kings. The Suite Limonaia is one king bedroom with its own living space.

Two of the three singles share a bathroom with a double, which is a detail worth knowing at the point rooms are allocated rather than at check-in.

Thirty-seven beds against a hundred guests means most of the party sleeps in Florence. At twenty minutes that is less of a problem than it is almost anywhere else in Tuscany, and it gives guests a city to be in rather than a village.

The trade-off is that the wedding does not end where people sleep. Guests cannot wander upstairs at two in the morning, so the night finishes when the cars leave, and that hour has to be decided in advance rather than allowed to happen.

The estate is on the Via di Colle Ramole at Impruneta, in the province of Florence, just beyond the southern edge of the city.

Florence city centre is 19 minutes and Siena 59.

Florence Peretola is 23 minutes by road. Bologna is an hour and ten and Pisa an hour and 24, both of which carry more long-haul traffic than Florence does and are worth naming on the invitation.

Rome Fiumicino is three hours and 27 and is not the route.

Twenty minutes from Florence is the asset, and most couples underuse it.

Put the guests in Florence and the wedding in the country.

Thirty-seven sleep on the estate and the rest are twenty minutes away in a city with more good hotels than anywhere else in Tuscany. That is the opposite of the usual compromise, where the overflow goes to a village with one pensione. We book central Florence for the guests who are not on the estate and run cars both ways.

Use the music curator from the Friday.

The curator is already paid for and most couples only think about music for the Saturday night. We brief them on the arrival drinks, the chapel, the aperitivo and the Sunday brunch, which is three days of the weekend covered by something that costs nothing extra.

Hold the number at 100.

The estate quotes against 70 to 100 and the gardens and conservatory are built for it. Above a hundred the Renaissance Garden starts to need structure and the conservatory stops being a credible rain plan, and the whole economy of the place changes.

Impruneta sets the outdoor hour.

The comune has an ordinance like every other, and that is what governs amplified music outdoors after midnight. We settle it in writing before the deposit, because an estate that includes a music curator and then stops the music at ten would be a strange thing to find out late.

Magic Day plans weddings at Dimora Ghirlandaio from the first conversation to the final farewell. That means the three nights and the whole estate, the twenty rooms allocated with the shared bathrooms accounted for, hotels blocked in central Florence for the rest of the party, the included music curator briefed across the whole weekend rather than one evening, the chapel used for the ceremony and the legal half arranged in Florence, the banqueting team briefed for the wedding dinner and the pizza night, and the finishing hour agreed in writing before any deposit is paid.

We have worked Florence and Tuscany 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.