To mark its official opening night on 14 December 1966, Sofitel Sydney Wentworth this week (Dec 14) held a glamorous soiree to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Wentworth Hotel.
Year-long festivities celebrating the Wentworth Hotel’s history culminated last night with an exclusive spectacle for 300 guests in the hotel’s famous Grand Ballroom. Valued clients and partners, the hotel’s sponsors of the arts and cultural scene, past hotel general managers, the hotel’s longest serving employees, and AccorHotels executives, enjoyed a night of free-flowing Champagne courtesy of Veuve Clicquot.
Celebrity host, Melissa Doyle, guided guests through an eventful night, with a surprise performance from Mark Vincent, who played Freddy in the 2016 sold-out season of My Fair Lady, directed by Julie Andrews. Mark performed his hero song ‘On the street where you live’ to an enlivened crowd.
Sofitel Sydney Wentworth’s Executive Chef, Boris Cuzon and his team designed a gourmet menu for the occasion featuring some culinary highlights of the last five decades. Canapés served included ‘pig in a blanket’ and ‘devils on horseback’ while a live oyster chucking buffet and French crepe stations proved popular with guests.
The central wow factor of event was the magnificent 1.3m tall 50th anniversary cake specially crafted by Hello Naomi, and framed by a 1.4m drop-down chandelier named ‘The Duchess’, gold gilded and dressed in 30 per cent lead crystal.
The ceremonious cutting of the cake was conducted by the hotel’s longest serving employees Rosa Tucker and Claude Stein in a wonderful close to the official formalities of the elaborate celebration.
The evening was a celebration of its glorious past, guests and unique stories the Wentworth Hotel has to tell. Speeches by AccorHotels Chief Operating Officer Pacific, Simon McGrath and General Manager of Sofitel Sydney Wentworth Craig Reaume, were honouring the historic building and its original visionaries and architects, Qantas Airways for creating the largest brick building in the southern hemisphere, at a time where Sydney was in need of an international five-star hotel.
Reaume recalled one memorable moment from 1983: “Prince Charles and Princess Diana danced publicly in front of TV cameras in this exact spot in the Grand Ballroom, when Prince William was only 10-months old. The little Prince was upstairs in the Wentworth Suite with the nanny, as Diana didn’t want to be far away from him.”
Guests also enjoyed the free 50th anniversary lobby exhibition that has been telling the story of the Wentworth Hotel over the last three months. May the next 50 years for Sofitel Sydney Wentworth be even more memorable.
