Tarrytown Hotel Celebrates 50 Golden Years of Weddings

At the Golden Anniversary party on Friday, 100 people turned for a soiree held in the Grand Ballroom’s lounge adorned with black and gold balloons, a large swan ice sculpture, the round tables and plenty of delectable food [which was retro from the 60s as the theme of the event].

The idea was to pay tribute to all the couples who got married at the Tarrytown hotel, past and present, over five decades.

The Tarrytown Hilton, renamed The Double Tree Hotel [by Hilton] was the first full-service hotel in Westchester. The hotel breaks the record for having the most weddings of any other hotel in Westchester since its opening in 1961, organizers said!

Patch spoke with two Tarrytown couples and to Richard Friedman, who’s been managing the hotel for four years, about this unique event. He estimates that the hotel has hosted 40 or 50 weddings per year which equals over 2,500 weddings.

“We were trying to find as many couples who got married here over the course of 50 years—so we invite them to a party and then we have some gifts for them and two being raffled off— a 14 karat gold and diamond pendant and a sterling silver pendant with the Double Tree logo on it.  It’s not easy contacting all these people that got married here," Friedman said. "They’re either not here anymore or divorced—so we had a nice response.” He added, “ We had some couples that we didn’t even know were coming.”

Chris Hammond, of Tarrytown, works in banking in New York City and his wife, Rima were married at the Tarrytown Hilton 11 years ago because she used to work at the hotel. His wife’s sister currently works there.

“We came to the party because my wife’s sister works here and our in-laws got married here,” he said.

“We’ve been married 11 years—it’s a great place to have a reception here,”  said Chris’s wife, Rima. 

Barbara and Richard Block, also of Tarrytown, had their wedding reception at the Tarrytown Hilton 42 years ago.

“It was so beautiful—our daughter had her wedding reception here during hurricane weekend three weeks ago,” said Barbara Block.

“The reason we came back here is because we thought our reception was so lovely 42 years ago—we love the outside where we had the cocktail hour and it was just spectacular. When we were looking for a wedding reception for our daughter, we went to many places but in the back of our minds we wanted to come back here because it’s very meaningful for us,” explained Richard Block.