The St. Regis New York Wedding Guide (2027): Cost, Capacity & Everything Else

The St. Regis stands at the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 55th Street, where John Jacob Astor IV opened it in 1904. It is still the grandest of the old Midtown hotels, and the King Cole Bar off the lobby is still where New Yorkers take people they want to impress.

A wedding here is three rooms on two floors. You marry in the gilded Versailles room on the second floor, take the elevators to the 20th for cocktails in the glass-walled Penthouse, then walk through to dinner and dancing under the painted clouds of the Rooftop Ballroom. Nobody goes outside, and nobody needs a car.

The package is $500 per person, with a $10,000 venue fee and $5,000 for a ceremony at the hotel. With service charge and tax, the hotel’s bill for 150 guests comes to about $119,000, and a complete wedding to roughly $200,000 to $280,000. The tradeoff is easy to state. This is a formal indoor hotel wedding that ends at midnight, and it is at its best below 180 guests.

• Location: Two East 55th Street at Fifth Avenue, Midtown Manhattan
• Venue type: Historic full-service hotel, opened 1904
• Wedding package: $500 per person, 100-guest minimum
• Venue and ceremony fees: $10,000 venue fee. $5,000 for a ceremony at the hotel
• Service and tax: 25% service charge and 8.875% sales tax, which takes $500 to about $680 a head
• Hotel cost at 150 guests: About $119,000, ceremony included
• Typical total budget: $200,000 to $280,000 for 150 guests*
• Dinner and dancing capacity: 220 in the Rooftop Ballroom
• Cocktail capacity: 200 in the Penthouse
• Sweet spot: 100 to 180 guests
• Rain plan: None needed. Ceremony, cocktails, dinner and dancing are all indoors
• Smaller weddings: Fewer than 100 on selected dates, in the second-floor rooms
• Rooms: 238 in the hotel, 67 of them suites. The package includes a suite for the couple for two nights and a second room the night before
• Catering: By the hotel. The cake, flowers, music and photography are yours to bring
• The finish: A five-hour bar and a midnight farewell, with an after-party available at $150 a head
• Getting there: LaGuardia, about 35 to 75 minutes by car
• Best for: A formal Manhattan wedding where the rooms are the design
• Main consideration: The real cost is well above $500 a head, and the 220 figure applies to dinner only

*RoamRecs planning estimate.

Choose the St. Regis for the rooms and for the way the evening moves through them. Each part of the day gets its own setting: gold and mirrors for the ceremony, glass and skyline for cocktails, a painted sky for dinner. Guests change rooms three times and never see the same backdrop twice.

Its quiet advantage is that the indoor wedding is the wedding. There is no garden you were hoping for and no ballroom held in reserve. A wet Saturday changes the arrivals and the street portraits, and nothing else.

First, clear up the name. The Rooftop Ballroom is a ballroom on the 20th floor, enclosed, with chandeliers and arched windows. It is not a roof terrace. If open air is what you are picturing, look at the Peninsula across the street.

The sweet spot is 100 to 180 guests. The ballroom takes 220 for dinner and dancing, but the Penthouse holds 200 for cocktails and Versailles seats 200 before you add an aisle. Below 180, every room is comfortable and the dance floor can be generous. At 220, the ceremony and the cocktail hour both need a second plan.

Two things come with the territory. First, $500 is the menu price. Once service, tax and the fees are on, the hotel’s share is closer to $800 a head at 150 guests, and flowers, music and photography come after that. Second, the party is built to end at midnight. You can buy an after-party, but this is a dinner-dance, and couples who want a 3 a.m. dance floor will be happier elsewhere.

Best for: a black-tie crowd, a guest list of 100 to 180, and couples who would rather spend on the room than on transforming one.

Think twice if: you want to be outdoors, you want the whole building to yourselves, or the late-night party is the point.

The current package is $500 per person with a minimum of 100 guests, plus a $10,000 venue fee. A ceremony at the hotel adds $5,000.

The number to carry in your head is $680. Food and drink take a 25% service charge, and New York sales tax of 8.875% is charged on top of both. That turns $500 into about $680 a head before the fees.

