Ravello wedding

A Ravello wedding runs €100,000 to €1.2 million all-in: €100,000 to €250,000 for 60 guests, €150,000 to €1.2 million for a hundred, and €400,000 upward at 150. Magic Day weddings in Ravello start from €100,000.

The range is wide because the five venues here charge in five different ways.

Two hotels ask for the whole building above a certain size: the Caruso recommends its buy-out above ninety guests, and Palazzo Avino requires one above sixty, for three nights at least in both cases. Villa Cimbrone sells its rooms, a minimum spend on the wedding and the hours its gardens close to the public. Villa La Rondinaia prices the event by the number of guests and takes its six rooms with it, and Villa Eva, which has no rooms at all, hires out its garden by the day, for less as the guest list grows.

What sits outside every one of those figures is the same: the flowers, the music, the lighting, the photography and the getting there. Ravello’s lanes are for walking, and much of what reaches the villas along them is carried in, so that part costs more here than it would on flat ground.

Five venues: two palace hotels, one hotel inside a garden, and two private villas taken for the day or for the weekend. Each has its own page, and the notes below are for choosing between them.

Choose on two things before the photographs: where the party goes after midnight, and how many of the guests the venue can sleep. The answers run from a hotel of fifty rooms to a villa with none.

An 11th-century palace at the top of Ravello, a hotel since 1893 and a Belmond one since 2014, with the Wagner Gardens along the cliff and an infinity pool that seems to run off the edge of it. Taken as a buy-out it sleeps a hundred in fifty rooms, with the dinner in the gardens, the party at the pool until midnight, and the last hours indoors.

Read the full Belmond Hotel Caruso wedding guide for the buy-out, the rooms and what a wedding there costs.

A twelfth-century palace painted pink, on the street that climbs to the Caruso, with its restaurant, Rossellinis, on terraces over the Gulf of Salerno. Up to sixty guests take Rossellinis and its terraces while the hotel carries on around them; above sixty, the hotel asks for the whole palazzo, and the dinner moves out onto the lawns.

Read the full Palazzo Avino wedding guide for both sizes of wedding, the rooms and what each costs.

A villa at the southern tip of Ravello, rebuilt by Lord Grimthorpe a century ago, with six hectares of gardens running out to the Terrace of Infinity and no road to the door: guests walk in, fifteen minutes from the town. The gardens are open to the public by day, so the wedding is built around the moment they become yours, with the ceremony in the Tea Room, the drinks on the Terrace and the dinner on the lawns.

Read the full Villa Cimbrone wedding guide for the gardens, the rooms and what a wedding there costs.

The house Lord Grimthorpe’s daughter built on the cliff below Cimbrone, and Gore Vidal’s home for more than thirty years. It takes one event a day, for up to 180 under its marquee, and all six of its rooms go with it for two or three nights.

Read the full Villa La Rondinaia wedding guide for its terraces, the party after midnight and what a wedding there costs.

A Liberty villa in three thousand square metres of garden, on the lane from the cathedral square to Villa Cimbrone, kept for events alone and hired by the day. It has no rooms to stay in; the family who own it run Hotel Villa Maria and Hotel Giordano a few minutes away, and its soundproofed hall takes the party after midnight.

Read the full Villa Eva wedding guide for the garden, the hours and what a wedding there costs.

Ravello is small, and it divides into two halves either side of the cathedral square.

The cathedral square is the middle: the Duomo, and beside it Villa Rufolo, whose gardens hold the Ravello Festival’s stage above the sea. Most weddings here pass through it at some point, on foot.

East of the square, along the street that climbs to the Caruso, are Palazzo Avino and the Caruso itself, with the Principessa di Piemonte gardens beside Palazzo Avino and the town hall a couple of hundred metres from both hotels. It is the side of town for a civil ceremony.

South, along the lane to Villa Cimbrone, are Villa Eva, Hotel Villa Maria and Villa La Rondinaia, with Cimbrone and its gardens at the end. It is the garden side of Ravello, and the lane is walked rather than driven.

Scala, across the valley, has the ruined basilica of Sant’Eustachio for a symbolic ceremony under the sky, and Amalfi is eight minutes down the hill, with its harbour and the rest of the Amalfi Coast.

Yes, but not at any of the five venues on this page. None of them holds a civil ceremony of its own, so a Ravello wedding is two ceremonies: the legal one in the town, and a symbolic one at the venue.

The comune marries couples at its town hall, for up to 100, or in the Principessa di Piemonte gardens, for up to 80, both a few minutes’ walk from the Caruso and Palazzo Avino. A Catholic wedding can be held in the Duomo, which takes up to 250, or at Santa Maria a Gradillo, and Protestant and Orthodox rites can be arranged too.

