The Notary Hotel Wedding Guide | Philadelphia, PA

The Notary Hotel sits directly across the street from Philadelphia City Hall, in the building that used to be the City Hall Annex. I have photographed here five times now, three weddings and two industry events, and the thing I keep coming back to is how little driving anybody does. You wake up in the building, you get married in the building, you eat and dance in the building, and when you want the best portraits of your life you walk across the street.

That sounds like a small thing on paper. On a wedding day it is enormous. Most Philadelphia weddings lose forty-five minutes somewhere to a shuttle, a parking garage, or a bridal party that got split across three Ubers. At The Notary that time stays in your day.

Everything below comes from real wedding days I have photographed in this building, plus the venue’s published details. I will get into the rooms, the light, the exact spots I shoot, the rain plan, and the question couples search hardest for, which is what a wedding here actually costs.

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The Notary Hotel Wedding Venue Snapshot

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Why Couples Choose The Notary Hotel

Ask ten couples and you will get some version of the same answer: everything is at one address.

You drive up once. You check into a suite. Your parents, your college roommates, and your out of town aunt all have rooms in the same building. You get ready upstairs, you get married on another floor, cocktail hour happens down the hall, dinner and dancing happen in the ballroom, and at the end of the night nobody is calling a car. They are taking an elevator.

For a Philadelphia wedding that combination is genuinely hard to find. Plenty of venues in this city are beautiful. Far fewer let you sleep, dress, marry, and celebrate under one roof, and fewer still put a landmark like City Hall directly across the street when you want portraits.

The second reason is the building itself. This was a working government building, and it was built like one. Ceilings are high, doorways are heavy, the stone and the brass are the real thing rather than a finish applied in a renovation. You do not have to decorate this venue into looking expensive. It already does.

The third reason is less romantic and matters more than couples expect: the staff. I have worked here five times across weddings and corporate events, and I have never had a bad day with this team. Nobody has told me where I cannot stand. Nobody has rushed a family formal. When I have needed to get into a room early to check the light, the answer has been yes. That sounds minor until you have worked somewhere the answer is no.

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The Spaces

The ceremony room

Ceremonies here happen indoors, on one of the upper floors, in a room the hotel sets specifically for you. It reads far grander than the words “hotel meeting room” suggest. Patterned carpet, drum chandeliers overhead, tall drapery panels, and a row of windows down one wall.

Because the hotel builds the room around your guest count, the aisle length and the chair layout are yours to decide. That flexibility is worth more than it sounds. A ceremony space that seats 200 but is holding 90 always feels empty at the back. Here they set what you need.

The ballroom

Here is the single most useful planning fact about this venue, and nobody tells couples about it: the ballroom is not lit by windows.

Light comes from the ceiling and from the fixtures, which means the room looks exactly the same at 5pm in December as it does at 9pm in June. Your reception photographs will not change character because the sun set halfway through dinner. At a venue with a wall of glass, a 4:30 sunset genuinely changes what your first dance looks like. Here it does not.

What that buys you is scheduling freedom. Winter dates stop being a compromise. A 4pm ceremony and an 8pm ceremony produce the same reception gallery. You can put your dinner, your toasts, and your dances wherever they make sense for your family instead of chasing daylight through a window.

The pathway and the half moon windows

Cocktail hour usually runs along the pathway outside the reception room. It is a good cocktail space on its own, but the reason I care about it is what sits at the end of it.

There are enormous half moon windows down there. Arched, tall, and full of soft light, and they make the best family formal backdrop in the building. Groups of eight or ten fit inside the frame without anybody getting cropped, and the arch does the composition work for me. When a couple asks where we are doing the big extended family shots, this is where I take them.

The lobby

The lobby is a real portrait location, not a hallway you pass through. Deep seating, marble, warm lamps, and the kind of ceiling height that lets me back up and shoot wide without the frame feeling cramped. On a cold January night when nobody wants to go outside in a gown, the lobby alone will carry a full portrait set.