The hotel’s bill, with the venue fee, ceremony fee and bartenders included:

• 100 guests: about $85,000
• 150 guests: about $119,000
• 200 guests: about $154,000

The 100-guest figure is also the floor. A list of 80 on a standard date still pays for 100.

What the $500 buys

• Passed hors d’oeuvres and buffet stations at cocktails
• A three-course dinner with a choice of entrée
• A five-hour premium open bar, wine with dinner and Champagne on arrival and for the toast
• A suite for the two of you for two nights
• A second room the night before the wedding
• A tasting
• Cake cutting with the St. Regis sterling silver sword

Think of it as dinner, drinks and the rooms, done properly. Everything that makes it your wedding (the cake itself, flowers, music, photography, lighting) you bring in.

The extras worth knowing

• Bartenders: $350 each, one per 75 guests. Two at 150, three from 151
• Coat check: from $825 per attendant, required October through April
• Vendor meals: $100 each, about $136 with service and tax. Count your photographers, band and planner
• Children’s menu: $175
• Carving station chef: $350
• Valet: $120 a car, about $142 with parking tax
• Extra bar time: $50 per person per hour
• After-party: $150 per person for two food stations and one more hour of premium bar

The after-party is the big one. For 150 guests it adds about $31,000 with service and tax. If you want one, invite the whole wedding upstairs for the last dance and price the after-party for the guests who will actually stay.

Holding the ceremony elsewhere takes the $5,000 fee off the bill. It rarely saves money once a second venue and cars are involved, and it gives up the best thing about the hotel, which is that nobody has to move further than an elevator.

A well-produced St. Regis wedding lands in these ranges. They are RoamRecs planning estimates for one wedding day in June at the hotel’s current rates, with a ceremony at the hotel.

• 100 guests: $155,000 to $225,000
• 150 guests: $200,000 to $280,000
• 200 guests: $245,000 to $340,000

Here is where the money goes at 150 guests:

• The hotel, including vendor meals: about $121,000
• Planner, photography and video: $24,000 to $44,000
• Flowers, furniture, lighting and production: $38,000 to $69,000
• Music: $7,000 to $20,000
• Cake, cars and officiant: $4,000 to $9,500

Add a 10% cushion on everything except the hotel and you arrive at the range above.

Three things move the total. Guest count: every guest is about $680 at the hotel before a flower is ordered, so the list is the biggest lever you have. The ceiling: the room arrives decorated. Low centerpieces and good lighting are enough here, and a hanging installation is where budgets run. The band: a DJ sits near the low end of the music line and a large live band sits at the top of it.

Ask the band, the hotel and your production company what sound and lighting each is bringing before you sign all three. It is the easiest place at a hotel wedding to pay for the same equipment twice.

The ranges leave out a welcome party, a rehearsal dinner, a farewell brunch, an after-party, guests’ rooms and winter coat check.

The St. Regis seats 220 for dinner and dancing and is at its most comfortable with 100 to 180.

• Rooftop Ballroom (20th floor): Dinner and dancing. 220
• Penthouse (20th floor): Cocktails. 200 standing
• Versailles (2nd floor): Ceremony, or a smaller reception. 200 in rows, 100 for dinner and dancing
• Fontainebleau (2nd floor): Intimate ceremony or dinner. 80 for a ceremony, 50 for dinner and dancing
• Library (2nd floor): Small cocktails, rehearsal dinner. 55 standing, 40 seated

How we would use the rooms

Ceremony in Versailles, cocktails in the Penthouse, dinner and dancing in the Rooftop Ballroom. It is the sequence the hotel was built for, and it has one great practical virtue: the ballroom is being set while your guests are two rooms away, so there is no flip and no waiting in a corridor.

Versailles is the most ornate room in the building, all gilt and mirrors. Keep the ceremony flowers simple and spend on the aisle. The room is doing the rest.

The Penthouse is the change of air. After a gilded room with no view, guests step out of the elevator into glass and daylight, with the city below. Time the ceremony so cocktails catch the last of the light. The Penthouse opens directly into the ballroom, so the move to dinner is a set of doors.

The Rooftop Ballroom has the vaulted, cloud-painted ceiling that is the reason most couples book. Work with it. Low centerpieces keep the long sightlines and the ceiling in view, and warm lighting does more for this room than a floral build.

