Tonnara di Scopello wedding

Tuna were caught and cured here in the thirteenth century, and the village that did the work is still standing: the trizzane where the boats sheltered, the houses of the tonnaroti, the Palazzina Florio in Art Nouveau on the seaward side, and a walled courtyard with a small church in it.

The Florios of Palermo, who held Sicily’s tuna fisheries at their height, left their name on the villa and on the residences inside the walls. Each one is still called after whoever used it, from the rais who ran the catch to the bagliera who baked the fishermen’s bread.

The fishing stopped. The village did not fall down.

What stands now is a museum, open to visitors by day, with two limestone stacks in the water in front of it and the Zingaro reserve beginning around the headland. It is one of the most photographed places in Sicily and it is still, once the gates close at four, a place a hundred people can have entirely to themselves.

The village is the venue.

Nothing here is a ballroom with a view of something better, and the day moves through the place rather than sitting in one room of it.

The old docking point, where boats loaded and unloaded against the rock. It is where we put the ceremony, with the water behind the couple and the stacks beyond it.

The walled courtyard at the centre, floored in cuti, the round pebbles laid in Sicilian farmyards, and closed on all four sides with a little church against one wall. This is the dinner, for everyone, under the walls that kept the fleet’s gear dry.

The terrace where the anchors were stored, hanging over the water. Aperitivo here as the light goes, and the stacks turn from white to gold to black while people are still holding their first drink.

A wide, flat slipway by the sea, where the fishermen prepared and launched the boats. It takes a long table, a band, or a marquee when a guest list outgrows the courtyard.

Above the village, looking down on the whole borgo and the cove. A welcome drink at sunset belongs here, and it is the first time most guests understand the shape of the place they have come to.

The beach at the bottom of the village, and behind it the Marfaraggio, the shelter where boats were dragged in for winter. The party ends in there, and it can run until the sun comes up over the water.

Two adjoining rooms take 80 to 100 between them, which is the tonnara’s answer to weather. It cannot put a wedding of 150 under a roof, so above 100 a wet evening means a structure, and the structure has to be booked with the date rather than argued about in the forecast.

The village bar, open through the stay, pouring coffee at breakfast and Sicilian wine at dusk. It is a small thing that does more for a three-day wedding than most of what is spent on one.

Fifteen residences inside the walls, sleeping 55. They are apartments rather than hotel rooms: a kitchenette in each, a bathroom, a terrace or a patio in most, and sea views from nearly all of them.

They sit in four groups. Sotto la Torre, under the tower, holds three, one with a stone bathroom cut into the rock, and the Palazzina Florio holds six in Art Nouveau rooms with balconies over the stacks.

The Vicarie, where the fishermen lived, hold four, including the Casa del Rais. The Taverne, where the bread was baked, hold two, both with gardens over the sea.

Breakfast for everyone staying, daily tidying and a night watch come with the hire.

Beyond 55 guests the arithmetic changes. A catamaran moored off the stacks sleeps eight in four cabins, gulets sleep twelve apiece, and everyone else goes to Scopello up the hill or into Castellammare del Golfo, twenty minutes away, which has the bed stock a large guest list needs.

The tonnara is in the comune of Castellammare del Golfo, in the province of Trapani, at the end of the lane that drops from the village of Scopello to the water.

Palermo is 55 minutes by road and is the airport for this wedding, with European and UK connections through the day. Trapani-Birgi is an hour and ten, and carries low-cost European routes rather than anything a guest list can plan around.

Catania is the exception worth understanding. It holds the only non-stop flight from the United States into southern Italy, Delta from New York, and it is 280 kilometres and nearly four hours away on the other side of the island.

Castellammare del Golfo is 20 minutes away and holds the hotels, the restaurants and the port. Palermo is an hour and ten. The Zingaro reserve, seven kilometres of coast path with no road through it, begins a few minutes north, which is where guests go on the day between.

The tonnara is hired whole, for three nights on a weekend or two midweek, from four in the afternoon on the first day to half past ten on the last morning: €85,000 for a weekend in high summer, and less midweek and in the shoulder months.

• Sole use of the whole village for the nights taken
• The fifteen residences, for up to 55 guests
• Breakfast every morning for everyone staying, and daily tidying
• A night watch, around the clock
• The private beach, with towels and deck chairs, and the parking

Everything that makes the wedding: the caterer and the kitchen they bring, the tables, the chairs, the glass, the lighting, the sound, the flowers, the music, the photography, any structure on the ground, and the coaches that move guests up and down the coast. The catamaran and the gulets are hired on top.

A Magic Day wedding at the Tonnara di Scopello starts from €300,000 and lands near €450,000.

Hold the date two years out. The tonnara sells a small number of dates a year and the summer weekends go first, often before the calendar formally opens. We ask for a year and a month before anything else is discussed.

The museum closes at four. Sole use starts then, so the build happens with visitors still walking through until the gates shut. We schedule the heavy production for the morning after the handover rather than the afternoon of it.

Everything comes down one road. There is no second way in, no storage and no kitchen, so a lorry that arrives late blocks the one that arrives next. We run the deliveries to a timetable and keep a van at the top of the lane.

Put the last hour in the Marfaraggio. The boat shelter takes the party through the night without a sound reaching anybody, and the walk down to it, past the water, does more for the mood of a wedding than any production we could build.

Plan the wet evening at 100. The halls take 80 to 100 together, so a wedding of 150 needs a structure held from the start. We would rather book it and strike it unused than watch a forecast for a fortnight.

The tonnara gives a wedding a village of its own for three days: fifteen residences, a courtyard, a beach, a terrace over the sea, breakfast every morning, and a night watch. What it does not give is a kitchen, a caterer, furniture, light, sound or anyone to run the day, and the list of what has to be driven down that lane is longer here than at a hotel of the same size.

That is the work. A wedding for 150 at the Tonnara di Scopello is a temporary kitchen, a full production, two nights of other events, boats for the guests who sleep aboard, and coaches timed around a single-track road. It is also the rare Sicilian venue where nobody has to leave at midnight, because the last hour happens in a stone shelter on a private beach with the sea in front of it.

Magic Day plans weddings at the Tonnara di Scopello from the first conversation to the final farewell.