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Ceremonies and the City Hall Windows

Every ceremony I have photographed here has been indoors, and the room has a feature I have not seen anywhere else in Philadelphia.

Off to one side of the ceremony space there are curtains. Pull them back and you are looking straight at City Hall. Not a sliver of it between two buildings. The whole thing, right there, close enough that it fills the window.

The last time I was up there scouting that view, there were birds sitting on the ledge outside, a row of them, staring in at me while I worked out my angles. I could not tell you what kind they were. City birds. They did not move and they did not care, and I stood there for a second thinking that this is a genuinely strange and wonderful place to get married.

Practically, those windows give the ceremony room directional daylight down one side, which is exactly what I want. Faces get shaped instead of flattened. If your ceremony is in daylight hours, ask the hotel to leave that side open.

Because the ceremony is indoors, there is no weather conversation and no rain date. That removes an entire category of stress from the month before your wedding. I have watched couples at outdoor venues refresh a forecast app every hour for two weeks. Nobody does that here.

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Getting Ready in the Suites

The suites upstairs are large, modern, and bright. Big windows, a lot of floor space, and enough seating that a wedding party of eight is not standing shoulder to shoulder waiting for hair and makeup.

Window light is the whole game in a getting ready room, and these have it. I can put someone beside the glass and shoot with nothing else, no flash, no light stand, no cleared corner. That is why prep photographs from this venue look calm. There was nothing in the room to fight.

One tip I give every couple staying on site: ask for the suite on a higher floor if the hotel can do it, and ask which direction it faces. Then get ready near the window, not near the bathroom mirror. Hotel bathroom lighting is unkind to everybody and it is the number one thing that makes prep photographs look worse than the day felt.

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Best Photo Locations at The Notary Hotel

The covered colonnade

This is my favorite spot in the whole building, and it is not technically in the building. Outside, wrapping around the side, there is a run of large columns with a covered walkway behind them.

Everything I want is there at once. The cover kills harsh overhead sun, so it works at high noon in July when nothing else outdoors does. The open side throws clean directional light in from one direction. The columns give me repeating shapes to build a composition around, and the walkway gives me depth to shoot down.

It is also the private spot. First looks and private vows go here, because the columns screen you from the sidewalk. You are outdoors, in the middle of Center City, and still nobody is watching.

City Hall, across the street

City Hall is right there. You walk out the door, cross at the light, and you are standing in front of one of the most photographed buildings in the country.

No shuttle. No parking. No travel block in the timeline. I want to be blunt about how much that is worth, because couples routinely give up an hour of their wedding day to a portrait location that is a fifteen minute drive each way, plus loading, plus a bathroom stop. Here I can take a couple out and have them back in twenty minutes with a full set of city portraits.

The courtyard archways, the tower, the Broad Street view, and the plaza all sit within a block. In the shoulder seasons there is greenery on the north side that works as a softer alternative when a couple wants something less architectural.

The entrance at night

The hotel’s own doorway after dark is a location most people walk past. Warm light pouring out of a tall arched entry, the couple standing in it, the street going dark around them. It takes four minutes and it is often the frame couples enlarge.

Then there is the sign. The Notary Hotel marquee over the door, lit up, with the two of you underneath it. It is the one photograph that says exactly where you got married without a caption.

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Light and Timing

Most venue guides tell you to build your timeline around golden hour. At The Notary the advice is different, because the venue is unusually forgiving about time of day.

The colonnade is covered, so midday sun is not a problem. The lobby is interior, so it does not care. The ballroom is lit from the ceiling, so sunset does not change it. That is three of the four main locations that are immune to the clock. What is left is the outdoor city work, and that has two good windows rather than one.

Daytime across the street

City Hall in daylight gives you scale and architecture. Overcast days are quietly excellent here, because the stone holds detail and nobody is squinting on Broad Street.

