Wedding DJ at The Rittenhouse Hotel in Philadelphia, PA

The Space

Long before it became a hotel, this address on Rittenhouse Square had already lived two lives. Railroad executive Alexander Cassatt and his wife Lois built a mansion here in 1900, which later passed to the Episcopal Church of Pennsylvania and then became a private school, the Academy of Notre Dame. Architect Donald Reiff drew plans for a hotel in the 1960s, construction began in the early 1970s, and the Rittenhouse finally opened its doors in 1989.

What guests find today is a French restaurant, Lacroix, the Mary Cassatt Tea Room and Garden for afternoon tea, and the Library, a bar that hosts live jazz. The hotel was renovated and modernized in 2019, and it holds Forbes Travel Guide Five-Star status, the kind of recognition that shapes how a reception here is staffed and run. The building’s angled windows, designed to give every guest room a direct view of the square, are part of what makes the address distinctive.

Capacity & Layout

The hotel carries over 12,000 square feet of versatile event space, spread across rooms sized for a rehearsal dinner as easily as a full wedding reception. Because the property does not publish a single fixed seated or standing number, a couple’s floor plan gets built around the specific room they choose rather than a stock capacity chart, and that conversation happens directly with the hotel’s events team once a date and guest count are set.

That flexibility cuts both ways. A smaller gathering can take the Library or the Tea Room and never feel like it is rattling around a ballroom built for hundreds, while a larger wedding can draw on the full 12,000 square feet across connected spaces. For us, that means asking early which room is booked, since the shape of the space, not just the guest count, decides where speakers, a dance floor, and a DJ table actually go.

Amenities

Guests have 118 rooms, ranging from 450 to 600 square feet, and 25 suites between 650 and 2,000 square feet, so a wedding party can block a real footprint of the hotel for the weekend rather than a handful of scattered rooms. On site there is a spa and an indoor heated pool, along with a fitness center offering cardio equipment, free weights, and Pilates classes, plus a hair salon, Hair by Paul Labrecque, for day-of styling.

Dining is handled in house at Lacroix, and the Mary Cassatt Tea Room and Garden gives out-of-town guests a reason to arrive a day early. The Library’s live jazz sets a tone before an event even starts. The hotel is a member of Leading Hotels of the World, on top of its Forbes Five-Star rating, both signals of a property built to run a full wedding weekend, not just host a single evening’s reception.

Location & Getting There

The Rittenhouse sits directly on Rittenhouse Square in Center City Philadelphia, one of the city’s most recognizable public spaces, which means ceremony and reception photographs can lean on tree-lined park views without a couple ever leaving the property. Guests arriving from outside the city land in a walkable, well-known part of downtown, and out-of-town family can be pointed toward the square itself as a meeting point before or after the event.

We’ve worked a reception here, and the practical upside of a Center City hotel address is that setup and load-in happen inside a controlled, indoor environment rather than a venue at the mercy of weather. Because the event space sits within the hotel itself rather than a separate tent or outbuilding, a DJ setup runs on hotel power and house acoustics, and sound stays contained to the room the couple has booked rather than carrying into a lobby or another event nearby.