Villa Balbiano wedding

The villa stands on the western shore at Ossuccio, in the commune of Tremezzina, with the water on one side and terraced gardens climbing behind it. It dates from the seventeenth century, it was built for a cardinal, and it is one of the largest private residences on the lake.

The gardens are the part people photograph: clipped hedges, stone urns, a wisteria-covered walk and an avenue running back from the water.

It belongs to The Heritage Collection, which also owns Château de Villette outside Paris and Villa Astor on the Amalfi Coast, and it is let whole. The art is not put away for your wedding, which is why the vendor rules on this page read the way they do.

One thing worth settling immediately. Villa del Balbianello is a different property four minutes down the same shore, and the two are confused constantly. Balbianello is the museum on the promontory reached by boat. Balbiano is this one.

The villa is taken whole on every setup, so the question is not which spaces you get but how many days and how many people.

Terraced, formal, running down to the water, and where the ceremony and the dinner go.

The villa has its own, with an arched boat house under the garden wall and access from the lake for guests arriving by water.

Frescoed rooms hung with portraits, and where a seated dinner for up to 55 goes when the weather turns, and where the after-party goes every night after half past nine.

Six double suites included with every rental, with a Lake Como view suite on the second floor set aside for getting ready.

A Villa Balbiano wedding starts from €400,000, and for optimal results we recommend budgeting €600,000 all-in for 60 to 120 guests.

Each carries a refundable security deposit of €35,000.

One day, no accommodation, €50,000. Check-in at ten, the property released by half past eight the next morning. Forty guests included, and up to 55 for a surcharge: €5,000 to 45, €10,000 to 50, €15,000 to 55. Weekdays only.

Two days and one night, €100,000. Up to 55 guests, the six suites included, check-out at nine in the evening on the second day. Weekdays only.

Three days and two nights, €150,000. Up to 55 guests, the six suites included.

Three days and two nights, €200,000. The same three days, up to 100 guests.

Three days and two nights, €250,000. The same three days again, up to 200 guests.

The last three setups are the same length of stay and the same six bedrooms. What separates €150,000 from €250,000 is only the number of people allowed through the gate, which is not how a price list usually works and is worth knowing before comparing them.

So the number that moves this budget is the guest list, and it moves it in steps of €50,000 rather than smoothly.

Everything. The rental is the villa and the six suites, and the catering, furniture, lighting, flowers, music, photography and transport are all brought in.

They are also all constrained. The Heritage Collection’s vendor document states that using only approved vendors is mandatory and that failure to comply results in significant penalties, on the grounds that these are historic houses holding important art collections. That is a real limit on what a couple can choose and it is better met in month one than month nine.

Amplified music outdoors stops at 21:30. It is written into all five rental setups and it is the earliest outdoor curfew of any venue on this site.

What follows it is generous by comparison. The after-party runs inside the villa until one in the morning, and each hour beyond that costs €5,000.

The practical effect is that the evening has to be designed backwards from half past nine. The ceremony and the aperitif sit early, the dinner outdoors runs through sunset, and the room the party moves into is chosen in the first site visit rather than on the night. We get the hour and the indoor finish confirmed in writing before signature, because a villa’s custom and a villa’s contract are different documents.

For a guest list that wants a band under the stars until midnight, this is the wrong villa on a beautiful lake, and we say so early.

Six double suites in the Main Palazzo, sleeping twelve, included on every setup.

The Wing, the Villino and the Palazzino add more at extra charge, to a published ceiling of thirty people.

Thirty beds against an event for 200 is the limitation here, and the villa’s own paperwork is not quite consistent about the number: the price list says thirty and the covering email says thirty-two. We plan on thirty.

Tremezzo and Lenno are minutes away on the same shore, and Bellagio is across the water. We keep the block on the western shore so that nobody is crossing the lake at one in the morning.

The villa is at Ossuccio, in the commune of Tremezzina, on the western shore opposite Bellagio.

Como is 39 minutes, Bellagio is across the water, and Milan is an hour and a quarter.

Milan Malpensa is an hour and twenty minutes, Linate an hour and 27 and Bergamo an hour and 44. Lugano, over the Swiss border, is 56 minutes and is worth checking for guests coming from Zurich.

The road from Como up the western shore is a single lane each way between stone walls, and in July and August it does not flow. The drive that takes 39 minutes in May can take well over an hour in August, which is the argument for bringing guests the last stretch by water.

The curfew is the decision.

Half past nine outdoors is two hours earlier than most of this lake and three hours earlier than Provence, and it is not negotiable because it is printed on every setup. We always put it in front of a couple on the first call, because it either does not matter to them at all or it rules the villa out, and both answers save months.

The second thing is that the price ladder is a guest-list ladder. Going from 55 guests to 100 costs €50,000 and buys no extra nights and no extra bedrooms. A wedding of 60 therefore costs a great deal more than a wedding of 55, and the right move is often to hold the list at 55 and spend the €50,000 on the day itself.

The third is the vendor rule, which is stricter here than anywhere else we work. The approved list is mandatory, the penalties are stated, and the reason given is the art on the walls. It is reasonable and it is restrictive, and a couple who arrives with a florist and a band already chosen will have to start again.

Then there is the gap between 200 guests and 30 beds. Villa Balbiano will seat two hundred people and sleep thirty of them, so at the top of its range almost the whole guest list is in another village. That is workable on the western shore and it is a coach operation at one in the morning, and it belongs in the budget from the start.

Magic Day plans weddings at Villa Balbiano from the first conversation to the final farewell. That means choosing between the five rental setups and knowing that the last three differ only by headcount, the half past nine curfew designed into the running order, the approved vendor list and what it leaves you to choose, the weekday question on the shorter setups, the six suites and the block in Tremezzo, and the boats if the shore road is against us.

We have worked the Italian lakes for years. Tell us the dates you are considering and how many people are coming, and we will tell you which of the five setups your guest list has already chosen.