A Park Lane Icon

Our suite looked out over Park Lane and the park beyond, parquet underfoot, a four-poster bed beneath a silk canopy, and a window seat made, it seemed, entirely for people-watching the comings and goings of Mayfair below. The bathroom was white marble, with a sunken tub deep enough to disappear into and quick enough to fill that you never had to wait. A butler was, throughout, quietly on call, the sort of service that anticipates rather than responds, and never once intrudes.

Dinner was at The Grill, a room that has been here since the hotel opened and was recently reimagined in zinc, copper, and hand-blown glass, fusing classic flavours and exquisite ingredients with a lighter, more modern hand. There was Dorset crab, and a cottage pie marinated for twenty hours that arrived, as the best comfort food does, like being hugged from the inside, followed by a parade of desserts brought to the table. It is cooking that knows exactly what it is, and does it flawlessly.

Breakfast belongs to the Promenade, the hotel's long gallery of columns, gilding, and marble that runs the length of the building, said to rise to something near the height of Nelson's Column, served by immaculately turned-out waiters who have clearly done this for years. By day it is the setting for the famous Dorchester afternoon tea; on a wedding morning it is where the celebration begins. Down on the ground floor, the spa is its own quiet world, blue walls and spring flowers, white marble and a glittering chandelier, a steam room and a rainforest shower, and a sixty-minute aromatherapy massage that is the ideal note on which to begin, or end, a wedding weekend.

And then there are the weddings, for which The Dorchester is rightly celebrated. The Ballroom is the grand stage: a 1930s Art Deco room beneath a gilded ceiling, seating around 432 for a wedding breakfast and holding up to a thousand for a reception. For something smaller there is the Crystal Suite, from fifty to a hundred and twenty, and the Wedgwood-blue Orchid Room with its pale plasterwork, for up to two hundred and fifty. The Park Suite looks out over Hyde Park, holds fifty to a hundred, and is said to have hosted Prince Philip's bachelor party. Loveliest of all, perhaps, is the Penthouse and Pavilion, an Oliver Messel confection of baroque design with its own roof terrace above Park Lane, for the most intimate of celebrations.

What lingers is the sense of opulent history worn with complete ease: exemplary service that never strains, sublime luxury that never shouts, and the quiet confidence of a hotel that has been doing this, beautifully, since before most of its guests were born. Such a gorgeous hotel. It is completely evident why it is so iconic, and why, for couples who want their wedding day held at one of the great addresses of London, there is really nowhere quite like it.