When The Ritz opened on Piccadilly in 1906, its neighbour was Lord Wimborne, a steel magnate who lived in the house next door and began a long dispute with the new hotel over land. That house now belongs to The Ritz, and it is where a Ritz wedding takes place. William Kent House, begun in 1743 for the Prime Minister Henry Pelham, holds the rooms licensed for the ceremony and the dining rooms where the wedding dinner is served, with Green Park beyond the west windows. A couple marries in a Georgian prime minister’s town house and spends the night in César Ritz’s hotel next door.
A prime minister’s town house
Henry Pelham became Prime Minister in 1743 and in the same year engaged William Kent, the architect and designer credited with introducing the Palladian style into England, to build him a house at 22 Arlington Street. It went up in two phases. Kent died in 1748, and his assistant Stephen Wright completed the house in 1754, the year Pelham died.
The Green Park front, in yellow brick, is eleven bays wide, with full height canted bays and a wrought iron balconette at every window. Inside, a galleried staircase rises under a coffered ceiling, and the saloon at the centre of the west front has a ceiling coffered in red and blue panels set with small relief figures. The house has been listed Grade II* since 1958, and an English Heritage plaque put up in 1995 on the Green Park side records it as Pelham’s home.
César Ritz arrives on Piccadilly
The Ritz opened on 25 May 1906. César Ritz conceived it, and its architects were Charles Mewès, who had designed the Hôtel Ritz in Paris, and Arthur Davis; it was their first major commission in London. Norwegian granite and Portland stone clad one of the earliest steel frames in the capital, and a channelled arcade runs over the Piccadilly pavement in the manner of the rue de Rivoli. The richest gilding inside is in the central court and in the restaurant at the Green Park end of a long promenade corridor. The hotel is also listed Grade II*.
In September 1917 a shell exploded in Green Park close to the hotel, and Lord Ivor Churchill recorded that it broke every window in Wimborne House. In 1947 the Eagle Star insurance group bought the house, restored its eighteenth century interiors and made it the company’s headquarters, which it remained until 2005.
How the house joined the hotel
The Ritz bought the house in 2005, refurbished it, returned its private dining rooms and suites to their Renaissance style decoration, and opened it to hotel guests in November 2006. Its first official event after the work was Queen Elizabeth II’s 80th birthday celebration that year, which also spread across the hotel’s ground floor and The Ritz Club. In January 2002 the then Prince of Wales granted The Ritz a Royal Warrant for banqueting and catering services, the first and only hotel to hold one, and King Charles III granted a Royal Warrant again in May 2024.
One room on the hotel side has a wartime past. Winston Churchill, Dwight Eisenhower and Charles de Gaulle met in the Marie Antoinette Suite during the Second World War to discuss operations, and the suite is licensed today for wedding ceremonies.
The wedding rooms of William Kent House
The rooms of the house meet at the Grand Hall, at its centre, beneath a mural by Mao Wen Biao; this is where the group photographs are taken. The Queen Elizabeth Room, a drawing room looking over Green Park, is licensed for ceremonies and also serves as the reception room for The William Kent Room, where dinner is laid. The Wimborne Room, which keeps the house’s old name, has damask silk walls and a gold leaf ceiling and suits a smaller lunch or dinner. Across in the hotel, the Marie Antoinette Suite opens off the Long Gallery beside The Ritz Restaurant and can hold a cocktail reception of its own.
This is a house for a wedding of moderate size. A ceremony takes up to 60 guests, the largest seated dinner is for 72, and a standing reception can reach 200. The rooms of William Kent House can be reserved for the wedding alone, while the hotel around them carries on with its other guests. Ceremony, dinner and dancing all take place indoors, so the day does not hang on the weather, and live music and dancing are allowed in designated areas until midnight.
Dinner from a kitchen with two Michelin stars
Every wedding is catered by the hotel’s own kitchen, and kosher catering is available. John Williams MBE has run that kitchen as executive chef since 2004. The son of a Tyneside fisherman, taught to cook by his mother, he builds his menus on the principles of Auguste Escoffier and cooks with British produce in season. Under him The Ritz Restaurant won its first Michelin star in the guide for 2017, the first in the hotel’s history, and its second in February 2025. In 2024 he became President of the Royal Academy of Culinary Arts, after twenty years as its chairman.
Beyond the wedding rooms, the hotel’s restaurant, tea room and bar are there for guests staying the weekend. The restaurant looks onto Green Park through floor to ceiling windows, afternoon tea is served in the Palm Court at five sittings between 11.30 am and 7.30 pm, and The Rivoli Bar mixes seasonal cocktails. Gentlemen wear a jacket and tie for afternoon tea and in the restaurant; smart casual dress is fine at breakfast, in The Rivoli Bar and in The Secret Garden.
Pelham’s chambers for the wedding night
The grandest rooms for the couple are in William Kent House itself. The Royal Suite occupies Henry Pelham’s former private chambers: 204 square metres over two floors, a sitting room with gold leaf detailing, a formal dining room seating ten, which is the largest private table at The Ritz, two dressing rooms, and floor to ceiling windows over Green Park and The Secret Garden. Reserved together with The Burlington Suite, it gives a wedding party the entire floor.
The Prince of Wales Suite, also in the house, is larger at 216 square metres, with a reception room, a private study and a dining room for eight, and it can be taken with The Arlington Suite for a floor of its own. Guests in the Signature Suites have a personal butler and an airport transfer in the hotel’s chauffeur driven Rolls-Royce Phantom. The rest of the guest list can stay in the hotel’s rooms and suites, so nobody needs a car between the last dance and bed.
The Secret Garden
The Secret Garden opened on 8 June 2026. Marcus Barnett Studio and David Collins Studio laid it out as an English garden of grasses and perennials, irises, hellebores, hydrangeas, crab apple trees and white wisteria around a central water feature. It is reached through the hotel’s Arlington Street entrance and opens daily through the summer as a place for drinks and dining, weather permitting. For a wedding, the garden is used for a summer reception and for photographs.
Arriving at 150 Piccadilly
Green Park station, on the Piccadilly, Victoria and Jubilee lines, is less than two minutes’ walk from the door. Guests flying into Heathrow can take the Heathrow Express to Paddington and the Underground on to Green Park; from Gatwick, the Gatwick Express runs to Victoria, with the Victoria line north from there. Valet parking is available, and the Ritz Rolls-Royce can be hired with a chauffeur for the arrival. The hotel marked its 116th anniversary with a short film. For the neighbourhood, see weddings in St James’s and London wedding venues, read the legal requirements for marrying in London, or compare The Goring and The Dorchester.
The day keeps to one house: vows in a drawing room over Green Park, drinks in the same room before dinner in The William Kent Room, and the Royal Suite waiting in Pelham’s old chambers. The decision to settle first is the dinner list, because the largest seated wedding dinner is for 72. Couples whose list fits can read The Ritz London profile and check your date.