Above 200 guests

A 220-person dinner fits. A 220-person cocktail hour in the Penthouse does not, and neither does a 220-seat ceremony in Versailles. At that size, ask the hotel to draw the whole evening, with the second cocktail space named and priced, before you commit to the date.

Smaller weddings

Below 100 guests the wedding stays on the second floor: ceremony in Fontainebleau, cocktails in the Library, dinner and dancing in Versailles. It is a lovely, close version of the day, with the rooms a few steps apart.

The Library sets the size. It holds 55 for cocktails, so this sequence is at its best with 40 to 50 guests. Between 55 and 100, ask for a different cocktail room. Smaller weddings are quoted separately and on selected dates.

There isn’t one, because nothing is outdoors. The ceremony, cocktails, dinner and dancing run in the same rooms in sunshine, rain or snow. For a New York wedding in any month, that is worth a great deal.

Weather still touches three things: arrivals, portraits and the walk from other hotels. Put a doorman with umbrellas on the 55th Street entrance, choose an indoor portrait spot with the hotel in advance, and offer cars to guests staying a few blocks away.

The moment to plan is the move upstairs. Taking 150 people from the second floor to the 20th takes time, and it comes straight out of the cocktail hour. Have the planner’s team at the elevators, send older guests up first and start passing drinks the moment the first car arrives.

The hotel’s own running order is a good one: guests at 6 p.m., ceremony at 6:30, cocktails at 7, dinner at 8 and a farewell at midnight.

The hotel has 238 rooms, 67 of them suites, and your guests can sleep an elevator ride from the dance floor. That is the case for a hotel wedding in one sentence.

What the package includes

A suite for the two of you for two nights, and one more room on the night before the wedding.

The night-before room is the more useful of the two. Check-in is at 4 p.m., so a room booked for the wedding day will not be ready when hair and makeup arrive at nine. Give it to whoever is getting ready with you, and it becomes the dressing room from first thing in the morning.

Take the suite for the night before and the wedding night. Checkout is at noon, so ask for a late one when you book and have breakfast sent up.

The room block

Reserve a block at the St. Regis for family and the wedding party, and be realistic about its size. Rooms here are among the most expensive in the city, and many guests will thank you for a second option. The hotel has connecting rooms and two-bedroom suites, which suit parents and families with children.

At 150 guests with half of them travelling, you need around 35 to 40 rooms a night across your hotels. Keep them in two places.

Where should wedding guests stay?

The St. Regis. Family, the wedding party and anyone you want within reach on the morning. Nobody staying here needs a coat or a car.

The Peninsula New York. Our first choice for a second block. It is directly across Fifth Avenue at 55th Street, two to four minutes door to door, and at the same level as the St. Regis. Guests cross one street in black tie.

Omni Berkshire Place. The practical block. East 52nd Street at Madison, five to eight minutes on foot.

Warwick New York. West 54th Street at Sixth Avenue, eight to twelve minutes away. A classic Midtown hotel for guests who would like to be a little closer to the theaters and the West Side.

Put all of these on the wedding website and steer people to two of them. Guests who book their own rooms in Brooklyn or downtown spend the weekend in taxis.

A block or two in heels and a gown is further than it sounds. Tell guests at the nearby hotels that a car is fine, and in winter arrange one.

The hotel cooks

Food and drink are the hotel’s, and that is part of what you are paying for. The menu is built with the culinary team and tried at a tasting. Use the tasting properly: taste both entrées, ask to see the bar list by brand, and settle the Champagne while you are there.

The cake is the exception. You bring it, and the hotel cuts it with a sterling silver sword, which is worth a photograph.

If you need kosher catering or a specialist kitchen, raise it on the first call. It changes the quote.

Hire a planner anyway

The hotel’s wedding specialists run the rooms, the kitchen and the service, and they are good at it. They do not manage your florist, your band, your room blocks or your budget. With three rooms, two floors and a production load-in through a working hotel, this is a wedding that needs someone of your own running it.

The hotel will recommend florists, photographers and bands who know the building. Start there. A team that has loaded into the 20th floor before will save you time and money.

