My Leaving Party: Hotel Cafe Royal & Toy Room London.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I have been blessed with some really incredible friends. With less than a week until I make the move back to Australia, it’s got me reflecting on the past few years of my life and just how much has changed. You see, last weekend was my leaving party, and I had to say ‘goodbye for now’ to a fair few of these wonderful people. We took over the Library Bar at the club at Hotel Cafe Royal, and then headed up the road to the PA5H London Fashion Week after party at Toy Room…

I’m not going to go into why these people are so special, as that deserves a post of it’s own, but before you read this post I just want to stress how amazing these people are, and just how grateful I am to them all for being a constant support over the past five years or so. Some of these people are new friends from the past year or two, others have been in my life much longer, and some of them you may recognize from a fair few blog posts. Sadly I didn’t get one big group photo, so lots of different ones will have to do…
As always I was unorganized and left everything until the last minute. My usual event-planner extraordinaire, Adam (who as you know from my 25th birthday back in April organized a pretty epic night for me that night), couldn’t get back to London last weekend because of flight times/work, and so our friend Talha stepped in and pretty much saved the day! I mean I literally had a corner of a pub reserved as a backup because it was fashion week and every decent bar in London was booked up with #LFW parties. And then Talha was like ‘do you want me to just ask the guys at Hotel Cafe Royal for you?’ I could have kissed him I was so grateful!
He double checked they weren’t holding a LFW event, and boom, it was sorted. We basically took over the whole Library Bar at the club at Cafe Royal, where we went for Sufi’s birthday last October. It was perfect. Everyone was able to move chairs around without interrupting anyone else, mingle at the bar and sit on the sofas and catch up and I could just make my way round everyone and have a quick chat with them all.

The dress code was obvs cocktail dresses/glam, because let’s face it, I need to leave London with a bang after five years of glamorous and extravagant parties pretty much every week. Even if I am only going for a year, I need to make the most of the excuse to throw a party! 

I had around 35 friends turn up throughout the evening, including my best friend of 21 years (who could sadly only stay for an hour, but it was much better than nothing!), old work friends, clubland friends, and fashion-world friends. 

We were going to go to Cuckoo after for dancing as it’s my fave club, but then Talha was like ‘there’s a PA5H fashion week after party at Toy Room, let’s go there’…and whaddya know he managed to get in all of us who wanted to go (around 20 of us). It was amazing. And it was so awesome bumping into Jaime and Toni there, who are two awesome bloggers (totally slaying FYI) I worked with all the way back in 2013 when I first started working in PR in the men’s fashion world. 
We had the BEST time at Toy Room dancing and enjoying the awesome music! It’s such a cool place with random teddy bears everywhere and a giant teddy bear on a grand piano. The after party was so much fun, and I loved just having one last big party with my friends. It was one of those nights where I just thought ‘what even is my life’. I’ve thought that many times over the past five years, and it’s so crazy to think how different things could have been. But alas, that is for another post on another day.
Zak and Talha are without a doubt the most dapper dressed gentlemen I have ever met.
There was very little air con inside the club. Check out that super attractive sweaty hair head. Ew. Basically I had the choice between not dancing and keeping my hair & makeup perfectly in place, or dancing and having fun and sweating off my makeup and blow dry. Obvs I danced.

No paparazzi plz. Thx. This photo makes me laugh so much, Sufi and the guys persuaded me that it would be a great idea to dance on the table…except the ceiling was too low so I couldn’t dance and then just as I was about to get down Sid took a photo and I was like ‘NO’.

I had such a good night, and I’m so grateful to all of my friends who turned up to say goodbye and help me celebrate with one last big party!

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Catherine Lux
Catherine Lux

Catherine Lux is a veteran travel blogger by night and the Head of SEO at Havas Media Group by day. Originally from Surrey, she spent four years living in Australia (2007-2009, and 2016-2018), and now lives in London. An ex-party girl sometimes prone to relapses, she loves nothing more than sharing her fine dining and luxury travel experiences with her loyal readers.

Find me on: Web | Instagram

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4 Comments

  1. Angie SilverSpoon
    September 23, 2016 / 9:33 am

    What a fab send off and awesome friends!

  2. Suze @LuxuryColumnist
    September 23, 2016 / 11:48 am

    You have a great bunch of friends and I'm sure they'll miss you as much as we will

  3. Catherine Lux
    September 24, 2016 / 5:08 pm

    I really do, I'm gonna miss them all lots! x

  4. Catherine Lux
    September 24, 2016 / 5:09 pm

    It was amazing! x

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