Masseria Montenapoleone wedding

Montenapoleone is an organic farm on the rise above Savelletri, ten minutes from the sea and a few from the great masserie of the coast road. It is whitewashed with terracotta-red trim, low and rambling in shape, with prickly pear and bougainvillea growing against it and a pair of old blue gates that lead nowhere in particular.

The farm is the point rather than the setting. The kitchen, a bio restaurant and bar under a wooden pergola, cooks what the land produces and changes with the season, and the treatment room makes its own preparations from Puglian plants. There is a lagoon-shaped pool with white cabanas around it that looks like it belongs somewhere else entirely.

The masseria puts a wedding through several settings over three days rather than staging one evening, which is what the daily event rule is really about.

White walls, potted citrus and ironwork seating, used for the ceremony and the aperitivo. The chapel wall makes the backdrop most couples choose.

The everyday heart of the place: stone columns, a timber roof, long tables. It takes a welcome dinner easily and a wedding dinner in cooler weather.

A glazed room with green shutters and a fireplace, laid with long tables. This is the wet-weather answer and it is a room rather than a compromise.

The lagoon pool with its cabanas, and beside it a stretch of sand where the masseria lays a long table for what it calls a Moroccan dinner under the stars. It is the setting the photographs are of.

A Masseria Montenapoleone wedding starts from €150,000 and lands near €250,000 all-in for 80 to 200 guests.

The arrangement cannot be taken apart, and understanding that early saves a budget being rebuilt later. From April to the end of October the masseria asks for a minimum stay of three nights, the booking of all 24 rooms, and a food and drink event on every one of those days.

All 24 at double occupancy for the three nights, quoted at just under €40,000 with tax in high season, which runs from May to late June and again through September, and just under €35,000 in April and October. Extra occupants, children and cots are charged per night on top.

A minimum spend of €30,000 across the three days at 54 guests, rising with the guest list. That is the welcome dinner, the wedding and whatever the last day holds, all from the masseria’s own kitchen, which does not take outside caterers.

The flowers and the design; the music and its licence; the photography; the transfers; and the rooms at the partner masserie nearby for any guests the 24 cannot hold.

Twenty-four rooms sleeping 54 at double occupancy, or as many as 77 with extra beds and cots. They run from rustic deluxe rooms through junior suites named after what grows outside them to superior suites cut into the tufa, all in the same whitewashed and timbered manner as the rest of the farm.

Every room is part of the arrangement rather than booked separately, so the farm belongs to the wedding for the three nights. For a guest list past 77 the masseria works with neighbouring masserie and arranges the overflow itself, which is less trouble than assembling a hotel block town by town.

The masseria is at Contrada Bicocca outside Fasano, on the slope between the trulli country and the coast.

Savelletri and the sea are 10 minutes, Polignano a Mare 27, Alberobello 34 and Ostuni 37. It sits in the same stretch as Torre Maizza, Torre Coccaro and San Domenico, but inland and at a fraction of the cost.

Brindisi airport is 55 minutes and Bari an hour and seven, so both are in range and the flight choice is wide.

The guest floor is the first thing to check and the one that catches people out. Fifty-four is a high minimum by Puglian standards, and it is the number the food and drink minimum is calculated on, so a wedding of forty pays for fifty-four either way. Below about seventy guests this is the wrong venue economically, however well it photographs.

The three-day structure is the second, and it is a strength rather than a tax.

Three nights, all the rooms and an event each day is exactly how a destination wedding wants to run: people arrive, eat together, swim, marry, and eat together again. We always price all three events at the start rather than treating two of them as extras, because the masseria has already decided they are happening.

The last thing is the ceremony. It is symbolic here, as at most farms in this region, so the legal marriage happens at the comune of Fasano or at home before travelling. We always get that appointment made before the flights are booked, because a town hall in August has its own calendar.

Magic Day plans weddings at Masseria Montenapoleone from the first conversation to the final farewell. That means the three nights and the season band they fall in, the 24 rooms and the overflow at the masserie nearby, the three events the arrangement requires and what each should be, the ceremony and what the comune of Fasano will register, the menus with the farm’s own kitchen, and the transfers from Brindisi and Bari.

We have worked across Puglia since the Bari office opened in 2014, and the slope above Savelletri is the part we know most closely. Tell us the dates and how many people, and we will tell you what the rooms and the three days come to.