Masseria Calderisi wedding

Calderisi sits four kilometres inland of Savelletri, on Contrada Sarzano, in the olive country behind the coast where the great masserie are. It is long, low and white, with the barrel vaults and arched loggias of a working farm, and it has been brought up to date carefully rather than gutted.

There is a heated outdoor pool, a restaurant under a vaulted ceiling hung with woven lanterns, and the whole thing sits among dry-stone walls, agaves, olives and prickly pear. Calderisi Mare, the beach club, is down on the coast with a shuttle running to it, which is what most guests do with the afternoon.

The proposal allows three locations on the wedding day: one for the aperitif, one for the dinner and the cake, and one for the after-dinner party. A fourth move costs extra, so the shape of the day is chosen early.

The largest space, holding a ceremony for up to 300, with tables laid among the trees and lanterns on the ground. This is the picture most couples come here for.

A permanent tented space seating 130 for a ceremony, and the wet-weather answer for a party that will not fit indoors.

A small chapel on the estate holding 30, which suits a family ceremony with the rest of the party waiting outside rather than a full congregation.

The old frantoio, underground and vaulted, holding 100 standing. This is where the night goes on after three, and it is the reason the hours here beat everywhere else on this coast.

A Masseria Calderisi wedding starts from €150,000 and lands near €250,000 all-in for 100 to 200 guests.

The masseria is taken whole, by the night, over a minimum of three: from €24,000 a night in May and September and €28,000 in June, with April and October considerably lower and July and August higher and wanting four nights rather than three. That covers all twenty-four rooms, a hot and cold breakfast, the heated pool, the private beach and its shuttle, bikes, internet, parking, and tax.

This is the line couples miss, and it changes the budget more than anything else on the page. Sole use is granted only if a food and drink event is booked on every day of the stay, or a flat fee is paid for each day without one. Over three nights that means three parties: a welcome dinner, the wedding, and something on the last day, which is why the all-in figure sits where it does.

Compulsory, and €260 a head with the drink included. It covers a welcome cocktail, three live stalls, a served starter, a pasta course, a main, the cake, a dessert buffet and a third of a bottle of wine a head. The other meals are priced separately, from a spaghetti lunch by the pool to a barbecue on the beach in the evening.

The flowers and the design, though the masseria can supply luminarie, lanterns and candles itself; the music and its licence; the photography; the ceremony set-up, which is charged by the number of chairs; the after-dinner bar; and the transfers.

Twenty-four rooms and suites, and sole use means all of them. Nine are Il Cortiletto rooms around the courtyard, six are Giardino Suites with gardens, five are Stable Suites in the old outbuildings, and the rest are singular: L’Uliveto among the trees, Il Fortino, and the Tower 1658 with the Tower Suite above it.

They are white and vaulted in the local manner, with fireplaces, patterned tiles in the bathrooms and doors onto the gardens. Breakfast is a full buffet, and the pool, the bikes, the beach shuttle and the parking all come with the room rather than being sold on.

Twenty-four rooms will not sleep a guest list of 200, so most weddings here house the family and the closest friends at the masseria and the rest in Savelletri, Fasano, Ostuni or Monopoli, all within half an hour.

The masseria is inland, in farmland, with Savelletri and the coast seven minutes away and its own beach club on it.

Monopoli is 22 minutes, Polignano a Mare 27, Alberobello 32 and Ostuni 28, which puts the whole Valle d’Itria and the pick of the coast inside half an hour. Guests staying three nights have more to do here than anywhere else in Puglia.

Brindisi is 46 minutes and Bari an hour and seven, so both airports work and the flight choice is wide. Lecce is an hour and eleven and belongs to a day out rather than to the weekend.

The hours are the reason to choose this venue over its neighbours. Three in the morning outdoors is later than anywhere else on this coast, and the olive mill takes it to five. Most Puglian weddings are designed around a midnight or a two o’clock stop; here the question is when the couple wants it to end rather than when the contract says it must.

The daily event rule is the reason to read the contract twice.

Sole use is only granted with a party on every day of the stay, and over three nights that is three catered events rather than one. It is not a penalty, it is how the masseria fills a house it has closed to everyone else, and handled well it turns the weekend into the thing people remember.

We always budget all three events from the start, rather than letting the second and third be discovered after the contract is signed.

The last thing is the civil ceremony, which the masseria lists among its services. If that holds, and we confirm it with the comune of Fasano every time, it removes the town-hall trip that most Puglian weddings have to build into the morning.

Magic Day plans weddings at Masseria Calderisi from the first conversation to the final farewell. That means the dates and which season band they fall in, the three nights and the three events the contract requires, the ceremony and what the comune of Fasano will register, the menus and the wine, the design and the flowers, the rooms in Savelletri for the guests the twenty-four cannot hold, and the coaches between them.

We have worked across Puglia since the Bari office opened in 2014, and this stretch of coast is where most of it happens. Tell us the dates you are looking at and how many people, and we will tell you what the three nights and the three parties come to.