A house that was
something else
first.
Villa Lena
An estate above Palaia, forty-five minutes from Pisa and an hour and a quarter from Florence, that spends most of the year as an artists’ residency and becomes a wedding venue only when somebody asks it to. That is the whole difference. Nothing here was built to hold a wedding, which is why a wedding here does not look like one.
Three weddings, three consecutive years, three different months — twenty-six guests in October, fifty in September, eighty-one in August. Everything below is from those days.
The ceremonynis here too
Two of the three married on the estate itself — in the garden behind the villa, with the hills doing the work no decoration can do. It is the reason to choose this place over a villa that rents you a lawn: you are not assembling a wedding out of separate locations, you are staying somewhere for two days.
The aisle runs between the columns and the olives, guests walk fifty metres from their rooms, and when it is over nobody has to be counted onto anything. The aperitivo is already happening on the terrace before the last person has stood up.
Photographs stop the day and a film keeps it moving, and at an estate this size the difference matters: the walking between places, the sound of eighty people at a pool, the light going down behind the villa while dinner is still being served.
Dinner is whatnyou came for
If there is one reason to choose this estate over the twenty others within an hour of Florence, it is where dinner happens. A long table in front of the villa, the terracotta going warm behind it, lights strung between the cypresses, and about forty minutes of light that are worth planning the entire evening around.
Tell your planner to serve early. Every wedding I have photographed here has run into that light and every one of them would have wanted more of it — not because anything went wrong, but because the best half hour of the year happens once and does not wait for the speeches.
- August
- Hard, bright light until late, and the pool becomes the venue whether or not it was on the plan. The good hour arrives after seven. Everything before it happens in shade or in water, and the day is built around avoiding the middle of the afternoon. The largest of the three, at eighty-one guests.
- September
- The same estate, an hour earlier. A five o’clock ceremony puts the couple portraits at six and dinner straight into the sunset at half past seven — which is as close to the ideal timeline as this place gets. Fifty guests, dinner in front of the villa, dancing by the pool at ten.
- October
- Everything moves forward an hour and a half: a four o’clock ceremony, dinner before seven, the first dance at nine and the night over by ten. Colour in the olives, a real chance of needing the indoor plan, and the softest light of the year. It suits a smaller wedding — twenty-six people, and the estate feels like a private house.
n A couple reading this has already decided they like the estate. What theyn have not decided is the date.
Our guests loved him too. He had a way of making all of us comfortable in front of the camera — they ended up looking like models.
Mouri · October 2023 · WeddingWire
- Lisa · September 2025
- “We just watched and are blown away … the editing was absolutely incredible.”
- Robin & Zoë · August 2024
- “They perfectly capture all the loving memories of our wedding. They truly feel like a dream to us.”
n Three weddings, three years, three couples. Mouri’s and Robin & Zoë’sn reviews are on WeddingWire under my name, alongside fifty others. Lisa wroten hers to me the night her film arrived.
A wedding, October 2023 — 26 guests A wedding, August 2024 — 81 guests A wedding, September 2025 — 50 guests
- Where it is
- Toiano, in the comune of Palaia, between Pisa and Florence. Pisa airport is 45 km away, about forty-five minutes. Florence airport is 63 km, about an hour — but the airport sits on the near side of the city, and from the centre of Florence, where your guests will actually be staying, it is closer to seventy kilometres and an hour and a quarter. More on a Friday afternoon. Worth knowing before you plan a welcome dinner in town.
- The last stretch
- Come in through Palaia. Some satnavs send you up the other side, which is narrower, unsealed and slower — and it is the road your grandmother’s car will be on. Put the approach in the guest information and it stops being a problem.
- The shape of the day
- Ceremony in the garden behind the villa, aperitivo on the terrace, dinner in front of it, dancing down at the San Michele pool. Four places, no cars, and guests who sleep where they celebrated.
- Numbers
- I have photographed twenty-six, fifty and eighty-one guests here. It carries all three, and it changes character between them: at twenty-six it is somebody’s house, at eighty-one it is a party in a garden.
- If you want a church
- There is one twenty minutes down the hill — the Pieve di San Martino at Palaia, Romanesque and older than the country. One of the three weddings went there and came back. It is a possibility, not a requirement, and everything else stays where it is.
n Everything on this page comes from days I photographed there. For then estate’s own rules, capacity and availability, ask the venue.
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