Wedding DJ at Cicala at the Divine Lorraine in Philadelphia, PA

The Space

Cicala occupies ground-floor space inside the Divine Lorraine, a ten-story building in North Philadelphia that architect Willis G. Hale designed and built between 1892 and 1894 as the Lorraine Apartments, one of the first high-rise apartment buildings in Philadelphia. Its sister restaurant, Sorellina, sits on the other side of the same lobby, and the two share the ground floor of a building most Philadelphians know by its later name.

The building became a hotel in 1900, then in 1948 Father Divine purchased it and renamed it the Divine Lorraine, making it the first fully racially integrated hotel in Philadelphia and among the first in the country. It sat on the National Register of Historic Places by 2002 in recognition of that civil rights history, and after a 2016 redevelopment into apartments, the ground floor reopened with restaurants including Cicala, so a wedding here sits inside a building with a genuinely layered past.

Capacity & Layout

Cicala seats 120 guests and can hold up to 150 standing, numbers that put it firmly in boutique-wedding territory rather than a ballroom-sized event. That size works in the venue’s favor for an intimate reception: with fewer guests to move through a room, the space stays close and the dance floor stays full rather than swallowed by empty square footage.

An expansive outdoor patio is available for events too, giving a couple the option to split cocktail hour outside and move the seated dinner and dancing indoors under the restaurant’s chandeliers once the light drops. Joe and Angela Cicala run both restaurants on the property, and the layout, two dining rooms flanking one shared lobby, means a wedding party can effectively take over both sides for a larger guest count.

Amenities

The restaurant runs a full bar and cocktail program as part of normal operations, so a wedding reception inherits an already-dialed-in beverage service rather than a rented-in bar setup. Sparkling chandeliers over the main dining room give the space a formal, finished look without a couple needing to bring in additional lighting or decor to dress up what is otherwise a working restaurant.

Sorellina, the sister restaurant next door, centers on a large bar and serves hand-made Neapolitan pizza, which is worth knowing if a couple wants a more casual late-night food option for guests after the formal dinner service winds down. The building itself now holds more than 100 apartments above the ground floor, so out-of-town guests staying nearby will find a residential building rather than a hotel wrapped around the party.

Location & Getting There

The Divine Lorraine sits in North Philadelphia, a part of the city with its own identity apart from Center City’s tourist core, and guests should plan to arrive by car or rideshare rather than expect the kind of walkable hotel row found downtown. The building’s history as Philadelphia’s first fully racially integrated hotel gives the neighborhood real civic weight, and it is worth a couple mentioning that history to out-of-town guests who may not know it.

For sound, the split between Cicala’s enclosed dining room and the outdoor patio matters: a DJ working indoors under the chandeliered ceiling gets a contained room that holds volume well, while a patio portion of the night calls for a system built to carry sound into open air without disturbing the restaurant’s indoor guests. Planning which part of the evening happens where is worth settling early with the venue.