CHEAPEST Wedding Venues in Lake Como, Italy!

Apr 7

Lake Como is one of the most expensive wedding markets in the world right now. So you might be wondering, can I actually pull a wedding off there on a tight budget?

Yes, if you know where to look.

So stick around if you don't want to give up on your dream of an Italian Lakes destination wedding, because we've pulled out the cheapest, most cost-effective, and in my opinion, the highest bang for your buck properties to get married at in Lake Como, and I'm sharing what they charge.

As a destination wedding planner, I have been gathering intel on Lake Como for years, frankly because all of these couples keep coming to me with these big hopes and dreams of getting married there, and I've had to crush them by telling them they basically need to triple their budget to make it happen.

So I have been on a mission to find out how to do this cheaper in Lake COmo without having to move your wedding to one of the cheapest wedding destinations in Europe instead. And planning a low budget destination wedding all comes down to choosing the right venue.

Before I get into the list that I'm going to share today with all the pricing information, I want to educate you on what typical pricing looks like in Lake Como so that you have a frame of reference. Frankly, Lake Como venue costs are super high because it's a really beautiful area and it's in very high demand. When you think of those quintessential properties that are super TikTok and Instagram famous, typical pricing that you'll see would be around 30,000+ euros per day with some of the most famous properties going up to 50,000 euro or even 60,000 euros per day. These are what I call dream crushing prices. A lot of times you're paying that much and not necessarily to get anything besides access to the venue.

Unlike Tuscany destination weddings, a lot of these properties don't even include accommodations. To see my list of cheapest Tuscany venues, you can click here. These are merely the prices to walk in and breathe the air for six hours. For a lot of you, that is your total wedding budget! So we can't pay that.

Before I jump in, I'm going to be sharing pricing information. A disclaimer: pricing information changes every single year, so all of these prices are the current pricing that we have access to. All the prices I'm going to be sharing today are in euros and they are inclusive of the value added taxes (VAT). The exchange rate from the Euro to the USD changes every day. So for clarity's sake, everything is staying in euros.

Let's get into it

Villa Erba

The first venue I'm going to tell you about, we're actually planning a wedding there this year!

It's the most expensive of all the properties that I will be sharing today, but still a really high bang for your buck. It's called Villa Erba.

This property is smack dab right on Lake Como. You can reach down and touch the lake from the ceremony spot. It's a day rental only. There are no accommodations on site, but there are great nearby hotels and it is a 19th century villa located on the western coast of Lake Como. Couples are drawn to this property because you can have your ceremony right on the lake's edge with that quintessential lake Como view, and the inside of this property is absolutely spectacular for dinner and dancing. You can dance outside till 11:00 PM, but you do have to move inside after that due to the noise ordinance. Inside, you can go till 4:00 AM, but there's an extra fee for that, which we'll cover in a second.

This property can hold a lot of people, so it's a really great option if you have 250 plus guests. The wedding that we have there this summer is ~50 people so it's still a beautiful option for something more intimate like that.

A caveat of this property, there are required vendors that can make it a little bit more expensive and you have to get all the vendors to send the orders to the venue to approve what you're ordering. So there's a little bit of red tape that you have to jump over to get married here. Additionally, you have to use their preferred floral, AV, lighting, catering, rentals, and entertainment partners.

Let's talk about the current price for a full day. A one day rental up to 150 guests is 20,000 euros plus the 22% vat, so that brings that up to 24,000 euros. Like I said, this is going to be the most expensive property we talk about today.

It’s certainly still expensive, but when you compare it to other properties that have the same view and the same infrastructure within Lake Como, this is a fraction of the price. Not to mention if you were to compare it to anything remotely similar within the United States, you would be seeing those same prices. So hello… If we're going to pay the same rates, we might as well be in Lake Como!

Now, if you have over 150 guests, the price increases incrementally by about 2000 euros, and if you want to extend your rental past 1:00 AM, it's 1,000 euros + vat per hour and you can go till four.

