La Foce wedding

La Foce stands on a ridge at the southern edge of the Val d’Orcia, where the valley meets the Val di Chiana, in the comune of Chianciano Terme.

It was a derelict estate when Antonio and Iris Origo bought it in 1924, and what they did over the next forty years is the reason anyone visits. Iris Origo wrote War in Val d’Orcia here. Her husband replanted the farms. And Cecil Pinsent, the English architect who made gardens for the Anglo-Florentine set, laid out the terraces, the box parterres, the wisteria tunnel and the lemon garden that climb the hill behind the house.

The zigzag road of cypresses below the villa was planted by the estate too. It has since become the single most photographed view in Tuscany.

The wedding uses the garden, and the garden is a sequence of outdoor rooms climbing the slope.

The ceremony space, below the house, enclosed by hedges with the valley beyond.

Where the cocktail hour goes, among the lemon pots on their stone plinths.

The dinner. Not the lawn, which cannot be used, but the gravel terrace in front of the villa façade under the holm oaks.

By the pool, and the only indoor space in the plan. The party moves here at midnight and runs until two.

A La Foce wedding starts from €200,000, and for optimal results we recommend budgeting €300,000 all-in for 100 to 140 guests.

€48,000 for a minimum of three nights, and it is compulsory: the garden is let only alongside the house. The figure includes the use of the garden on the wedding day.

The villa sleeps 24.

All optional, all on the same three-night basis, and about €14,000 between them: the B&B Palazzolo sleeps 14, Montauto, a farmhouse, 10, Belvedere Grande eight and Belvedere Piccolo five.

Taken together with the villa they sleep 61.

The garden cannot be used for anything but the wedding. No welcome dinner, no farewell brunch, no pool party.

What the estate offers instead is the inner courtyard of the villa. The Dopolavoro restaurant, 300 metres down the road and under entirely separate management, is the other answer and a good one.

Everything. La Foce rents the venue and nothing else: the food, the drink, the décor, the lighting, the music, the photography and the flowers all arrive with suppliers we appoint.

This is the line that decides the design, and it is stated plainly in the brochure: the estate does not allow marquees, tables or chairs to be set up on the grassy areas for the seated dinner.

In a region where almost every wet-weather plan is a marquee on a lawn, that removes the usual answer entirely. The dinner for 140 goes on the gravel under the ilex trees, and the orangerie takes the party afterwards.

It is also why the capacity is 140 rather than a larger number. The limit is not the size of the garden but the area of hard standing in it.

We would not take a brief here for a wedding that needs a marquee, and we would not promise one could be found. What La Foce offers instead is a garden that no structure could improve, and a dinner laid under eighty-year-old holm oaks on gravel Pinsent laid down.

Outdoors the music stops at midnight. The party then moves into the orangerie by the pool and runs until two in the morning, which the estate names as the close of the event.

That is a clear and generous arrangement by Tuscan standards, and because it is written down there is nothing to negotiate. What it needs is design: a move at midnight is either a moment or an interruption, and the difference is whether anybody planned it.

We build the evening so the last hour outdoors is the peak of it and the orangerie is lit and waiting when the band stops.

Sixty-one across five houses, of which only the villa is compulsory.

Villa Origo takes 24 and is the house itself, with the garden at its door. Palazzolo, the estate’s bed and breakfast, holds 14. Montauto is a farmhouse for 10. The two Belvederes take eight and five, the larger with two doubles, two twins and four bathrooms, the smaller with two doubles, a single and two bathrooms.

Every one of them lets for a minimum of three nights alongside the villa, which makes La Foce a venue for a wedding that takes a long weekend rather than an evening. A hundred and forty guests means the rest stay in Montepulciano or Chianciano Terme, both within half an hour.

The estate is on the Strada della Vittoria at Chianciano Terme, in the province of Siena, on the ridge between the Val d’Orcia and the Val di Chiana.

Montepulciano and Pienza are both close, and Siena is an hour and 22.

Florence Peretola is an hour and 49 minutes and Rome Fiumicino two hours and 41. That second figure is the one worth noticing: La Foce is as close to Rome as it is to Florence in practical terms, and Fiumicino carries the long-haul traffic that Florence does not.

Perugia is an hour and 30 and Pisa two hours and 50.

The garden is the venue, and the garden has rules.

Nothing may stand on the lawns.

No table or marquee may stand on the lawns, so the 140 seats go under the ilex trees on the hard standing. We lay that plan out early with the caterer and the furniture hire, because a designer who arrives expecting a lawn has lost two days.

The Dopolavoro is 300 metres away.

The garden is for the wedding alone, and the villa’s inner courtyard takes anything else. The estate’s own restaurant is 300 metres away under separate management and solves the night before beautifully.

Rome is the better airport for a long flight.

Fiumicino is two hours and 41 against Florence at an hour and 49, and for anybody flying from outside Europe the extra fifty minutes buys a far better flight. We put both on the invitation and book cars from whichever they choose.

All five houses let on the same three-night basis.

All five let on the same three-night basis, and the four optional ones add 37 beds for about €14,000 between them. That is the cheapest accommodation of any estate on our Tuscan list, and it keeps the wedding party together on the ridge instead of scattered across Montepulciano.

Magic Day plans weddings at La Foce from the first conversation to the final farewell. That means the three nights and Villa Origo, the dinner designed for the gravel because the lawns are closed to it, the midnight move into the orangerie built as a moment rather than an interruption, the welcome dinner placed at the Dopolavoro rather than bought in the courtyard, the four optional houses taken together, suppliers appointed for a venue that comes entirely bare, and both Florence and Rome on the invitation.

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 three nights come to.