Midnight, and after

The evening is built around a five-hour bar: cocktails at 7 p.m., last dance at midnight. Extra bar time is $50 per person per hour, and the after-party package is $150 per person.

Do not plan on drifting down to the King Cole Bar. It closes at 11 p.m., an hour before your wedding does. If the night is going to continue, book the after-party and its room with the hotel, or pick a bar nearby and tell the wedding party in advance.

Production

Everything for the ballroom comes up in an elevator, on the hotel’s schedule. Have your planner get the load-in hours, the freight elevator dimensions and the insurance requirements before the florist designs anything large.

The ceiling is the temptation. Hanging flowers and lights under the painted sky look wonderful in photographs, and they are the most expensive thing you can do in this room. Ask what the hotel allows overhead before you fall for a picture.

Most couples marry in Versailles, which seats up to 200 in rows. For a small wedding, Fontainebleau seats 80. Either is $5,000 on top of the package.

The legal side is simple in New York. Apply for a marriage license online, collect it at the City Clerk’s office for $35, and wait 24 hours before the ceremony. The license is good for 60 days. You need an officiant and one adult witness.

A friend or relative can marry you. New York issues a one-day officiant license for $25, from the same clerk’s office that issued your marriage license. Get it before the wedding day.

St. Patrick’s Cathedral is five blocks down Fifth Avenue, and a cathedral ceremony followed by a St. Regis reception is a classic New York day. It is for Catholic couples with a tie to the archdiocese, and the cathedral asks for a first meeting at least a year ahead. Start there before you book the hotel.

Tell guests to fly into LaGuardia if they have the choice. It is the closest airport and, since its rebuild, the easiest.

• LaGuardia (LGA): 35 to 75 minutes by car
• John F. Kennedy (JFK): 60 to 100 minutes by car. The usual choice for international flights
• Newark Liberty (EWR): 60 to 100 minutes by car, depending on the tunnel

The spread in each range is traffic. A Friday afternoon arrival sits at the long end, so guests coming for a Friday rehearsal dinner should land by early afternoon.

The train beats the road at rush hour. From JFK, the AirTrain connects at Jamaica to the Long Island Rail Road for Penn Station or Grand Central. From Newark, the airport link meets NJ Transit trains to Penn Station. Either way, guests finish with a ten-minute taxi.

The hotel has no airport shuttle. Put car-service and taxi guidance on the wedding website and leave it at that.

Do wedding guests need a car?

No, and they should not rent one. Midtown is walkable, taxis are everywhere, and the 5 Av/53 St subway station is two blocks from the door.

For guests who do drive, event valet is $120 a car, about $142 with tax. The valet desk runs until midnight, which is exactly when your wedding ends, so arrange with the hotel how cars come out afterwards.

One date check: Fifth Avenue closes for parades several times a year, and the hotel suspends valet on those days. Look at the parade calendar before you fix a Saturday or Sunday.

If you are shuttling guests from another hotel, use sprinters, not a coach. Nothing large can wait on Fifth Avenue.

May, early June and early October are our picks, and this is one of the few venues where the answer barely matters. The wedding is indoors in every month. The season decides the portraits, the walk between hotels and what your guests do with the rest of the weekend.

• May: average high 72°F (22°C)
• June: average high 80°F (27°C)
• July: average high 85°F (29°C)
• September: average high 76°F (25°C)
• October: average high 65°F (18°C)
• December: average high 44°F (7°C)

National Weather Service averages for Central Park.

May and early June give you warm evenings, Central Park in leaf for portraits and guests happy to walk.

July and August are hot and humid on the street and cool in the ballroom. Keep outdoor photographs short and early, and give guests ten minutes with a cold drink before the ceremony.

September and October are New York at its best, and everyone knows it. Hotel rooms across Midtown are at their most expensive, so open the room block early.

November through March suits these rooms. Gilt, chandeliers and a painted sky look right on a winter night, and December brings the Fifth Avenue windows and the Rockefeller Center tree. Budget for coat check, which is required from October through April, plan portraits indoors and give travelling guests a day’s slack for weather.

The hotel can hold the whole weekend, so guests unpack once.