2. Villa Carminati Resta

Let's move on to the venue that, in my opinion, is one of the villas that is the absolute best value and one of the cheapest options in Lake Como. It's Villa Carminati Resta. This one is also right on the lake.

It's an 18th century villa and it has accommodations on site. It can sleep eight people. This is also on the west side of Lake Como and has direct lake access. You can have your ceremony in the lakefront garden and there's a courtyard area where you could do your cocktail hour, and then they have indoor spaces that also still have a lake view that are available for the reception. There is a 2:00 AM curfew here inside, you can extend to 3:00 AM for a fee.

Let's get into the price, which is my favorite part. For the venue only without the accommodations, it's about 8,500 euro for a weekend and just over 7,000 euros for Monday through Thursday. If you add on the loft and the greenhouse rental on this property, the price will go up to about 9,000 euros for the weekend and about 7,300 euros for Monday through Thursday.

So the maximum you're paying for this property for one day is about 9,700 Euros, which to be at a villa on the side of Lake Como touching the lake is a deal. What's even better is if you have a really small guest count, you can actually take off the use of the main building, only use the lakefront garden, the loft and the courtyard, and that's only 4,700 euros.

But if you just want to do everything, the whole property and the rooms on site that sleep the eight people, that's 11,000 euros per night for a weekend or 9,200 euros per night for Monday through Thursday. If you'd like to extend the party from 2am to 3am, it's just an additional fee of about 1800 Euros.

Now, I buried the lead. The best part of all of those prices that I just shared with you, those are high season prices from May through September, meaning if you got married here in October through May, it costs even less. Prices drop around 1200 euros across the board if you move to the low season.

3. Villa Regina Teodolinda

Let's move on to one of our absolute favorites. Again, super high value for dollar. It's Villa Regina Teodolinda. This is also right on the edge of Lake Como in Laglio. Our team loves this property and we visited last year. There's also Lakeside access.. You can literally come and go via boat! Unlike the other properties we've talked about so far, it has a pool and accommodations on site, so this one gives more of a family vacation vibe rather than wedding venue vibes. This property is an amazing deal because it has six suites that sleep 12 people, so this is perfect if you want to have your VIP guests stay with you and the rest of your family are staying close by at hotels.

A caveat to this one, similar to the first venue we talked about, there are required vendors. The other caveat is that it's actually a maximum of a two nights stay. This is unlike a lot of properties that we see where there's typically a minimum stay of two or three nights. But here, you can't stay more than two nights. If you do choose to have the property here for two nights, you have to host an event on each day, meaning you'd have to have your welcome party there on the day before. They're basically relying on the food and beverage minimum from an additional party if you decide to stay. But I mean, twist my arm, I'll stay an extra night.

The other caveat with this villa is that there is a 50 guest minimum. So if you have less than 50 guests, you can still get married here, but you're going to get charged the food and beverage prices based on 50 guests.

Alright, let's talk about the best part: the price. May through September, which is the high season. it's about 12,200 euros per night, (and you can do one night if you don't want to do two), and that's for the weekend price. You'll shave 2000 euros off of that if you decide to move to midweek. In the low season, April and October, the price is even better. It's about 8,500 euro per night for the Saturday and for midweek, it's just 6,100 euros per night.

And remember, you can have your guests pay for those rooms so that you can subsidize the cost of this nightly rate, making it even less for you. These rates are just unheard of for Lake Como.

4. Villa Relais Vittoria

Let's move on to our next property. It's literally right next door. Villa Relais Victoria. This is a boutique hotel also in Laglio. It's right next to Teodolinda. We also got to visit this property last year and got to stay overnight. It was lovely!

This one we love because it's even bigger. It sleeps 26 guests across 13 rooms and they actually have another four rooms available at their sister Villa, Villa Costa Cecilia. It is a boutique hotel, but you can rent the whole thing out to make it a “villa” or you can do a partial rental and know that there are other hotel guests there with you, but that saves a ton of money.

