Antico Casale Urbani

“Stunning Wedding Setting, Stressful Experience”

We fell in love with this venue when we first visited. The grounds are absolutely stunning, there are lots of layout options, and the atmosphere feels relaxed and special. The food at our tasting day was incredible, which gave us a lot of confidence booking a three-day wedding package, especially a… more

We fell in love with this venue when we first visited. The grounds are absolutely stunning, there are lots of layout options, and the atmosphere feels relaxed and special. The food at our tasting day was incredible, which gave us a lot of confidence booking a three-day wedding package, especially as we were planning from the UK with my husband’s family based in Italy. It’s important to know that the venue runs quite “DIY.” They provide the food and space, but you’re expected to hire an external planner to manage timings and structure. That’s fine in theory, but we found organisation and communication from the venue itself to be very poor. We constantly had to chase invoices just to understand what we owed, correct pricing mistakes, and remind them to remove items that shouldn’t have been there. A few days before the wedding, they told us we owed more money despite an email trail confirming the agreed price, which created completely unnecessary stress right before the big day. There were several moments where we felt costs were prioritised over care. At one point, the owner even suggested double-booking the third day of our wedding with another party and that we could “share” the space and their band. We also paid for a lifeguard for our pool party who turned out to be the same person working the bar. During our three-night stay, the rooms were lovely, but there were no facilities to buy drinks or food unless everything had been prepaid. Bars were often closed with no staff available, including the night after our pool party and even the morning of the wedding when guests couldn’t buy water or coffee. It felt like the systems weren’t set up for a multi-day wedding. The pool party day itself was disorganised — towels left wrapped in plastic, no floats as agreed, and the pool cleaning machine still in the water while guests were swimming. Small details, but they add up when you’re hosting lots of people. The food on the actual wedding day was also disappointing compared to the tasting. We had specifically asked for softer pasta/risotto to suit our preferences, but it came out quite hard and wasn’t adjusted. For our pizza party, we were told pizzas would be cooked in the open fire oven, but instead they simply arrived on plates. Our evening “unlimited bar” had one overwhelmed staff member serving cocktails for around 60 guests, which meant long waits all night. It’s such a shame because the venue itself is genuinely beautiful and has so much potential. But overall, we didn’t feel supported or looked after, and the experience often felt understaffed, unorganised, and overly focused on cutting costs rather than delivering what had been agreed. If you choose this venue, be prepared to be very hands-on, double-check everything in writing, and manage a lot of the logistics yourself.

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