After dark

This is the window couples do not plan for and always love. City Hall is lit at night, and depending on the evening it is lit in color. I have walked a couple out after dinner and photographed them standing in the street with the whole building glowing red behind them.

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The Rain Plan

The rain plan at The Notary is that there is nothing to move.

Getting ready is indoors. The ceremony is indoors. Cocktail hour is indoors. Dinner and dancing are indoors. Nothing about your day is sitting under a tent hoping. That alone puts this venue in a different category from most of the Philadelphia and South Jersey venues I work at.

Portraits are the only piece exposed to weather, and the colonnade solves that. It is covered, it has good light, and it is thirty steps from the lobby. In real rain I shoot the couple and the wedding party there, then use the lobby and the half moon windows for everything else. No umbrellas, no wet hems, and no photographs that look like an apology.

If you are the kind of person who will lose sleep over a forecast, this is the venue that lets you stop.

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What Does a Notary Hotel Wedding Cost?

I am not going to invent a number for you. Hotel wedding pricing moves by date, by day of the week, by season, by room, and by guest count, and any figure I published here would be wrong for somebody within a month. What I can do is tell you how the bill is built, so the proposal makes sense when you get it.

A full service hotel like this one usually quotes on some combination of these pieces:

• Food and beverage minimum. Rather than a flat room rental, the hotel commits your room to you against a spend target. Hit the minimum with catering and bar and you are fine. This is the number that drives everything else, and it moves substantially between a Saturday in October and a Friday in February.
• Per person catering and bar. Chosen from packages, with tiers for the bar and for the menu. This is where a plated dinner versus stations changes the total.
• Ceremony fee. A separate setup charge for turning a room into your ceremony space, since it has to be set, chaired, and often flipped.
• Service charge and tax. Applied on top, and it is a real percentage rather than a rounding error. Ask for the all in number, not the per plate number.
• Guest room block. Negotiated separately. Many hotels credit rooms picked up in your block against your event, and some offer a complimentary suite at a certain pickup. Ask about this specifically, because it is the piece couples most often leave on the table.

One genuine cost advantage here that does not show up on the venue proposal: your guests are not paying for cars, parking garages, or a ride home at midnight. When you compare this venue against one that needs a shuttle and a hotel block across town, put that in the math. It is usually not small.

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Planning Tips That Make the Day Run Smoothly

Use the building, do not just book it

The reason to choose a venue like this is that everything is in one place. So build a timeline that actually spends that advantage instead of scheduling like you are at a venue across town. You do not need a forty minute travel block. You do not need a shuttle. You need ten extra minutes for portraits and an hour you would have spent in a van.

Put family formals at the half moon windows

Tell your planner and your coordinator where the family shots are happening before the day, and make it the pathway windows. When twenty relatives are standing around after the ceremony, the difference between “we have a spot” and “let me find a spot” is fifteen minutes of everybody’s cocktail hour.

Do the first look in the colonnade

It is private, it is covered, it is thirty seconds from the elevator, and it photographs better than anywhere else on the block. If you are doing a first look or private vows, that is the location. I will scout it that morning and tell you the exact spot.

Book the suite the night before

A morning check in on your wedding day is a bad trade. You are unpacking while a hair stylist is setting up and a florist is knocking. Get in the night before and wake up already where you need to be.

Ask the ceremony room to open the curtains

If your ceremony runs in daylight, the windows on that side are the difference between a room lit by chandeliers and a room lit by Philadelphia. Say it out loud to the hotel in your planning meeting so it is on the setup sheet.

Keep ten minutes free after dinner

Covered above, and worth saying twice. Ten minutes outside after dinner produces night portraits you cannot get any other way, and everybody is loose and happy by then.

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Frequently Asked Questions About Notary Hotel Weddings

Where is The Notary Hotel?

21 North Juniper Street in Philadelphia, PA 19107, directly across the street from Philadelphia City Hall. The building is the former City Hall Annex, built in 1926 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It operates today as part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection.

How many guests can The Notary Hotel hold for a wedding?

