City venue guide

The 10 best wedding venues in London

London weddings divide between grand civic set-pieces and stripped-back industrial rooms, and both are booked in roughly equal numbers. Couples marry under the Rubens ceiling at Banqueting House in Whitehall, among the Victorian glasshouses at Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, in Henry VIII's Great Hall at Hampton Court Palace, or in the pillarless Lancaster Ballroom at The Savoy. At the other end of the scale a bomb-damaged chapel in Peckham or a Thames-side warehouse at Trinity Buoy Wharf costs a fraction of that and is booked just as far ahead. Because the capital is 33 separate boroughs rather than one authority, the venue you choose also decides which council's registrar performs the ceremony.

Researched and last reviewed 2026-08-16. We have no commercial relationship with any venue listed.

London, England — where couples marry — London · Photo: Ilya Grigorik · CC BY-SA 3.0

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew — wedding venue in London, England

Photo: Prl42 · CC BY-SA 3.0

No. I

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Botanical gardenKew, Richmond upon ThamesUp to 230 seated with dancing in the Temperate House

Vows are exchanged in the Nash Conservatory, a glasshouse originally raised in the grounds of Buckingham Palace and moved to Kew in 1836, lit through full-height glazing on three sides. Guests then walk across the Gardens for dinner in the Temperate House, the largest surviving Victorian glasshouse anywhere, surrounded by roughly 10,000 plants. Smaller parties take Cambridge Cottage or the Orangery instead. Kew is a working UNESCO World Heritage site, so wedding hire is an evening slot after the public has left — the transfer between buildings is part of the evening rather than a logistical problem.

Dinner inside a Victorian glasshouse

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Hampton Court Palace — wedding venue in London, England

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No. II

Hampton Court Palace

Royal palaceEast Molesey, south-west LondonUp to 220 seated with dancing; 50 in the Little Banqueting H

Henry VIII's Great Hall was the last medieval great hall built for an English monarch and still hangs its Tudor tapestries; the seated dinner goes into the brick-vaulted Undercroft beneath it. Smaller weddings take the Little Banqueting House, a Baroque garden pavilion on the Thames bank that holds 50 for a ceremony. The site is two palaces grafted together — Tudor red brick on one side, Wren's Baroque courtyards on the other — which gives an unusual range of backdrops without leaving the grounds. Palace hire opens around £18,000 plus VAT; the pavilion is a fraction of that.

Henry VIII's hammerbeam great hall

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Banqueting House — wedding venue in London, England

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No. III

Banqueting House

Historic landmark hallWhitehall, WestminsterUp to 150 seated for a ceremony, 350 for dinner

Inigo Jones's classical hall is the only surviving fragment of the Palace of Whitehall, and the Rubens canvases set into its ceiling are the sole complete large-scale series by the painter still hanging where they were installed. Ceremonies seat 150 in the Main Hall directly beneath them, with the brick Undercroft downstairs taking drinks before guests come back up for dinner. It remains open to visitors during the day, so weddings run as evening hire once the doors close. Anyone marrying here is essentially booking a single extraordinary room rather than a full-service estate.

Rubens ceiling still in its original setting

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The Savoy — wedding venue in London, England

Photo: Max Cowper · Public domain

No. IV

The Savoy

Grand hotelStrand, Covent GardenUp to 700 in the Lancaster Ballroom; 300 in the River Rooms

Opened in 1910 to a design by René Sergent modelled on an eighteenth-century Parisian salon, the Lancaster Ballroom runs to 476 square metres with no internal pillars and a permanent stage — rare in a London hotel and the reason big band setups end up here. Couples who want daylight take the double-height River Rooms overlooking Embankment Gardens instead, and the neighbouring Savoy Chapel handles religious ceremonies. Catering is in-house and priced per head from around £200, so the guest list drives the budget more than the room hire does.

Pillarless 1910 ballroom with its own stage

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No. VThe Ned

No. V

The Ned

City hotelBank, City of London50 to 180 guests across the sixth floor

Six rooms and two terraces occupy the sixth floor of the former Midland Bank headquarters, designed by Sir Edwin 'Ned' Lutyens and completed in 1924. Couples take the whole floor rather than a single room, so the ceremony, drinks and dinner each get their own space — The Saloon, the Drawing Room, the Tapestry Room and the rest — with the terraces looking out across City rooftops. It suits a wedding that wants the guest-list flexibility of a hotel without the ballroom format, and Ned's Club spa a lift ride below handles the getting-ready morning.

