Il Borro wedding

The estate lies along the Via dei Sette Ponti in the Valdarno, in the triangle between Florence, Arezzo and Siena.

At the heart of it is a medieval village that had emptied out by the end of the twentieth century. Ferruccio Ferragamo bought the estate in 1993 and rebuilt the hamlet house by house, and it now runs as a Relais & Châteaux hotel with vineyards, olive groves, an organic farm and a working artisan quarter in the village lanes.

The estate holds two Michelin Keys. Neither of its restaurants holds a star, and the Il Borro Tuscan Bistro that appears in Michelin guides elsewhere is a separate business in another country.

The estate is not hired by the room.

It is taken in one of four packages, and each package is a different set of buildings.

The historic villa, ten double rooms, with an indoor and an outdoor pool and its own staff. The Intimate Event package takes it alone for 20 guests, on request and with three nights the minimum.

Thirty-eight restored houses along the lanes of the hamlet, holding 82 guests. Added to the villa this is the Medieval Village package, for up to 102.

Eighteen units at Le Aie in 6,000 square metres of garden, five double rooms at Villa Mulino in the woods, and four at Villa Casetta among the Merlot vines. Added to the village they make the Relais & Châteaux package, for 160.

The two spaces where the night goes after midnight, and the only two with no limit on the music. Everything about the shape of an Il Borro evening comes back to them.

An Il Borro wedding starts from €300,000, and for optimal results we recommend budgeting €450,000 all-in for 100 to 160 guests.

Two nights is the minimum for an event, and three for the smallest package. Low season is March, April and November; high season is May to October.

• Medieval Village, up to 102 guests: €90,000 for two nights, €119,000 for three, in low season
• Relais & Châteaux, up to 160 guests: €135,000 and €188,000 in low season; €175,000 and €252,000 in high
• Il Borro Toscana, up to 195 guests: €143,000 and €200,000 in low season; €192,000 and €274,000 in high

Breakfast for every guest, served where they sleep, and a shuttle running throughout the stay. Daily cleaning everywhere.

It also carries a surprising amount of the weekend’s entertainment: a guided cellar tour with a welcome glass for every wedding guest, the private spa by the hour, a yoga class on the two-night packages and two on the three-night, and horse riding for adults with pony rides for children. None of that is an extra and most couples discover it late.

Food and drink, which are quoted separately and are the larger half of the budget. Flowers, music, photography, the cake, and the SIAE licence that comes with playing anything at all.

The wine is the estate’s own, and that is a rule rather than a preference. Bringing a different label carries a corkage of €10 a bottle.

The brochure is explicit, in both seasons: one hundred per cent of the guests attending must stay at Il Borro for the duration of the event.

That single condition explains why the estate sells beds instead of rooms, and it changes how a guest list is drawn. A wedding of 160 cannot invite 40 local friends for the evening, because there is no such thing as an evening guest here. If the list runs past the package, the estate will point to its farmhouses outside the Relais & Châteaux selection or to houses nearby, but the package itself is the ceiling.

We always build the list to the package rather than the package to the list, because the step from one package to the next is between forty and sixty thousand euros.

The curfew here is unusually generous and unusually conditional.

Outdoors, music runs to ten in the evening at a maximum of 70 decibels. That is the rule for everyone. On the Relais & Châteaux and Il Borro packages only, it then continues outdoors until midnight at a reduced 60 decibels, which is quiet enough that the band becomes a different kind of band.

After midnight the whole thing moves indoors to the Amphitheatre or the Tinaia, and there the brochure sets no limit on the hour and no limit on the volume.

So the evening has a shape dictated by the package rather than by the calendar. A couple on the Medieval Village package has music outside until ten and then goes in. A couple on one of the two larger packages buys two more hours under the sky. We cost that difference honestly, because two hours of outdoor music in June is worth more to some weddings than forty more beds.

One practical note that catches suppliers out: sound checks are permitted only until two in the afternoon and again after four.

Ninety-seven double rooms and one single, sleeping 195.

The Medieval Village holds 82 across 38 houses, three of them with two bedrooms, decorated in a classic style and fitted with modern technology behind it. Villa Il Borro takes 20 in ten double rooms with two pools and a dedicated staff. Le Aie del Borro adds 40 across eighteen units, one with three bedrooms, around a pool and a relaxation area in 6,000 square metres of garden.

Villa Mulino sits in the woods with five double rooms for 10, and Villa Casetta among the Merlot vines with four for 8, each with an infinity pool.

Breakfast is served where you sleep: at the Osteria for the village, at Ristorante Pomario for Le Aie, and delivered to the villas.

The estate is at San Giustino Valdarno in the comune of Loro Ciuffenna, in the province of Arezzo.

Florence city centre is 57 minutes and Siena an hour and ten, which makes this one of the few estates of its size that is genuinely close to both.

Florence Peretola is an hour and eight minutes by road. Bologna is an hour and 55 and Pisa two hours and nine; Perugia is an hour and 47 and Rome Fiumicino three hours and 20.

An hour from an international airport is the shortest transfer of any large estate we work with in Tuscany, and for a guest list of 160 flying in from several countries that is worth real money in cars.

The package is the wedding, and it decides more than the bed count.

Choose the package for the music, not only for the beds.

The Medieval Village package stops outdoor music at ten. The two larger packages carry it to midnight. That is the single most important difference between them and it is written in a paragraph about decibels rather than in the price table, so couples compare the packages on headcount and never see it. We put the two hours on the table at the first conversation.

Use the amphitheatre deliberately.

After midnight there is no curfew of any kind in the Amphitheatre or the Tinaia, which is rarer in Tuscany than couples realise. That turns the small hours into the part of the night worth designing rather than the part that tails off, and we build the running order so the music people remember lands after twelve rather than before ten.

Count the included activities as budget, not as extras.

The cellar tour, the spa, the yoga and the riding are all inside the package price. A couple who also books a separate winery visit and a separate activity day is paying twice for a weekend that was already full. We plan the days around what the package has already bought.

Draw the guest list knowing nobody can come for just the evening.

Every attending guest sleeps on the estate, so there is no such thing as a local invitation here. That rules out the usual Tuscan compromise of a small resident party and a larger evening one, and it is the thing most likely to reshape a list after a couple has fallen for the place.

Magic Day plans weddings at Il Borro from the first conversation to the final farewell. That means the package chosen on the music as well as the beds, the guest list drawn against a rule that everyone sleeps on site, the church booked and the legal ceremony timed at the comune, the included cellar tour and spa built into the days rather than bought twice, the running order written so the night lands in the amphitheatre, and the sound checks kept inside the hours the estate allows.

We have worked Tuscany for years. Tell us the dates you are considering and how many people are coming, and we will tell you which package you need.