Villa Eva wedding

Villa Eva is a villa in the late Liberty style, the Italian Art Nouveau of the early twentieth century, set in a park of three thousand square metres planted with century-old trees. It belongs to the Palumbo family, who also run Hotel Villa Maria and Hotel Giordano a few minutes’ walk away, and it has been restored in its original style and kept for events alone.

Villa Eva is taken by one wedding at a time: no other event shares the villa on the day.

Its gardens look out over the Amalfi Coast from the lane that runs from the heart of Ravello to Villa Cimbrone.

The villa is laid out for one order of the day: the ceremony at the edge of the garden, the aperitif among the trees, dinner in the garden, and the halls inside for the rain and for the hours after midnight.

A dinner reception has the villa from half past six in the evening until midnight, or until 2am with the bar package. A lunch runs from half past one until seven, or until nine. Suppliers can set up from the morning, but guests arriving before the booking starts are charged by the hour.

The panoramic terrace at the edge of the garden, over the coast, and the villa’s first setting for a symbolic ceremony. The ceremony can move elsewhere in the park, or indoors, to suit the number of guests.

Two more ceremony settings, on a lower level of the garden than the Bellevue Edge. Each is hired on its own, and the Seaside Pergola is the dearer of the two.

The park carries the aperitif and the dinner. It has an open cellar for wine with the aperitif, a barbecue and frying area, and an outdoor bar with a wood-fired oven, where a pizzaiolo makes pizza for the guests during the aperitif, or for the last friends standing late at night.

Inside, the dining halls have wide windows over the sea, and they take the dinner, or the ceremony, if the weather turns. One of the halls is soundproofed, and that is where the party goes after midnight, with a band or a DJ.

Two rooms on the top floor of the villa, for the couple to get ready in, from half past ten in the morning until the end of the party. They are not for the night.

Villa Eva has no bedrooms for guests: it is kept for the wedding alone.

The family’s two hotels are the natural place to stay. Hotel Villa Maria is two minutes’ walk away on the lane to Villa Cimbrone, with its views over the sea, and Hotel Giordano is five minutes away, with the pool and the parking.

For a larger wedding, the rest of Ravello’s centre is a walk away, from the nineteen rooms of Villa Cimbrone, four minutes further along the lane, to Palazzo Avino on the other side of the cathedral square. We block the rooms at Villa Maria and Giordano the week the date is set, and give them to the families and the friends who will stay latest.

Villa Eva stands on the lane from Ravello’s cathedral square out to Villa Cimbrone, about 450 metres from the square, and under ten minutes on foot with Ravello’s steps. Villa Rufolo is at the start of the walk, and Villa Cimbrone’s gate is four minutes beyond the villa.

The villa has its own parking, so cars and suppliers can drive right up to it, but most guests walk, from their hotels and from the square.

Naples Capodichino is the main airport, an hour and a quarter to Ravello 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.

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

Villa Eva prices a wedding in parts, and the rental fee falls as the guest list grows: a wedding of a hundred pays about a third of what a wedding of twenty does, and a Saturday costs more than any other day.

• The villa itself for the day, with its fee set by the day of the week and the number of guests, and lower in the weeks at either end of the season
• The dinner, from fourteen set menus at €150 to €235 a head including VAT, each opening with a cocktail and finger food, or a buffet of stations instead
• The bar, bought in advance as a package scaled to the guest list, which also keeps the villa open two hours longer
• The ceremony setting, with a fee for each of the Bellevue Edge, the Lemon Grove and the Seaside Pergola
• The rooms to get ready in, and any time beyond the villa’s hours

The flowers, arranged with local florists, the music and its performance taxes, and the celebrant are all extra. The wedding cake sits outside the menus, and the villa has no sound or video system of its own, so the sound comes in with the band.

A Magic Day wedding at Villa Eva for 70 to 100 guests starts at €100,000 and lands near €150,000.

The location is the reason to choose it. Villa Eva sits on the lane from the cathedral square to Villa Cimbrone, under ten minutes from the square and a few minutes from the family’s hotels. Guests walk to the wedding and walk home from it, and nobody waits for a shuttle on the coast road at two in the morning.

Midnight outside, two o’clock inside. Music in the garden stops at midnight, the curfew Ravello’s town hall sets, and the party moves into the soundproofed hall, where it runs until 2am with the bar package, and until 4am at the latest. We plan the evening in those two halves, with the dinner and the speeches outside and the dancing inside.

The villa closes on the minute. It has to be empty a quarter of an hour after the booking ends, and every quarter of an hour beyond that is charged, so the last drink and the last song come twenty minutes before the end. We schedule the farewell to that clock.

Bring the sound, and the drawings. There is no sound system at the villa, and a band from outside the villa’s own list comes with a volume monitor the villa appoints. Anything beyond the standard set-up, an extra bar or more lighting, needs a drawing the villa approves first, so we send ours with the first design rather than the last.

Villa Eva gives a wedding a Liberty villa, a garden over the coast, its own kitchen and a hall for the party after midnight. What it does not supply is the wedding around them: the flowers, the music, the sound, the celebrant and the design all come in from outside.

That is a planner’s work, and at a villa that keeps time this precisely, running the day to the minute is most of it.

Magic Day plans weddings at Villa Eva from the first conversation to the final farewell.