London Venues for Jewish Weddings

February 19, 2023 Dror Wayne

Introduction
Wedding Venues in Central London Hotels
Other Central London Wedding Venues
Wedding Venues in Stately Homes and Country Hotels
Wedding Venues in North-West London
Synagogues with Wedding Venues
Other Wedding Venues
Things to Look Out for When Choosing a Jewish Wedding Venue

Introduction

Looking for a venue for your wedding that accepts outside caterers, has multiple rooms, and is suitable for a Jewish wedding? Many people find searching for a Jewish wedding venue in London challenging, because many venues are too small, don’t accept outside caterers, and don’t have enough rooms for the various aspects of the Jewish wedding (the chuppah, tisch, bedeken, yichud, reception, dinner).

We’ve prepared this list of venues in and around London to help you plan your Jewish wedding. We hope it helps!

We’ve tried to make sure all the venues included allow external caterers, but as venues change their rules, please do check with them directly.

Wedding Venues in Central London Hotels

1. The Landmark London

2. The Langham Hotel

3. The Royal Lancaster, London

4. The Dorchester

5. The Kimpton Fitzroy

6. Waldorf Hotel, Aldwich

7. Renaissance St Pancras

8. Park Plaza Riverbank

9. London Marriott Hotel, Grosvenor Square

10. JW Marriott Grosvenor House, London

11. The Biltmore Mayfair

12. Hilton Park Lane

13. The Savoy

14. Claridge’s

15. Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park

16. Hyatt Regency London

Other Central London Wedding Venues

1. The DeVere Connaught Rooms

2. Tower Bridge

3. Kensington Palace

4. London Stadium

5. One Marylebone

6. 8 Northumberland Avenue

7. The Emirates Stadium

8. The Science Museum

9. Middle Temple, London

10. Vuk Banqueting

11. The Honorable Artillery Company

12. Marriott Regents’ Park

13. One Great George Street

Wedding Venues in Stately Homes and Country Hotels

1. Offley Place

2. Shendish Manor

3. Hedsor House

4. Sopwell House

5. North Mimms

Wedding Venues in North-West London

1. The Grove Hotel, Watford

2. The Kinloss Suite

3. The Village London Watford / Elstree

4. The Hilton London Watford

5. Hilton London Wembley

6. Club Wembley at Wembley Stadium

7. Holiday Inn Elstree

8. Best Western Palm Hotel

9. Stone X Stadium (Allianz Park)

10. The Pillar Hotel

11. Cavendish Banqueting Suite

Synagogues with Wedding Venues

1. Mill Hill Synagogue

2. St Johns Wood Synagogue

3. Marble Arch Synagogue

Other Wedding Venues

1. Thistle London Heathrow

2. Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew

3. Radison Blu Edwardian Heathrow

Things to Look Out for When Choosing a Jewish Wedding Venue

One of the best things about Jewish weddings is that they’re not required to take place in a licensed wedding venue in the UK - you’ll just need it to be under the auspices of a synagogue who provide the registrar and the wedding can take place indoors, outdoors at any location in the country. Nonetheless, there are some other challenges to take into account. In no particular order, make sure you look out for these when choosing your Jewish Wedding Venue

1. Sound Limiter

You don’t want the music cutting out when everyone cheers! Sound limiters are disastrous for events but are important for neighborhoods. Many hotels and other venues carefully build and insulate their venues so you won’t have this problem, but those who have not taken it into account and are near residential locations will be more likely to have a sound limit in place.

2. Acoustics

The acoustics of a wedding venue are important, but your event designers can help you utilise furniture to dampen the acoustics if necessary and likewise your production company should take acoustics into account with the sound design. That might mean two separate sound systems, one which is used for the music and dancing and the other which is used for speeches.

3. Blank Canvas

Is your wedding venue a blank canvas which you can entirely personalise or does it have more specific features in place already? Plain walls can be lit up with any colour and production companies can turn blank canvasses into entirely different settings but look out for detailed carpets, wall paintings and dark ceilings.

4. Parking and Transport

Consider how your guests are getting to and from your wedding. Is there parking available? What will the traffic be like? Is there transport for those who don’t drive (because they can’t or because they plan to drink). Venues outside of the city can be problematic because a £30 uber each way means it costs your guests more than expected to attend.

5. External Catering / Corkage

Some venues just don’t allow external caterers - others have corkage fees for bringing your own alcohol.

6. Strict Rules

I once saw a venue contract which said no drumming, no candles, no confetti and various other rules. Those are all understandable (the venue was in a hotel) but the client wasn’t aware of it. Half way through the dinner the venue manager appeared with a credit card machine and looked for the father of the bride to charge him a £500 cleaning fee because they used confetti. He didn’t mind the candles or the drummer in the band.

Look out for these rules because once you’ve booked and signed, they could come back and create a problem in your dream wedding!

7. Size

Many venues will give you an upper limit of how many guests their hall holds when laid out in various different formats. Often, they overrestimate what is comfortable and it becomes difficult for waiters to get between the tables with your dishes, guests feel cramped and the dance floor is small. Remember, at Jewish weddings we usually have dancing in between courses whereas at many non-Jewish weddings, the dancing is at the end and the tables get pushed to a side to make the dance floor bigger. Don’t underestimate the importance of the size!

8. Air Conditioning

Aircon should be spread evenly throughout the hall, perhaps with a slight increase over the dance floor area. Be wary of aircon systems that are concentrated at the edges of the hall - a number of guests will be freezing whilst the majority will be shvitzing.

9. Rooms

Ideally, you want a separate room for the Chuppah, Reception, Dinner and if you’re having a Tisch / Bedeken, that will need a room too. Plus somewhere for yichud and somewhere for photographing and some caterers will tell you that certain venues’ kitchens are just too small for them to prepare hundreds of plated meals to be served at the same time and they need more space to lay tables out to work.

Sometimes, you’ll have the Chuppah and Dinner in the same room which means your suppliers will have to turn it around during the reception. This isn’t easy and there can’t be as much attention to detail as when they’ve been working since 7am to get the rooms ready.

Do you have an insight we’ve missed about Jewish wedding venues? Or want to recommend that we include a venue here? Send us a message :)

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