Bookings by Occasion · Business event companionship
The event companion: a guest who knows the room before she walks into it
London's formal calendar runs through a handful of rooms in W1, and the Society's desk knows most of them by their seating plans. A charity gala in the vast Great Room at Grosvenor House. An evening sale at Phillips on Berkeley Square. A client dinner in a private room above Mount Street, or a launch on New Bond Street where nobody is quite sure who invited whom. An event companion is the guest beside you at all of them.
Nobody at the table should wonder why she is there. She should simply be the person everyone is glad to have been seated near.
At 20:00
The occasion
Arranged around the evening you describe, never around a menu of extras.
Who suits Galas and client dinners
4 companions Cressida would propose first for an evening like this. Everyone else on the roster may be asked as well.
Guest lists and place names
Formal events keep lists, and lists need names. Tell Cressida how the event handles guests: whether a name must be sent ahead to the organisers, whether there is a place name at dinner, whether security checks the door. Your companion uses her first name at every event, and where a fuller name is required Cressida talks it through with you before anything is sent. Nothing about the Society appears on any list.
Rooms on the calendar
The largest charity nights are held on Park Lane: the Great Room at Grosvenor House seats well over a thousand, and The Dorchester's ballroom takes the dinners that prefer to be smaller. Around Berkeley Square, Phillips holds its evening sales at number 30, and the galleries of Cork Street open their shows with receptions that spill onto the pavement. Bonhams and Sotheby's keep their salerooms on New Bond Street, a few minutes' walk away.
In June the Summer Exhibition opens at the Royal Academy with a preview party at Burlington House on Piccadilly, one of the few evenings in the year when half of W1 seems to be standing in a single courtyard.
The After Dark Notes cover the VIP dinner date that so often comes before a formal evening, and where to go for dessert and digestifs once the last speech is over.
Private rooms and client dinners
Not every event fills a ballroom. Many of the evenings the Society arranges are dinners for eight in a private room: upstairs at a Mayfair restaurant, the library of a hotel, a club dining room taken for a client. These are the evenings where a companion's quieter skills matter most, because everyone at the table can hear everyone else. She keeps her own stories short, draws out the quietest guest, and when the talk turns to terms she finds something else to discuss with the person on her other side.
What a good plus-one leaves out
Much of the skill lies in restraint. At any event the Society arranges, your companion keeps to a few quiet rules.
Who controls the clock
How long to book depends on who sets the timetable. If you can leave when you like, two hours at £1,100 cover a reception comfortably. If a chairman, a compère or an auctioneer sets it, book longer: three hours at £1,500 for drinks and a dinner, or four hours at £1,800 for anything with speeches, since speeches overrun and the gavel rarely falls on time. Should the evening still be going at midnight, ask before the booked time ends, and Cressida confirms any extension in writing. The rates page sets out every length.
Whom Cressida briefs first
Michelle hosts by instinct: give her a table of strangers and by the main course they are talking to one another. Karolina is poised, discreet and funnier than she first appears; she prefers weeknights and plans opera evenings well ahead. Samanta has a violinist's composure and likes an evening confirmed by teatime. Sonya, calm and perceptive, suits an early reception that ends by ten. Karolina and Samanta are both among the slim and slender companions, and both look entirely at home in a long gown.
Galas and client dinners, asked
Tell Cressida the dress code printed on the invitation and she dresses to it exactly, erring towards the formal wherever the code is vague. For a daytime launch she chooses something tailored and quiet.
Yes. A regimental dinner in Wiltshire or a summer ball at a country house works on the same tariff. Beyond Zone 2 the journey is added, and Cressida gives you both numbers together.
By her first name, as a friend. Most hosts find that nobody asks for more, and if someone does, she is practised at answering warmly while saying nothing at all.
Only what you choose to tell her. A line about the host and the purpose of the evening is usually enough. She researches nobody beforehand and asks nothing afterwards.
If she is free, certainly; an annual dinner is often easier with a familiar face beside you. Ask Cressida for her by name as soon as the invitation arrives.
Notes for the occasion
- 6 min readAround the old embassy square: Grosvenor Square's hotels, weighed after darkThe square once called Little America now deals in hotels. The Biltmore, The Beaumont, The Twenty Two and their neighbours, judged by lobby, bar and lift for an evening in W1K.
- 6 min readSide doors, quiet lifts and unlisted floors: the hidden plan of a grand London hotelGrand hotels are built with more than one door, lifts that answer to a key and floors the buttons leave out. What each one is for, and why the Society still prefers the front door.
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Galas and client dinners, arranged
Tell Cressida what the occasion is, what to wear and when it begins. She proposes companions who suit it and settles the rest in one thread.