Friday. Rehearsal dinner at the hotel. Versailles takes up to 150 if you are inviting everyone from out of town, and the Library seats 40 for family and the wedding party. Then tell everyone to meet at the King Cole Bar. It is where the Bloody Mary was introduced to America, under a Maxfield Parrish mural, and it closes at 11, which gets the wedding party to bed.

Saturday. A slow morning. Hair and makeup in the night-before room, portraits in the hotel or up at the park in the afternoon, guests at 6 p.m.

Sunday. Brunch in Versailles for up to 150, or an informal table at a restaurant nearby for whoever is still in town. Guests with afternoon flights will leave from the lobby.

For guests with an extra day

The hotel is in the middle of the things visitors come to New York for. Put these on the wedding website:

• Central Park. Four blocks north. The southeast corner, the Pond and Gapstow Bridge are a ten-minute walk and the best portrait location near the hotel.
• MoMA. Two blocks away on West 53rd Street. The easy answer for a Saturday morning before the wedding.
• Fifth Avenue. The department stores and flagships run from the hotel’s front door down to Rockefeller Center.
• Rockefeller Center. Five blocks south, with the observation deck at Top of the Rock for first-time visitors.
• A Broadway show. The theaters are a 15-minute walk west. Thursday night works for early arrivals.

For restaurants, bars and the rest of the city, send guests to the RoamRecs New York guide.

Best for

• Weddings of 100 to 180 guests
• A formal, black-tie evening
• Couples who want the room to be the design
• Guest lists with a lot of travellers, who can sleep upstairs
• Winter and shoulder-season dates, when an outdoor venue is a gamble
• Intimate weddings of 40 to 50 on the second floor

Things to consider

• $500 a head becomes about $800 once service, tax and fees are on
• The cocktail room holds 200, so 220 is a dinner number only
• The evening ends at midnight unless you buy an after-party
• Nothing is outdoors, including the Rooftop Ballroom
• You share the hotel with its other guests
• Flowers, music, photography and the cake are all on top

These are the questions a good planner would put to the hotel before you sign. The answers shape the contract more than anything in the brochure.

1. Does our date carry the $500 package and the 100-guest minimum, or a higher one?
2. Which rooms and hours do the venue fee and the ceremony fee cover, and is anything else booked on the second or 20th floor that day?
3. Is the 25% service charge applied to the venue fee, the ceremony fee or the staffing lines?
4. Can we see the ceremony, cocktail and dinner plans for our guest count, with the band and dance floor drawn in?
5. Above 200 guests, where do cocktails happen and what does that space cost?
6. What is the latest the music and bar can run in the ballroom, and which room hosts the after-party?
7. Which suite is included, on which two nights, and how early can we get into it?
8. What is the room-block rate, and what do we owe if guests do not fill it?
9. Which tables, chairs, linens, dance floor, staging and sound come with the room?
10. Do you require a planner, house AV or vendors from an approved list?
11. What may be hung from the ballroom ceiling, and who is allowed to rig it?
12. What are the load-in and breakdown hours, and what insurance do vendors need?
13. Do children’s and vendor meals count toward the 100-guest minimum?
14. Can elevators be held for our guests between the ceremony and cocktails, and is the whole route step-free?
15. What are the deposit, the payment schedule and the cancellation and postponement terms?

The Plaza. Choose it if the guest list has outgrown the St. Regis. Its Grand Ballroom seats 500, more than twice the size, with the same Fifth Avenue formality and Central Park across the street.

Rainbow Room. Choose it if you want the skyline to be the show. It seats 250 with dancing on the 65th floor of Rockefeller Center, with Manhattan in every window. There are no bedrooms, so guests’ hotels are a separate plan.

The Peninsula New York. Choose it if you want to be outdoors. Directly across Fifth Avenue, it has an open-air rooftop for weddings and hosts one wedding a day. You take on the weather question the St. Regis never asks.

The RoamRecs New York City wedding venue guide maps hotel ballrooms, landmark interiors, lofts and waterfront venues across the city. Save the St. Regis, add two or three alternatives and compare them side by side.

The question to carry through your shortlist: how much do the gilded ceremony, the glass cocktail hour and dinner under a painted sky matter to you? If they are the wedding you have been picturing, $680 a head and a midnight finish are a fair price for them.