Villa Gamberaia wedding

The villa stands on the hill at Settignano, east of Florence, in the olive country that the Florentines have been building summer houses in for six hundred years.

The name comes from the people who owned the land in the fifteenth century, the Gamberelli. Two of them were the sculptors Bernardo and Antonio, known as the Rossellino, which is why the road to the gate is the Via del Rossellino. The house itself came later. Zanobi Lapi, a Florentine merchant, bought the property in 1610 and he and his heirs built the villa and laid out the garden in the first half of the century, with grottoes, fountains and a hydraulic system fed by the springs above it that still runs today.

What the world knows came around 1900. Princess Jeanne Ghyka, a Romanian noblewoman, bought the villa in 1896, lived there with the American artist Florence Blood, and replaced the old flower parterre with four long pools of water. Edith Wharton wrote about the garden a few years later, and it has been in the books ever since.

The war nearly ended it.

German troops occupied the villa in 1944 and a fire that August destroyed most of the interior. In 1954 the Florentine industrialist Marcello Marchi bought what was left and, with the architect Raffaello Trinci, rebuilt the house and restored the garden to its plan. His daughter Franca and her husband Luigi Zalum took it on in 1994, and the Zalum family keep it today, as a private house that opens for events and short stays. Villa Gamberaia is a member of the Grandi Giardini Italiani and of the Dimore Storiche Italiane.

A Villa Gamberaia wedding moves through the garden rather than sitting in one corner of it.

The garden is long and narrow, running north to south along the hill, and each part of it takes a different hour of the day.

The sunken grotto garden behind the villa, walled in pebble mosaic with twin staircases climbing to a balustrade. It takes a ceremony or a seated dinner for 80 and holds 150 standing for the cake. For a small wedding it is the most private room in the estate, and it has no roof.

At the end of the bowling green, a grotto framed by cypresses. This is the ceremony for a full wedding at Villa Gamberaia, up to 250 seated in the long green avenue in front of it.

Princess Ghyka’s water parterre, with the four pools, the clipped box and the arcade of yew opening onto the view. It holds 250, and it is where the photographs are taken whatever else happens.

The balustraded lawn beside the villa, looking west over Florence. The aperitivo goes here, for up to 250, and it is placed for the sunset over the city.

The long lawn south of the villa, with the house on one side and the hills on the other. The seated dinner for 250 goes here, and a marquee can stand on it.

The lemon house, beside its own garden of potted citrus. It seats 170 for dinner and holds 250 dancing, and at Villa Gamberaia it is both the rain plan and the room the party moves into at half past ten.

Inside the villa. The Blue Living Room seats 80 and works as the late bar, and it is the wet-weather room for a smaller wedding. The courtyard seats 80 and takes 120 dancing.

A Villa Gamberaia wedding starts from €120,000, and for optimal results we recommend budgeting €200,000 all-in.

The villa is hired whole for the event. The Villa Gamberaia wedding hire covers the gardens for the ceremony, the Florence Terrace and the bowling green for the aperitivo and the dinner, the Limonaia, the Blue Living Room, the courtyard and the ground-level cellars that look out over Florence. Doormen, toilet attendants, video security and the lighting of the garden and the façades come with it.

A weekday costs less than a Saturday.

The catering comes from outside the estate, along with the flowers, the production lighting, the band and the photographer. A marquee on the Bowling Green South is costed separately and only becomes necessary above 170 guests.

The eighteen bedrooms are let alongside the event, with breakfast and housekeeping included, and they belong in the Villa Gamberaia wedding cost from the first draft.

Music outdoors stops at half past ten.

That is the Municipality of Florence’s rule rather than the villa’s, and it applies across the city. After that the party carries on indoors, which at Villa Gamberaia means the Limonaia Hall, for up to 250 dancing.

So we write the evening backwards from half past ten. The aperitivo on the Florence Terrace at sunset, dinner on the bowling green while it is still warm, and the band already set up in the Limonaia before the last course goes out. Nobody notices the move when the room is ready.

Forty guests, in eighteen double bedrooms with four extra beds.

The villa has seven superior doubles and one suite, the Princess suite, with its own terrace over the Italian garden. The Limonaia apartment has four suites, and the Cappella and Nettuno apartments three double bedrooms each, each bedroom with its own shower room. Breakfast is served on the terrace overlooking Florence, and housekeeping and a concierge come with the rooms. There are two swimming pools.

Forty places against a guest list of 170 means most of the wedding sleeps in Florence. At fourteen minutes that is an easy ride up the hill, and Fiesole is twelve.

The villa is at Via del Rossellino 72 in Settignano, on the hills north-east of Florence, inside the city’s own boundary.

Florence’s Piazza della Signoria is 14 minutes by road, Santa Maria Novella station 18 and Fiesole 12. Siena is an hour and 20.

Florence Peretola is 26 minutes by road and is the airport to use. Bologna is an hour and 25 and Pisa an hour and 29, and Pisa carries the widest choice of direct flights from the UK.

Rome Fiumicino, three hours and 37 by road, is where most direct flights from the United States land. The fast train from Rome to Santa Maria Novella is the better route than the motorway, and the station is 18 minutes from the gate.

The garden is the venue, and the garden has a plan B for 170.

We plan at 170.

The Bowling Green South seats 250, but the Limonaia Hall seats 170. Up to 170 guests the rain plan is a room the estate already has. Above it, the rain plan is a marquee, and we put it in the first budget rather than in the week of the wedding.

The grotto suits a small wedding.

The Cabinet de Rocaille seats 80 for dinner, under the sky and walled on every side. For a wedding of 60 to 80 it is the room we would choose before the lawn, and the ceremony and the dinner can both happen there.

Guests in at the north gate, suppliers at the south.

The estate has two gates. We schedule every delivery and every van through the south gate and keep the north gate for guests, so the set-up and the arrival never meet on the drive.

The caterer is brought in.

The villa has no in-house caterer and keeps a list of trusted vendors, which is where we start when we appoint the kitchen for the day. Music in every space runs through the villa’s own professional sound system, so we brief the band on the house rig before they pack.

Magic Day plans weddings at Villa Gamberaia from the first conversation to the final farewell. The villa hire gives a couple the whole estate for the day, the house team and the sound system, and everything else falls to the planner: the caterer, the florist, the band and the production, the symbolic ceremony in the grotto or at the Ninfeo, the civil ceremony at Palazzo Vecchio, the eighteen bedrooms allocated, hotels blocked in Florence for everyone else, and the transfers up the hill.

What we know from the work is mostly about time. The evening is built backwards from half past ten, the Limonaia is set before the last course, and the guest list is held at 170 unless a marquee is in the budget. We plan weddings here from 40 guests to 250. Tell us the dates you are considering and how many people are coming, and we will tell you what the day comes to.