Villa Cipressi wedding

The villa stands on the water at Varenna, on the eastern shore where the lake forks, with Bellagio across the channel and the mountains behind it.

It was built in stages between the fifteenth century and the nineteenth, and the oldest wing dates from the 1300s. The botanical garden that gives the place its name falls to the lake across three terraces and is a listed collection in its own right.

The property is owned mainly by the Municipality of Varenna and run as a hotel by R Collection, which is a detail with consequences. It is why the gardens are normally open to the public, why closing them is something you buy, and why the mayor can come and marry you here.

The three outdoor terraces run as a sequence, connected by one external staircase, and the wedding moves up through them.

The lowest of the three and the designated ceremony space, civil or symbolic, seating 80 with a power column for the musicians.

The middle level, under fixed sun umbrellas and the cypresses. This is where the aperitivo goes, and the villa provides the iron tables, the lounge seating and the high tops.

The top level, with its historic fountain and a pergola. Dinner is here, either on one long imperial table for up to 50 under the pergola or on round tables.

Sala del Pergolato is the largest, taking 70 on round tables or 40 on an imperial. Sala degli Stucchi holds 32 on rounds and doubles as the ceremony backup. Sala dei Volatili is the dance room after dinner.

A Villa Cipressi wedding starts from €200,000, and for optimal results we recommend budgeting €350,000 all-in for 60 to 90 guests.

From €54,000 in low season, which covers exclusivity and two nights with the settings and the service included.

What it buys is the whole property with the botanical garden and the Veranda bar closed to the public from four in the afternoon on the day you arrive until ten on the morning you leave, and the event day privatised from midnight to midnight. It includes the three terraces, all the salons, the chairs and tables, a wet-weather plan agreed to a deadline of 24 hours before, breakfast for everyone staying, and the villa’s own events team.

Exclusivity also means booking and paying for all 31 rooms, whether or not every one of them is slept in.

€250 per person, which on this lake is a contained number for what it contains: a standing aperitivo with five kinds of finger food and fried canapés, a seated meal of a starter, a first course and a main of fish or meat, and a dessert buffet of six.

Drinks ride inside it. The aperitif is unlimited for its hour and a half, and dinner carries a litre of water, half a bottle of the house wine and coffee for each guest. The villa budgets half a bottle per person across the whole evening, counts what is opened, and charges the difference at the end.

An Italian-style aperitivo buffet adds €25 a head. Children are €60 and suppliers €75. Tasting is free for the couple, and anyone else at the table is €140.

Flowers and candles, decoration, music and the SIAE fee that comes with it, photography, the cake, the open bar after dinner, boat transfers, the town hall fee for a civil ceremony, and the city tax. Ceremony chairs are included up to 80 and charged above it.

A refundable €5,000 pre-authorisation is taken at check-in.

No tent, dance floor or structure may be set on the terraces or in the salons. Specific requests go to the events department, and the answer starts from no.

That makes the wet-weather plan an indoor one, and the indoor rooms are the size they are. Up to about 70 guests the rain plan is Sala del Pergolato and nothing else needs to happen. At a hundred it becomes Pergolato and Stucchi together, which is 102 seats across two rooms with a wall between them.

It is the one thing we would want a couple to understand before they fall in love with the Fountain Terrace, and it is the reason we plan this villa at 60 to 90 rather than at its ceiling.

Every area has power for musicians, with industrial sockets in the garden and domestic ones in the salons.

Acoustic and lightly amplified musicians play outdoors until the end of the reception, which the villa frames as respect for the historic centre of Varenna, the neighbours and the other half of the hotel. The DJ then moves into Sala dei Volatili and the dancing runs to midnight.

After that the villa plays low background music until half past twelve and the evening ends. There is no paid extension, so the timing of dinner is what decides how long the dancing lasts.

Thirty-one rooms, sleeping up to 72 once the extra beds at €100 a night are counted, across three buildings and two garden cottages.

Eleven Classic rooms look over the old village of Varenna. Ten Deluxe and three Prestige rooms look over the lake, and there are four Junior Suites, one with a balcony and three with lofts.

Three named suites sit apart. Mimosa, on the first floor of the main building with windows on two sides, is the one the villa suggests for the couple. Magnolia and Giardino are in a cottage in the botanical garden, each with a private terrace and its own piece of garden.

Check-in is from three and check-out at half past ten. Two sister hotels in the same group are a walk away for guests beyond 72, and the city tax is never included.

The villa is on the Via Quattro Novembre at Varenna, on the eastern shore about halfway up the lake, where the Como and Lecco branches divide.

Bellagio is 17 minutes away, which is the ferry rather than the road.

Milan Linate is an hour and 22 minutes by road, Bergamo an hour and 25 and Milan Malpensa an hour and 39. Lugano is an hour and nine.

Como itself is an hour and six minutes, because the road has to travel the length of one branch and back up the other, and that number surprises people who have booked a hotel in Como for the weekend.

There is no private car park. Public parking in Varenna can be reserved in advance at the operator’s rate, and most guests arrive by boat.

Plan this villa at 60 to 90 rather than at 100.

The ceiling is a hundred seated and the rooms behind it are not, so the difference between 90 guests and 100 is the difference between a wet-weather plan in one room and a wet-weather plan in two. Lake Como in June is not reliable enough to treat that as hypothetical, and the decision has to be made 24 hours out. We would rather hold the number down and keep the whole wedding in one room if the sky turns.

The second thing is the airport order, which is reversed here. Everyone arrives at Malpensa for Lake Como, and for Varenna that is the slowest of the three at an hour and 39. Linate and Bergamo both beat it, and a guest list told the right airport at the right moment saves two hours of collective driving.

The third is that €250 a head is a genuinely complete reception, and on this lake that deserves saying out loud. It carries the aperitivo, three courses, a dessert buffet, the wine and the water, and it is a price rather than a minimum spend, so it does not rise because the guest list is small. We always cost the evening from the headcount up here instead of working down from a floor, and the budget that frees goes into flowers and music and into the rooms.

Then there is the civil ceremony, which is real. The municipality owns the place, so the mayor can marry you on the Front Lake Terrace with the lake behind, and the couple do not have to do the legal half somewhere else first. On a lake where almost every great house can offer only a symbolic ceremony, that is worth a day of anyone’s itinerary.

Magic Day plans weddings at Villa Cipressi from the first conversation to the final farewell. That means the two nights and all 31 rooms, the guest number held where the rain plan still works, the civil ceremony booked with the commune, the reception costed at the real headcount, the suppliers appointed through the villa’s events department, the dancing timed against midnight, and the boats across from Bellagio.

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 what the two nights come to.