Masseria Moroseta wedding

Moroseta is not an old masseria pretending to be modern; it is a new building in the old manner, put up on a ridge of olive groves north of Ostuni and finished in lime plaster the colour of the stone around it. Arches, thick walls, tiny windows, prickly pear against white render, and the Adriatic in the distance.

It has six rooms and a kitchen with a reputation, and it has spent a decade being photographed for magazines. That matters practically rather than vainly: couples arrive here having seen the building many times, and what they want is the building itself rather than a set built inside it.

The property is small and the wedding uses all of it, which is the simplest arrangement in this whole set of venues.

Where the ceremony is set, chairs on the gravel facing the masseria’s long white front, with the olive grove behind the guests.

Dinner is one table rather than rounds, laid the length of a wall or under the loggia, which is what ninety guests and this architecture together allow. The plates are made in Grottaglie and come with the catering.

Arched and shaded, planted with cactus and citrus in pots, and where the aperitivo happens. It is the part of the building that does the most work in photographs and the coolest place to stand in June.

Thousand-year-old trees on the slope below, used for the drinks and for the photographs rather than for seating.

A Masseria Moroseta wedding starts from €100,000 and lands near €200,000 all-in for 60 to 90 guests.

The masseria is let whole and cannot be let any other way: all six rooms, breakfast included, for a minimum of three nights, with a wedding fee on top that covers the extra running a wedding asks of a small house. Together those come to just under €19,000 before tax.

€200 a head plus tax, charged on 60 guests at least. That is a full price rather than a starting one: it covers the welcome drinks, an hour and a half of aperitivo with live stations, three plated courses, the wine at a bottle a head, the artisanal tableware, the linen, the tables and the whole service team. An extra course is priced per head and so is every bottle past the first.

The flowers and the design; the music and its licence; the photography; the stretch tent that is the only wet-weather answer here, which is hired and installed at a charge of its own; the cocktail bar, if the wine and sparkling that come with dinner are not enough; and the transfers.

Six bedrooms, four Classic and two Suites.

Each has an outdoor space of its own and the Suites a sitting room as well. They are white and spare, almost empty: an iron bed, a plastered niche, a pair of shutters onto the olives.

All six are part of the hire, so the couple and the closest family sleep in the building. Everyone else stays in Ostuni, six minutes down the hill, which has more good small hotels than anywhere else in the region.

One rule to plan around: the masseria does not allow children under twelve to sleep on the property, though they are welcome for the whole of the wedding day. Families with young children take rooms in Ostuni.

The masseria is on the ridge that runs north from Ostuni, in open olive country with the sea seven kilometres away.

Ostuni is six minutes, and it is the reason this location works: a white hill town with hotels, restaurants and bars inside the walls, close enough that guests walk out of dinner and are in bed twenty minutes later. The beaches at Rosa Marina and Torre Guaceto are twenty minutes the other way.

Brindisi is 42 minutes, which is the shortest airport run of any venue in this set. Bari is an hour and twenty. Savelletri and its masserie are 27 minutes north, Alberobello 44 and Lecce just over the hour.

The ninety is real and it is the first conversation. Most venues treat a stated maximum as a starting position; Moroseta lets the whole property only for weddings at or under ninety and has repeated the number in writing twice. A guest list of a hundred and ten does not get negotiated down here, it gets a different venue.

The second thing is that a planner is compulsory.

The masseria will not host a wedding that is not run by a professional, and it asks for the planner’s details before it confirms. We always send ours in at the enquiry stage rather than after the contract, because a date can move while that is being sorted out.

The third is the tent. A stretch tent is the only wet-weather plan the property has, it is hired and installed at a cost, and the decision has to be made in advance rather than on the morning. In June that is a genuine gamble; in September we treat it as a line in the budget rather than an option.

The last is the children rule, which catches families late if nobody raises it. Under twelves cannot sleep at the masseria. They can be at the wedding all day, but the family goes back to Ostuni at night, and that is worth knowing before grandparents book flights.

Magic Day plans weddings at Masseria Moroseta from the first conversation to the final farewell. That means the date, which is scarce, the three nights and what the property fee covers, the menu and tasting with Giorgia Goggi’s kitchen, the ceremony and what the comune of Ostuni will register, the tent decision and when it has to be made, the rooms in Ostuni for everyone the six bedrooms cannot hold, and the coaches up and down the hill.

We have worked across Puglia since the Bari office opened in 2014, and Ostuni is the part of it we know most closely. Tell us the dates you are looking at and how many people, and we will tell you whether the ninety fits and what the rest of it comes to.