Cost is the first question every couple asks and the one most published guides answer vaguely. Headline ranges of "€25,000 to €100,000+" are technically true and practically useless: the gap is so wide it tells you nothing about your wedding. This guide is more specific, written for British couples, in pounds, and honest about the costs that are easy to miss until an invoice lands.
The single most useful thing to understand early is the shape of the budget rather than the total. In Tuscany the venue is the biggest single line you will spend on — usually 25-45% of the total, climbing higher at prestige-estate and castle venues. Get the venue decision right and the rest of the budget falls into a predictable pattern. Get it wrong and every other number moves with it.
What a Tuscany wedding actually costs
For a typical British wedding party of 60-80 guests, a Tuscany wedding lands somewhere between £45,000 and £75,000 once everything is counted. Smaller, simpler celebrations sit below that; multi-day events at prestige estates with large guest lists rise well above it. An elopement or very small wedding can be done for considerably less — see our dedicated elopement guide.
Those figures assume guests pay for their own flights and most of their own accommodation, which is the normal arrangement for a destination wedding. If you intend to cover guest travel or hotels, treat that as a separate budget on top.
The rest of this guide breaks the total into its real components so you can build a budget from the bottom up rather than guessing at a headline number.
The venue: the biggest single line in your budget
Exclusive use of a wedding villa for the three to four nights around the wedding typically costs between £6,000 and £25,000 depending on the property. Restored farmhouses and mid-sized estates sit at the lower-to-middle end; grand noble villas and properties licensed for on-site civil ceremonies sit at the top. Castles and the most prestigious estate venues can run higher still. As a share of the total budget, the venue is usually 25-45% for most weddings, climbing toward half — or more — at castle and prestige-estate venues where the property itself is most of the spend.
Agriturismi — working farm estates — are the most economical venue type and can be genuinely beautiful, though they offer less of the polished grandeur some couples want. A private villa occupies the middle ground and is what most of our couples choose: full exclusive use, privacy, and accommodation for the closest family built into the venue cost.
Many venues also charge a separate event or "wedding fee" on top of the accommodation rate, scaled to guest numbers. Always ask whether the quoted price is venue hire only or venue plus event fee — the two are not the same, and the distinction matters when you compare properties.
Catering and drinks
Catering is the second-largest line. Expect roughly £95-£155 per guest (around €110-€180) for a well-executed multi-course meal using local ingredients. Premium catering — more courses, finer wines, a fuller open bar, more service staff — runs higher, into £215-£345 per guest (€250-€400) at the top end.
Drinks are sometimes inside the catering quote and sometimes separate; an open bar, a welcome aperitivo and wine across a long Tuscan evening add up. Local Tuscan caterers almost always produce a more authentic result, at lower cost, than teams imported from the UK, and we recommend the local route unless you have specific dietary or stylistic needs.
The wedding planner
A local wedding planner is close to essential for a destination wedding and is almost always a separate cost from the venue. Fees generally run £2,600-£5,200 (roughly €3,000-€6,000), scaled to the complexity of the event.
It is tempting to view the planner as the line to cut. It is usually the line that saves you money overall: a good planner has standing relationships with suppliers, negotiates on your behalf, prevents the expensive mistakes that come from planning a foreign wedding remotely, and manages the paperwork and timeline so you are not doing it from the UK. See our guide to choosing wedding suppliers for what a planner does and does not cover.
The 22% VAT trap
This is the cost British couples most often miss. Italian VAT (IVA) is 22% and applies to nearly every wedding supplier — venue, catering, flowers, photography, transport, planning. A quote of €10,000 is really €12,200 once IVA is added.
Some suppliers quote inclusive of VAT and some quote exclusive of it, and the two look almost identical on a proposal. Before you compare two quotes or sign anything, confirm in writing whether the figure includes IVA. Building 22% into your planning from the start, rather than discovering it line by line, is the difference between a budget that holds and one that drifts.
Flowers, photography, music and transport
Beyond venue, catering and planning, the remaining suppliers typically account for the next largest share of the budget together. Floral design ranges widely with ambition — a few arrangements and bouquets at the modest end, a full transformation of ceremony and reception spaces at the upper end. Photography and film is a meaningful line for most couples and worth protecting; Tuscan light and landscape are a large part of why you are marrying here.
Music spans a solo guitarist at the aperitivo to a live band plus DJ across the evening. Transport covers guest shuttles between hotels and the villa, supplier access, and sometimes a curfew-driven late coach back. None of these are large alone; together they are a budget line that deserves a number, not a guess.
Where your guests sleep
The wedding villa accommodates the closest family and the bridal party — usually 14-30 people. Everyone else stays elsewhere, and where they stay shapes both cost and logistics. Villas near towns with hotel infrastructure (Greve in Chianti, Lucca, Pienza, Montepulciano) make guest accommodation straightforward. Remote estates give privacy but require coordinating shuttles or a scatter of hotel bookings.
Guests normally pay for their own rooms, so this is rarely a direct budget line for you — but the transport to connect those rooms to the venue is, and the choice of venue location quietly drives that figure.
A worked budget: 70 guests in Chianti
As an illustration only — every wedding is different — here is how a £55,000 budget for 70 guests might divide. Venue and event fee: around £14,000-£18,000 (roughly 25-33% of the total — a mid-tier villa, not a castle). Catering and drinks at roughly £130 per head: around £9,000, before a premium upgrade. Wedding planner: around £4,000. Photography and film: around £4,500. Floral design: around £4,000. Music: around £3,000. Transport and shuttles: around £2,000. Hair, make-up, stationery, favours and the smaller lines: around £2,500. And then 22% IVA layered across the supplier costs that quote exclusive of it — typically another £8,000-£10,000 on top of the pre-VAT lines above.
The point of the exercise is not the exact figures — yours will move — but the proportions. The venue is the biggest single line, catering scales straight off your guest count, and the VAT sits on top of nearly everything. Build your budget in that order. A castle or prestige-estate wedding pushes the venue share higher and the budget total with it.
How to bring the cost down
Three levers move the total most. First, the date: a midweek wedding (Monday to Thursday) rather than a Saturday can save a meaningful amount on venue fees, and the shoulder months of April and October are materially cheaper than the May-June and September peak. Second, the guest list: catering scales almost linearly with numbers, so a shorter list is the most direct saving available. Third, the venue tier: an agriturismo or a mid-sized farmhouse rather than a grand estate changes the largest line in the budget.
What we would not cut is the planner or the photography. The planner protects the rest of the budget from expensive remote-planning mistakes, and the photography is much of why Tuscany was the choice. See our guide on the best time for a Tuscany wedding for how date choice trades weather against cost.
Cost figures here are honest planning ranges for 2026, not quotations, and currency conversions are approximate — exchange rates move, so build a margin for that into your budget. We will give you specific, itemised numbers for the properties and suppliers you are actually considering when you enquire.
Last reviewed 25 May 2026.