Villa Lario wedding

The resort stands at Mandello del Lario on the eastern shore of the Lecco arm, with the Grigna rising behind it and a long view north towards Varenna.

This is the quiet side of the lake. There is no Bellagio traffic, no single-lane Via Regina, and the villages along the shore are working ones. What there is instead is a five-star property with its own beach, a dock, a pool above the water and nine suites spread across a villa, an old boathouse and two caves cut into the rock.

Amandus, the restaurant, is in the Michelin Guide and run by an executive chef who has been here a decade. Its kitchen cooks the wedding.

The resort is taken whole on the wedding day, and the evening moves down through it.

A flat lawn above the water, given over to the ceremony. It is the image the place is known by, and it is also, when a marquee goes on it, the wet-weather ceremony plan.

Palms and lawns, and a pool terrace facing the lake, where the aperitivo goes.

Indoors, where dinner sits for up to 110 guests whatever the weather does.

Ten metres by twenty beside the pool, with crystal drapes and chandeliers over a wooden floor, which is how the resort takes 160 to a seated dinner.

Private, on the water, for the boat away at the end and for the day after.

A Villa Lario wedding starts from €150,000, and for optimal results we recommend budgeting €250,000 all-in for 80 to 110 guests.

The resort to yourselves, plus VAT:

• Monday to Thursday: €10,000
• Friday to Sunday: €11,000

All nine, for a minimum of two nights, the night before the wedding and the night of it. VAT and breakfast are inside the figure:

• April and October: just under €7,000 a night
• May to September: just over €8,000 a night

Extra beds are €134 a night, and additional nights are offered at a rate below the hotel’s own list price.

The kitchen is internal and outside catering is not possible. Two wedding menus are published at €218 and €240 plus VAT per person, both running from an aperitif buffet through four courses to the cake. Children up to eleven are €55.

Unlimited wine is €27 plus VAT a head. A professional open bar with mixed cocktails runs from just over €3,000 for up to a hundred people to just under €5,000 for up to a hundred and fifty, for three hours.

Internal event coordination on the wedding day is just under €2,000, and €670 for a second event. It sits alongside a planner rather than instead of one.

• Marquee rental: just under €10,000 plus 22% VAT
• Exclusivity for the day it goes up: just over €4,000
• Exclusivity for the day it comes down: just over €4,000
• A marquee on the helipad for the ceremony: just under €4,000

Read those four lines together. Crossing 110 guests is not a €10,000 decision, it is closer to €18,000 once the two days of exclusivity are in, and that is before the extra covers are catered.

A barbecue, a brunch, a pizza party, a welcome cocktail or an Italian dinner on another day takes the resort again at just under €6,000 plus VAT.

Music outdoors stops at half past ten. That hour is set by the commune, not by the resort, so it is not something anyone can negotiate.

The fireworks fall under the same deadline, which is worth planning for, because a firework finale and a cake cutting and a first dance cannot all happen in the last twenty minutes before the garden goes quiet.

After half past ten the party moves indoors and runs to one in the morning. An hour beyond that is €3,000 plus VAT, with the overnight security cover charged on top of it, so the second hour of a late night costs more than most couples expect and is better decided before the contract than at midnight.

Nine suites, holding twenty to twenty-two people once the extra beds are in.

Two sit directly on the lake with private gardens. Two more are cut into natural caves in the rock behind the property, with the stone left bare inside. The rest are in the main villa and in the old boathouse over the water, and all nine were restyled recently.

The two-night minimum takes every one of them, used or not, for the night before the wedding and the night of it. For a guest list of a hundred that means twenty people on site and the rest in Mandello, Lierna or Varenna, which is sixteen minutes up the shore.

The resort is at Mandello del Lario, on the eastern shore of the lake’s southeastern arm, between Lecco and Varenna.

Varenna is 16 minutes away and Bellagio 42, by road around the headland or across by water.

Milan Linate is an hour and seven minutes by road and Bergamo an hour and ten. Malpensa, which is what most people book for Lake Como, is the slowest at an hour and 24, because this is the Lecco arm and the motorway comes from the other direction.

Como itself is 52 minutes, which surprises people who assumed it was next door.

Everything here is already priced, and that is rarer than it sounds.

Most of the great houses on this lake quote a rental and leave the rest to arrive later in the process. Villa Lario publishes the exclusivity by day of week, the rooms by month, two menus, the wine, the open bar, the coordination, the overtime, the security, the marquee and the second event, all in one document. We always model the full weekend here on the first pass, because for once the numbers to model it with exist.

The second thing is the hundred and ten. Below it, dinner sits in the existing rooms whatever the sky does and nothing else is needed. Above it, the marquee becomes mandatory and costs about €18,000 once the two days of exclusivity are counted, which is a bigger jump than the extra covers themselves. A guest list hovering around a hundred and five is worth holding there.

The third is the arm of the lake. Mandello is on the Lecco side, which means Linate and Bergamo beat Malpensa, Como is nearly an hour away, and the shore road is not the Via Regina with its one lane and its summer queue. Guests arriving from Milan have an easier journey here than to any villa on the western shore, and almost nobody expects that.

Then there is half past ten, which is the commune’s hour rather than the resort’s. It catches the fireworks as well as the band, so the last stretch of the garden evening gets crowded if nobody has planned it. We set the cake, the fireworks and the move indoors as three separate moments with air between them, and the evening carries on inside until one.

Magic Day plans weddings at Villa Lario from the first conversation to the final farewell. That means the day of the week chosen against the rate, the two nights and nine rooms held, the guest list decided either side of 110, the menus costed at the real number, the symbolic ceremony on the helipad, the fireworks timed before half past ten, the move indoors, and the overtime hour settled before signature.

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.