Masseria Auraterrae wedding

Auraterrae stands on the high ground behind Polignano a Mare, with vineyards and centuries-old olive trees running away from it and the Adriatic on the horizon. It is whitewashed and low, with a chapel at one end and lawns that drop away towards the view, and it is new as a wedding venue rather than a long-established one.

The family behind it, the Valentinis, are not new. They have run Relais Il Santissimo at Turi, twenty-five minutes inland, for fifteen years, and Auraterrae is the second property rather than the first attempt. That matters practically: the machinery behind the day is experienced even where the building is not.

The estate works outdoors, and its own photographs make that plain: rows of wooden chairs among the olives facing the sea, long tables on the lawn under canopies of fairy lights, dinner running into a sunset over the vineyard. The two o’clock curfew means those evenings run properly rather than being cut short, and June and September are the months the masseria holds dates in.

Where the ceremony and the dinner happen, taking up to 300 between them. The ground falls away to the west, which is why almost every photograph the masseria takes is at sunset.

On the property, and the reason a civil ceremony is straightforward here rather than a negotiation.

The two indoor spaces, taking 60 and 30. They are handsome and they are small, which is the thing to understand: they are rooms for a dinner of sixty rather than a wet-weather plan for three hundred.

Walled, whitewashed and hung with lanterns, used for the buffets and the stations, with the food laid out on trestles under the olive branches.

Twenty-two rooms: sixteen doubles, four triples and two quadruples, sleeping about fifty. All of them come with the wedding, so the masseria belongs to the party for the three nights.

Polignano a Mare is seven minutes away and has more hotels and rooms than anywhere else on this coast, so the overflow is straightforward. The masseria arranges it directly when asked.

There is free parking for 200 cars and the approach takes coaches up to twenty-five seats, which is smaller than some of its neighbours manage, so a guest list of 300 arrives in minibuses rather than in two full-size coaches.

The masseria is on Strada Comunale Maringelli above Polignano a Mare, in the strip of high ground between the trulli country and the sea.

Polignano a Mare, built out over its cove, is 7 minutes. Monopoli is a quarter of an hour, Alberobello 31 and Savelletri 24. Of every venue in this set, this is the one closest to a town worth an evening.

Bari airport is 47 minutes, the shortest run to a gate of any venue here, and Brindisi is an hour.

The indoor problem is the one to solve before anything else. Three hundred guests outdoors and sixty indoors is a gap that cannot be closed on the night, and the masseria’s own answer is either a marquee or moving the event twenty-five minutes inland to the family’s other property. Neither is a disaster and both cost money. We always price the marquee in from the first budget here rather than treating it as insurance, because above sixty guests it is the only thing standing between the wedding and the weather.

The civil ceremony and the chapel are the reason to keep reading.

Very few Puglian masserie can register a marriage, and fewer still have a chapel standing on the property. Between them they turn the wedding morning from a convoy into a walk across the lawn.

The third thing is Polignano. Seven minutes from a town that people actually want to see, with a gate 47 minutes from Bari, makes this an easy wedding for guests in a region where most weddings are not. We would build the days either side around the town rather than around the estate.

Magic Day plans weddings at Masseria Auraterrae from the first conversation to the final farewell. That means the dates and the three nights the buyout runs to, the quotation the masseria writes for your numbers, the civil ceremony and what the comune of Polignano a Mare requires, the menus with the masseria’s own team, the marquee decision if the party is larger than the indoor rooms, the hotels in Polignano for the guests beyond fifty, and the transfers from Bari.

We have worked across Puglia since the Bari office opened in 2014. Tell us the dates you are considering and how many people, and we will get the masseria’s own quotation and tell you what the three days come to.