Plan the day around that split from the start.

The paperwork is the same as anywhere on the coast: a nulla osta from your embassy, sworn translations, apostilles and an interpreter, and for American couples a sworn declaration made at the consulate in Naples. The Amalfi Coast guide sets out every step.

Midnight outside, set by Ravello’s town hall, and every venue here has its own answer for what happens after it.

At the Caruso the party moves indoors and can run until 2am. Villa Cimbrone puts it in a soundproofed marquee in its garden until 2am, when all nineteen of its rooms are taken, and at Palazzo Avino it carries on in Rossellinis as a silent disco.

Villa Eva has a soundproofed hall, where the party runs until 2am with its bar package and 4am at the latest. La Rondinaia takes up to eighty in its Salotto Italiano until 2am.

In July and August the Ravello Festival adds one more rule at Villa Cimbrone: bands and DJs there wait until the evening’s performance is over, usually by half past ten.

So the question at every venue is not what time the music stops, which is the same everywhere, but where the party goes next and how many guests that room holds.

Naples Capodichino is the main airport, an hour and a quarter on a clear road and an hour and a half as a planning figure. Salerno’s airport is 45 minutes away, and from Ravello it is the nearer choice. For American guests, connecting through Rome or Milan into Naples beats the four-hour drive from Rome Fiumicino.

By rail, Salerno station is 35 minutes by road and Napoli Centrale an hour and five, and both take the high-speed trains from Rome and Milan.

Ravello sits eight minutes above Amalfi by road, and the last stretch to most of its venues is on foot. Plan the walks as carefully as the transfers: light them, staff them, and arrange help for any guest who should not be doing them.

April to October, with June and September the months to aim for. Ravello’s height keeps its summer evenings cooler than the coast below, and its hotels keep a shorter season than its villas: the Caruso from late March to mid-October and Palazzo Avino from early April into October, while Villa Eva takes weddings from mid-March to mid-November and La Rondinaia from April to early November.

Through the summer the Ravello Festival puts concerts on the stage in Villa Rufolo’s gardens, above the sea. A concert there makes a welcome evening no venue can build, and the festival calendar is worth checking before a Saturday is fixed, because it sets when the bands can start at Cimbrone.

Ravello’s venues tie the wedding to their rooms.

The Caruso’s buy-out is all fifty rooms and the two suites of Villa Margherita for three nights. Above sixty guests, Palazzo Avino asks for all 43 of its rooms for three nights; Villa Cimbrone asks for all nineteen for two nights on a weekend, and La Rondinaia for its six, which sleep fifteen, for two or three nights. Villa Eva has none, and its guests stay at the family’s Hotel Villa Maria and Hotel Giordano, a few minutes away.

So a wedding of a hundred can sleep inside the Caruso, or mostly inside Palazzo Avino. A wedding at Cimbrone or La Rondinaia houses its families on the property and everyone else in the town, and one at Villa Eva houses everyone in the town. Beyond the venues, Ravello’s hotels are small and book early, and Amalfi, eight minutes below, takes the overflow.

We hold blocks twelve months out, weighted toward the venue’s own rooms, and publish one guest page with the walks and the transfers.

Decide where the party goes at midnight before you choose the venue. The hour is the same everywhere in Ravello; the room after it is not, and it holds anything from eighty guests to everyone.

Two ceremonies, one day. None of Ravello’s venues holds a civil ceremony, so the legal one happens at the town hall or in the Principessa di Piemonte gardens, and the symbolic one at the venue. We schedule them as one procession through the town rather than two separate events.

The rooms come with the venue. Most of Ravello’s venues sell their rooms with the wedding, so the room plan is part of the venue decision rather than a task for later.

Walk everywhere, and light the way. Much of Ravello is lanes and steps. We light the routes, put staff along them, and arrange help for anyone who should not be walking them.

Fly into Salerno if you can. From Ravello it is the nearer airport, and the road from it never touches the slow middle of the coast.

Magic Day has been established on the Amalfi Coast since 2015.

A Ravello wedding planner’s work here is logistics in a town built for walking: a band, a kitchen and a hundred guests brought along lanes and up steps, and a day divided between the town hall and a garden.

What the venues cover is generous: palaces with their own kitchens, gardens over the Gulf of Salerno, villas with terraces on the cliff. What sits outside them is the production, the paperwork for the legal ceremony, the transfers from Naples or Salerno, and an evening that has to change rooms at midnight.

Magic Day has planned weddings across 11 countries since 2008. As a Ravello wedding planner, the first thing we ask is the guest count and the size of the party after midnight, because in Ravello those two numbers choose the venue.