Whole-floor takeover in a Lutyens bank

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Trinity Buoy Wharf — wedding venue in London, England

Photo: Cmglee · CC BY-SA 3.0

No. VI

Trinity Buoy Wharf

Riverside warehouseLeamouth, east London70 to 300 guests

Two connected Grade II listed warehouses from 1864 sit where Bow Creek meets the Thames, fronted by 500 square metres of river terrace facing the O2 and the Docklands towers. The Buoy Store, exposed brick, takes the ceremony; the whitewashed Chain Store handles dinner and the dancing afterwards, with drapes to divide the two. London's only lighthouse stands on the same wharf, and the working pier means guests can arrive by boat. The licence runs to 1am, which is later than most central London venues manage.

Thames pier, terrace and a lighthouse

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Asylum Chapel — wedding venue in London, England

Photo: The original uploader was Aspro at English Wikipedia . · Public domain

No. VII

Asylum Chapel

Deconsecrated chapelPeckham, SouthwarkUp to 120 seated

Built in 1826 for the almshouses at Caroline Gardens, this Grade II listed chapel took bomb damage in the war and was never fully repaired — plaster stripped back to bare brick, fragments of the original stained glass surviving above. Southwark licenses it for civil ceremonies of up to 120. The constraints are as real as the atmosphere: there is no kitchen, so caterers work off-site, and the building holds no live-music licence, which limits you to background sound. Hire in the region of £1,500 to £2,000 leaves most of the budget for everything that follows.

Unrestored 1826 interior, bare brick and glass

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Battersea Arts Centre — wedding venue in London, England

Photo: Edwardx · CC BY-SA 3.0

No. VIII

Battersea Arts Centre

Victorian civic hallLavender Hill, BatterseaUp to 350 for a wedding in the Grand Hall

Fire gutted the Grand Hall of the old Battersea Town Hall in March 2015. Haworth Tompkins rebuilt it by September 2018 without pretending it hadn't happened: a timber lattice ceiling stands in for the lost plaster vault, and the scorched brickwork was sealed and left as found. Weddings for up to 350 take the Grand Hall and its adjoining breakout rooms, and Wandsworth lists the Grade II* listed building among its approved ceremony venues. Because it is a working theatre, the lighting rig and PA are considerably better than a civic hall would normally offer.

Post-fire rebuild with theatre-grade rigging

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Fulham Palace — wedding venue in London, England

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No. IX

Fulham Palace

Historic house and gardenFulham, Hammersmith and FulhamUp to 150 standing in the Great Hall; up to 200 in the walle

Residence of the Bishops of London for centuries, the palace keeps a Tudor red-brick courtyard and a Georgian range on the Thames bank, a short walk from Putney Bridge station. Four rooms carry a civil ceremony licence; the Great Hall is the oldest of them, panelled in dark wood with a stone fireplace and teardrop lanterns. Larger receptions move out to the walled garden, and under the 2021 rule change that outdoor ceremony can now be the legally binding one rather than a blessing. It is the closest thing central London has to a country-house wedding.

Tudor courtyard and a licensed walled garden

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No. XOld Marylebone Town Hall

No. X

Old Marylebone Town Hall

Westminster's register office occupies Sir Edwin Cooper's Edwardian Graeco-Roman building on Marylebone Road, commissioned in 1914 and reopened in 2018 after a four-year restoration. Seven rooms run from the Paddington Room, which takes eight people, up to the walnut-panelled Westminster Room, which seats 100 and holds a grand piano. This is a ceremony venue only, with no reception space, but the front steps are among the most photographed in the city and a slot here followed by lunch nearby is a complete and perfectly serious wedding.

Seven rooms, from eight guests to a hundred

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Marrying in London?

Want an invitation designed for your venue?

Tell us where you’re marrying in London, Englandand we’ll build the invitation around it — the venue’s own colours, an illustration of the building if you want one, your map and timings already in place. One link for every guest, with live RSVPs.