At this property, there are tons of alfresco spaces for you to have ceremony, cocktail dinner, all outside. You can have live music outside till 8:00 PM but then you move inside to their winery where you can dance till 11:00 PM during the week, 11:30 PM on Saturdays. It's on the smaller side, though it can technically sit up to 68 people for a seated dinner, (plus another 25 people that could sit on the veranda).

But having been there in person, we recommend 60 or less as the most optimal comfortable amount here.

Now if you have less than 30 guests, that's when you can decide not to do the exclusive buyout of the villa. If you have more than 30 guests, you have to buy out all the rooms. So let's assume that you have more than 30 guests and talk first about the venue rental fee and then we'll talk about what the accommodations cost.

From the high season in June through September, that venue rental fee is about 12,800 euros for the exclusive use of the property. That price drops dramatically in low season, (which at this property May is included in low season!). Low season here is technically April, May, and October. The exclusive fee then is 6,200 Euros. So again, this is the fee that you're paying to shut down the whole hotel, to have it for just you and your guests.

If you have less than 30 people and you don't care about there being other hotel guests in the public spaces of the hotel while you're doing your wedding events, that price is zero. You're not paying for anything except for the rooms.

Let's get into the room price. To book all 13 rooms June, July, August, September and holidays, the total is 9,000 euros per night. For May, and the first half of October the price goes down to around 7,200 euros per night. Other periods outside that in low season, it's only 5,100 euros per night.

Guys, I can't stress to you how cheap that is for something this beautiful in this location. Plus that also includes breakfast! And remember, your guests can pay you for these rooms too. So this 5,000, 7,000, 9,000 euros, etc, depending on the time of year you're getting married, could effectively be zero if you charge them the right amount for the rooms. Or you can pay half and they can pay half and everyone's happy and you save so much money.

Couple caveats with this property, if you don't pay for that exclusivity, the pool and the public spaces within the property are open to other hotel guests. So even if you pay for exclusivity on the wedding day, the day before, if you're there, the exclusivity isn't guaranteed. You can pay for that day to be exclusive to you and your guests as well, but if you want to do that it is an additional fee of around 5,000 euros (midweek) or 6,000 euros Saturday or Sunday. Those prices go down to about half of that in the low season. But again, you can avoid all those fees altogether if you're okay with non exclusivity.

Okay, let's move on now to a couple venues that are not on Lake Como, but they're surrounding the other lakes in the lakes region of Italy that are super cheap. So you can get the same Lake Como vibe and access to these types of areas, but you get so much more value for dollar.

5. Convento dell’Annunciata

Next up, another venue that's about a 35 minute drive from Lake Garda is Convento dell'Annunciata. This is a fantastic option that's beautiful, it's cheap and it's within driving distance of everything that you want to see. This one's not a hotel, it's a 15th century family estate. And it is a venue rental only, there are no accommodations on site. So you'll be staying at hotels nearby.

The venue rental fee is only 8,000 euros (that's the weekend price). For Monday through Thursday, it's only 7,000 euros.

6. Dimora La Catilina (Vivilo Ristorante)

Okay, let's talk about another one. This one is Dimora La Catilina. It sits on a private hill overlooking Lake Iseo and is about 15 minutes by car from the town of Iseo, but you can see the lake from the property. It's a renovated farmhouse surrounded by woods and olive trees and has a panoramic view of the lake. It is a venue only, there are no accommodations, so you'll be staying at a hotel nearby.

The best news is that this one is the cheapest one.

Depending on the day of the week you choose, the price to rent is as low as 2,500 euros up to 4,000 euros. Damn, that's cheap. There's a cool hotel nearby called Hotel Mirabella, so you can put all your guests there and then do this property for the wedding. That's like unheard of lake pricing…

Now that you know some of these hidden gems and their prices, it's time to figure out what the rest of your wedding will cost. To do that, you can download my free pricing guide to estimate the cost of your destination wedding in Europe. The link to that is below!