Villa Grabau wedding

Villa Grabau has stood on the hills behind Lucca since the 1500s, among the belt of historic villas north of the city.

The architecture is Renaissance underneath and Neoclassical on top: a loggia at the front, T-shaped halls behind it, and a sightline that runs from the long entrance avenue straight through the house to the gardens at the back. Inside there are frescoed vaults and trompe l’œil halls.

Outside, the formal gardens hold a collection of centuries-old lemon trees in their original terracotta pots. Beyond them lie an English garden of sequoia, cedar and tulip trees and a nine-hectare botanical park.

At the edge of the garden stands the Lemonhouse, built to winter the citrus, with stone openings carved by seventeenth-century artisans.

A Villa Grabau wedding is built around the Lemonhouse, which is always part of the hire, with the ceremony and the aperitivo in the gardens and the halls.

Three hundred and forty square metres, 280 of them usable, seating 300 for dinner. Vines fall from the roof in summer, and the terracotta walls glow at night. Dinner and the dancing at a Villa Grabau wedding happen here, whatever the weather.

The formal terrace north of the villa, also called the Italian Garden, with the lemon trees inside an amphitheatre of holm oak hedges and the Pizzorne hills behind. It comes with the Lemonhouse, with the garden in front of it, for the aperitivo.

A green stage of 572 square metres among centuries-old ginkgo trees, seating 230 for the ceremony, legal or symbolic. We prefer it for the ceremony, though the English Garden holds one too.

The romantic garden of rare trees, holding the civil ceremony as well, and the place for the photographs after it.

Frescoed halls for up to 200: the ballroom seats 90 to 96, the Hall of Faux Draperies 80, and three side lounges 36 each. They carry the aperitivo, and an indoor ceremony if it rains.

A Villa Grabau wedding starts from €120,000, and for optimal results we recommend budgeting €200,000 all-in for 150 to 300 guests.

Villa Grabau is hired by the day, from €7,000 for up to 100 guests to just under €15,000 for 300 with the villa’s ground floor and a ceremony garden. Above 100 guests the Lemonhouse adds €15 a head.

One rate holds through the season.

The Lemonhouse for the dinner and the dancing, the garden in front of it and the Lemon Garden for the aperitivo, and, where they are taken, the frescoed halls and the Box Hedge Theatre or the English Garden for the ceremony.

Villa Grabau has no in-house catering. Every caterer is brought in, and the estate welcomes any company without restriction, which leaves the choice of kitchen entirely with us.

The caterer, the tables and chairs, the lighting, the flowers, the music, the park houses and L’Arancera, and the hotels and coaches in Lucca.

Outdoor music at Villa Grabau stops at ten at night. Inside the Lemonhouse it runs until one.

Ten o’clock outside costs a Villa Grabau wedding very little, because the covered room is the largest space on the estate rather than a fallback, and the dinner is already in it when ten comes.

So the gardens hold the ceremony and the aperitivo, the Lemonhouse holds dinner and the dancing, and we time the move indoors for the light rather than for the rule.

Villa Grabau has 23 bedrooms between its park houses and L’Arancera, sleeping 54.

Three houses inside the park sleep 22. Casa di Annadora has four bedrooms for eight and its own pool, Casa di Orazio five bedrooms for ten, and La Stalletta two bedrooms for four, the last two sharing a pool. All three together come to just over €6,000 to just under €9,000, with high summer at the top, for a four-night minimum that costs the same as seven.

A restored farmhouse just outside the entrance gate, with twelve bedrooms for 24 and room for eight more, five kitchens, a citrus garden and a salt-water infinity pool. It is let whole or by the apartment, and booked on its own.

Fifty-four beds is the families and the wedding party. A wedding of 250 puts most of its guests in Lucca, eight kilometres down the hill, a walled city with hotels at every level, and we run one coach loop up to the villa.

The villa is on the Via di Matraia at San Pancrazio, in the hills north of Lucca, thirty minutes from the Versilia coast.

Lucca is eight kilometres away, Florence city centre an hour and seven and Siena an hour and 56.

Pisa airport is 56 minutes by road and Florence Peretola 59, so the two are the same distance. Bologna is an hour and 48 for long-haul arrivals.

A walled city eight kilometres away solves the accommodation, and two airports within the hour solve the flights. Between them they make a 250-guest international wedding simpler here than the bed count suggests.

A very large room, a modest hire, and a city at the bottom of the hill.

The calendar runs on weekdays.

The estate’s wedding dates fall mainly on weekdays. We start every Villa Grabau wedding from a Thursday or a Friday and build the weekend around it.

Put the saving into the kitchen.

The hire for 300 guests stays under €15,000, and the caterer is ours to choose. We appoint a kitchen strong enough for 300 in one room and put the difference into the food.

Take the park houses early.

The three park houses and L’Arancera are booked separately and go well ahead of the season. We hold them for the families before the wedding date is announced.

The rain plan is already built.

The Lemonhouse seats 300 under a roof and the halls take the ceremony, so a Villa Grabau wedding needs no marquee. We still set the aperitivo where it can step indoors in a minute.

Magic Day plans weddings at Villa Grabau from the first conversation to the final farewell, for 80 guests in the halls or for 300 in the Lemonhouse. The estate lets its Lemonhouse, its gardens and its frescoed halls by the day, and it has no in-house catering.

That leaves the caterer, the furniture, the lighting, the music, the park houses and L’Arancera, the hotel blocks inside Lucca’s walls and the coaches up the hill with the planner. We know how Villa Grabau runs: the dinner in the Lemonhouse before ten, the music inside until one, the civil ceremony in the Box Hedge Theatre rather than a town hall, and a wedding calendar that runs mainly on weekdays.

Tell us the dates you are considering and how many people are coming, and we will tell you what the day comes to.