Make ours for London See the designs

Planning a wedding in London

A venue has to be registered as approved premises with the borough it stands in, and your registrar comes from that same council — Richmond for Kew, Southwark for Asylum Chapel, Wandsworth for Battersea Arts Centre — so you are booking two diaries, and the registrar's Saturday slots usually run out before the room does. Since July 2021 a ceremony held outdoors within the grounds of approved premises has been legally valid in England, which is why Fulham Palace's walled garden and Kew's lawns can now carry the legal part rather than just the photographs; an unlicensed private garden still cannot. Central venues have effectively no guest parking and sit inside both the Congestion Charge and ULEZ zones, so plan around the Underground, and check the venue's licence end time against the last train home.

When to marry — May and September are the sensible picks: daylight and temperatures close to midsummer, but Saturdays are still findable and rates sit below the June-to-August crush that absorbs around 40% of UK weddings.
What it costs — Bridebook's 2026 figures put average London venue hire at roughly £4,700 against a £27,000 average total, but that midpoint hides the real spread — Asylum Chapel lets for £1,500 to £2,000, while a Historic Royal Palaces wedding starts near £18,000 plus VAT before a single plate of food.

Once the venue is settled, the next thing most couples deal with is telling everyone. A digital wedding invitation carries the address, a map, your timings and a live RSVP on one link — which matters more than usual when guests are travelling to London and need directions, and plenty of notice.

Questions

Marrying in London: your questions.

How much should we budget for a wedding venue in London?

Average venue hire in London is around £4,700, and Bridebook's 2026 report puts the average total London wedding at roughly £27,000 — about 25% above the UK average across every supplier category. What catches couples out is not the fee but what London venues leave out: unlike a rural estate, most central sites come with no accommodation and no grounds, so guest hotels, transport and often a second space for the after-party become separate lines. At the upper end, per-head catering minimums drive the budget far more than the room does — The Savoy quotes from about £200 a head.

Can a couple from overseas legally get married in London?

Yes, and a marriage in England and Wales is legally binding in its own right — you do not need to hold a separate civil ceremony in your home country first, though some countries require the certificate to be registered or legalised once you return. The obstacle is timing: both of you must have lived at an address in England or Wales for seven clear days before you can give notice at a register office, and the wedding cannot take place for a further 28 days after notice. If neither partner is British or Irish or holds settled status, you will usually need a Marriage Visitor visa (£135, valid six months), and the Home Office can extend the notice period from 28 days to 70, so allow far more lead time than a typical destination wedding.

How far ahead do London venues and registrars get booked?

Treat the registrar as the harder booking. Westminster, for example, takes ceremony reservations up to a year ahead with a £100 non-refundable fee, and weekend slots at Old Marylebone Town Hall go quickly, so confirm the council the same week you sign with the venue — they are separate diaries at separate organisations. Landmark venues such as Kew, Hampton Court Palace and Banqueting House release limited evening dates and are usually taken a year or more out, while midweek and winter dates can still surface inside six months, often at a lower rate.

When is the best time of year to get married in London?

May and September give you the most for the money: long daylight, temperatures close to midsummer, and Saturdays that are genuinely available, unlike June to August which together account for around 40% of UK weddings. June is the single most-booked month and, statistically, wetter than July — worth knowing if you are counting on an outdoor ceremony at Kew or in Fulham Palace's walled garden. Winter dates at the indoor landmarks lose nothing to the weather: Banqueting House, The Ned and Battersea Arts Centre look the same in January as in July, and price accordingly.

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Marrying in London?

Want an invitation designed for your venue?

Make ours for London See the designs

The 10 best wedding venues in London

Researched and last reviewed 2026-08-16. We have no commercial relationship with any venue listed.

Planning a wedding in London

When to marry — May and September are the sensible picks: daylight and temperatures close to midsummer, but Saturdays are still findable and rates sit below the June-to-August crush that absorbs around 40% of UK weddings.

What it costs — Bridebook's 2026 figures put average London venue hire at roughly £4,700 against a £27,000 average total, but that midpoint hides the real spread — Asylum Chapel lets for £1,500 to £2,000, while a Historic Royal Palaces wedding starts near £18,000 plus VAT before a single plate of food.