Masseria Salamina wedding

Salamina does not look like the other masserie in this set. It is a manor of the 1600s with a crenellated tower, arched loggias on two levels and a row of tall palms across the front, and from the air it reads as a small estate rather than a farmhouse: courtyards, a chapel, a pool, and rows of almond and olive trees running away in every direction.

Inside, a staircase hall rises through patterned yellow tiles under a chandelier, with family portraits on the walls. The family still owns it and still farms the land, producing the oil, the wine, the passata and the flour that end up in the kitchen, and there is a vegetable garden supplying it daily.

The masseria has eleven named spaces and a wedding usually moves through three or four of them, which is how the day is designed here.

Four of them: the old entrance courtyard by the carriage gate, the chapel courtyard, the manor house courtyard and the inner court. The ceremony goes in the chapel courtyard or by the carriage gate, which takes 50, and the inner court takes the dinner.

Both used for late-afternoon ceremonies, when the light is low and the heat has gone. The olive grove is lit at night and is where the aperitivo usually happens.

A glazed room, the newest of the spaces, taking a dinner for up to 120 at round or long tables. With the inner court it is the answer to a wet evening.

The poolside terrace is the wet-weather plan for the ceremony and the setting for a pool party on another day, with a centuries-old olive standing beside the water.

A vaulted bar under stone arches and a large indoor dining room, which is what lets this venue take an October wedding without anybody watching the forecast.

A Masseria Salamina wedding starts from €100,000 and lands near €200,000 all-in for 80 to 120 guests.

The masseria does not host a wedding any other way. Booking all twenty rooms gives private use for the wedding day itself; on the other days it is optional, and if no events are planned the masseria charges separately for closing the restaurant and its tastings to outside guests.

Nearly €9,000 a night at a weekend in the June-to-September high season and a little less midweek, breakfast and tax included, over a minimum of two or three nights depending on which days they are. Extra guests beyond forty are charged per night, and the city tax is added.

Three wedding menus at €215, €230 and €250 a head, on a minimum of 80 guaranteed guests. Each includes a welcome drink before the ceremony, the wine through the meal and the cake; the difference between them is how much of the food is made in front of the guests, with the fullest putting a mozzarella maker at the buffet. A tasting for two is included in the booking.

The ceremony set-up fee; the after-dinner party, which carries a service fee and an open bar priced by the package; the flowers and the decoration; the music and its licence; the photography; and the transfers.

Twenty bedrooms sleeping forty, in three kinds: six mezzanine rooms for two to four, eight farmhouse apartments for two to four, and six rooms in the manor house itself, among them two superior doubles, three junior suites and a superior suite. Most have a living area with single beds that can be made up on request.

For a guest list of 120 that leaves eighty people to house, and the masseria offers two of its own answers: a villa fifty metres from the gate and an apartment in the old town of Monopoli, with a list of other options nearby.

The masseria is at Pezze di Greco, in the comune of Fasano, inland of the coast between Monopoli and Savelletri.

Savelletri is 21 minutes, Polignano a Mare 23, Alberobello 29 and Ostuni 36. The estate sits in the middle of the triangle that most couples want to see, without being on the coast road itself.

Brindisi airport is 54 minutes and Bari an hour and three. The masseria’s own figures, 55 and 65 kilometres, match the routed distances closely, which is not something every venue in this set can claim.

The guest band is the first filter. Eighty is the floor on the wedding menu and 120 the practical ceiling of the rooms and courtyards, so this venue suits one size of party and will not stretch. A list of 150 belongs somewhere else and a list of 50 pays for 80.

The civil ceremony is the reason to stay interested.

Very few Puglian venues can hold a legally binding ceremony, and Salamina arranges one through the registry office at Fasano and holds it in its own chapel courtyard. That removes the town-hall convoy from the wedding morning, which is worth more than it sounds when the alternative is moving 120 guests twice in one day.

The indoor rooms are the third thing. Between the green house, the inner court and the large dining room, a wedding of 120 has somewhere real to go if the evening turns, which is why we always show this venue to couples looking at late September and October. Most of its neighbours cannot say the same without a marquee.

Magic Day plans weddings at Masseria Salamina from the first conversation to the final farewell. That means the dates and the nights the private use runs to, the civil ceremony and the registry office at Fasano, the choice between the three menus and the tasting that comes with the booking, the spaces the evening moves through, the villa and the rooms in Monopoli for the guests the twenty cannot hold, and the transfers from Brindisi and Bari.

We have worked across Puglia since the Bari office opened in 2014, and this corner between Fasano and Monopoli is the part we know most closely. Tell us the dates and how many people, and we will tell you whether the numbers fit.