Villa Sola Cabiati wedding

The villa stands on the western shore at Tremezzina, between the lake and the road, with an Italian garden in front of it and a park behind.

The main body was built in the early 1500s. In the second half of the eighteenth century Duke Gabrio Serbelloni added the two wings, the marble balconies and the curved pediments that give it the face it has now, and had “villulae quietem”, the stillness of a small villa, cut into the gate.

Inside are frescoes of the Tiepolo school, the family’s furniture and the family’s pictures, because the house is still the family’s. Since 2016 it has been run by Grand Hotel Tremezzo along the shore, which holds two Michelin Keys, and the villa is let to one party at a time with that hotel’s staff attached to it.

The property is small and the wedding uses most of it.

In front of the villa, facing the water. The ceremony goes here, and so does the reception.

The alternative ceremony setting, with the park behind.

The wet-weather plan, and the only one, because tensile structures and canopies are not permitted anywhere on the property.

Where the after-party sits once the evening comes indoors.

A heated outdoor pool, a sunbathing terrace and a private dock. No event and no music may be held in the rear garden or at the pool, so these are for the days around the wedding rather than for the day itself.

A Villa Sola Cabiati wedding starts from €150,000, and for optimal results we recommend budgeting €250,000 all-in for 24 to 36 guests.

Let whole, by the night. Because no event may be held between 31 May and 20 September, only four windows matter, and each carries its own minimum stay. Every rate below is plus 10% VAT.

Window	A night	Minimum	The stay
24 April to 14 May	€15,000	3 nights	just under €50,000
15 to 30 May	€20,000	4 nights	€88,000
21 to 26 September	€20,000	4 nights	€88,000
27 September to 31 October	€15,000	3 nights	just under €50,000

Outside those, the villa is open and cheaper still at €10,000 a night from November to late April, but a wedding on this lake in February is a different proposition and almost nobody wants one.

Check-in is from three and check-out at noon.

€10,000 plus VAT for a wedding of up to 40 guests, agreed under a separate event contract with the hotel.

The villa, the Italian garden and the park with its pool, with nobody else in any of them. Daily breakfast, a 24-hour butler, housekeeping with a turndown, and a private chef on full call.

It also carries the sister hotel along the shore. Guests can use its spa, its tennis court and its fitness centre through the stay, and its private beach and three pools as well.

Food and drink, which are quoted on what is actually consumed rather than per head. Transfers and laundry, spa treatments, and the flowers, the music, the photography and the setup a wedding needs.

A pre-authorisation of 20% of the booking is taken at check-in against damage, and the deposit is 30% at confirmation with the balance three months before arrival.

Everything about planning this villa comes back to two lines in the proposal, and they are easier to read early than late.

Functions of any kind are permitted in low and high season only. Nothing at all may be held between 31 May and 20 September, which closes the whole of high summer.

What survives is late April to 30 May on one side, and 21 September to the end of October on the other. Those two windows are the answer to when a wedding here is possible, and the table above prices each week inside them.

The villa and its grounds are under a noise restriction that permits background music through the day and the night. That is not a curfew, it is a volume, and it applies everywhere.

The after-party can run to eleven outdoors and midnight in the entrance hall, but it runs at that volume throughout and there is no version of the evening where it does not. A couple who pictures a band on the lawn is picturing a different house, and we would rather say so in the first conversation than in the fourth.

Six bedrooms, twelve adults, and two children under twelve on extra beds in some of the rooms.

Every room takes a double or two singles and has a private bathroom with a separate bath and shower. They are named for the family: Antonietta at forty square metres on the ground floor, Gianvico at sixty-five with a separate sitting area, Andrea and Amalia at fifty each, Nora at forty-five and Alberica at forty.

All six look over the lake.

Beyond twelve, the answer is Grand Hotel Tremezzo along the shore, which is where the rest of a forty-guest wedding sleeps and where the villa’s own staff come from.

The villa is on the Via Statale at Tremezzina, on the western shore opposite Bellagio, a few minutes from Villa del Balbianello and Villa Carlotta.

Bellagio is 14 minutes away and Como 44.

Milan Malpensa is an hour and 25 minutes by road, Linate an hour and 33 and Bergamo an hour and 49. Lugano across the Swiss border is 58 minutes.

There is a private dock, and on this stretch of shore the boat is usually the better arrival. Varenna is 25 minutes by water and the drive round is longer than the crossing.

Decide about the music before you decide about anything else.

This is the only villa on our Lake Como list where the restriction is on volume rather than on hours, and it applies at every point of the property and at every hour of the day. We always put that in the first conversation, because a couple who wants a party is not being badly served by this house, they are being pointed at the wrong one, and finding that out after a site visit is an expensive way to learn it.

The second thing is that the calendar and the rate card disagree, and the calendar wins. The peak rate runs from the middle of May to the end of September and weddings are barred for most of it, so the dates actually available are late April to 30 May and 21 September to the end of October. Two of those four windows carry the high-season rate rather than the peak one and a three-night minimum rather than four, which is why we always aim for 24 April to 14 May or 27 September to 31 October: the same villa, €38,000 less.

The third is that forty counts everyone. The twelve people sleeping in the house are inside the number, not beside it, so the real guest list is twenty-eight once the family is in. We plan this villa at 24 to 36 so that the count never becomes the thing anyone is thinking about on the day.

Then there is what the rate quietly includes, which is the part couples undervalue. A private chef on full call for three or four days is a different proposition from a caterer for one evening, and it turns the rehearsal dinner, the lunches and the farewell breakfast into things that simply happen rather than things that get quoted. For a wedding of this size that is most of the week.

Magic Day plans weddings at Villa Sola Cabiati from the first conversation to the final farewell. That means the three or four nights and the dates that are actually open, the guest list held inside forty, the symbolic ceremony in the Italian garden with the halls behind it, the music planned for the volume the villa permits, the chef briefed for the whole stay, the rooms at the hotel along the shore, 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 stay comes to.