Published listings show the property handling up to about 320 guests, with the Grand Ballroom seating up to around 300 and the Juniper Ballroom seating about 300 without a dance floor or roughly 220 with one. The property lists about 10,500 square feet of event space in total. Confirm the exact capacity for your floor plan with the events team, because a band, a stage, or a lounge setup changes the seated number.

Can you have your wedding ceremony at The Notary Hotel?

Yes, and every ceremony I have photographed here has been on site and indoors. The hotel sets a room on one of the upper floors specifically for your ceremony, built to your guest count. There is no outdoor ceremony space, which also means there is no rain date conversation.

What happens if it rains at The Notary Hotel?

Nothing moves. Getting ready, ceremony, cocktail hour, dinner, and dancing are all indoors. Portraits are the only weather dependent piece, and the covered colonnade outside the building handles that. It has cover, good directional light, and it is a few steps from the lobby. I also use the lobby and the arched half moon windows, so a rainy day here still produces a full gallery.

Is the ballroom at The Notary Hotel lit by windows?

No, and that is a planning advantage. The ballroom is lit from the ceiling and its fixtures rather than by daylight, so it looks the same at 5pm in December as at 9pm in June. Your reception photographs will not change character when the sun goes down, which means you can schedule your ceremony time around your family instead of around sunset.

Do you have to travel for portraits at The Notary Hotel?

No. City Hall is directly across the street and you walk to it. There is no shuttle, no parking stop, and no travel block in the timeline. I can take a couple out and have them back with a full set of city portraits in about twenty minutes, which is time most weddings hand over to a van.

Where are the best photo spots at The Notary Hotel?

Four of them. The covered colonnade outside the building, which is private, shaded, and works even at midday. City Hall across the street, in daylight and again at night when it is lit. The arched half moon windows at the end of the cocktail hour pathway, which are the best family formal backdrop in the building. And the lobby, which carries a full portrait set on its own in bad weather.

Where do you get ready for a Notary Hotel wedding?

In the hotel suites upstairs. They are large, modern, and have strong window light, which is the thing that actually matters in a prep room. Book the suite for the night before rather than checking in on the wedding morning, and get ready near the window instead of the bathroom mirror.

How much does a Notary Hotel wedding cost?

Hotel pricing moves by date, season, day of the week, and room, so any number published here would be wrong for somebody quickly. Expect the quote to be built from a food and beverage minimum, per person catering and bar, a ceremony setup fee, service charge and tax, and a separately negotiated guest room block. Ask for the all in total for your guest count rather than the per plate figure, and ask what the room block credits back to your event.

Is The Notary Hotel good for LGBTQ+ couples?

Yes. One of the weddings featured throughout this guide is John and Carter’s, two grooms, and the staff treated their day exactly the way every couple should be treated. Nobody hesitated, nobody assumed, and nothing about the day had to be explained twice. I photograph every couple the same way and this venue has been a good partner in that.

Do guests stay at the venue?

Yes, and it is one of the main reasons couples pick it. The Notary is a working hotel with roughly 499 rooms across 15 floors, so your guest block, your suite, and your reception are all in the same building. Nobody drives home at midnight.

Is The Notary Hotel walkable to other parts of Philadelphia?

Very. City Hall is across the street, Broad Street and the Avenue of the Arts are right there, and Reading Terminal Market and the Convention Center are a short walk. For out of town guests with a free afternoon, the location does a lot of work.

How far ahead should we book a photographer for The Notary Hotel?

Twelve to eighteen months for Saturday dates. I take a maximum of 15 weddings a year, so my calendar closes earlier than most, and the vendors who know a venue well tend to book on the same timeline.

Have you photographed a wedding at The Notary Hotel?

Yes, three weddings, plus two industry events in the same building, so I have been through these spaces five times. Two of those weddings are on the blog: John and Carter’s, and Adrianne and Adam’s. Knowing a venue this well is the difference between finding the light on the day and already knowing where it will be.

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