I am, and have always been, entirely, unashamedly, possibly irrationally in love with the English marquee. Not as a practical solution to an outdoor event, or a contingency against the weather, but as a form, an idea, and, when it is done properly, not just a tent, but for one night only, the most beautiful room in the world.

It begins before you arrive.

You see it from across a lawn, or cresting a drive, or through the trees at the edge of a field: glowing from within, improbably elegant, entirely temporary and you know something special has been built for you and the people you love.

That knowledge, that an entire world has been constructed, will be inhabited for a few extraordinary hours and then dismantled as though it never existed, sets a tone before a single guest has crossed the threshold or a single glass has been raised. No hotel ballroom, however grand, can give you that.

Richmond – the one that still makes us catch our breath.

There are parties you plan and deliver beautifully and feel genuinely proud of. And then there are the ones that cross into something else entirely, that surprise even you, that make you stand in the entrance on the morning of and feel something you weren't entirely prepared for.

The marquee at Richmond Observatory was one of those.

Our client's vision was ambitious: a marquee that didn't feel like a marquee at all, but rather a stately home conjured from another era entirely. The brief called for a large structure set against the neoclassical grandeur of the Observatory itself, a building of such quietly imposing Georgian beauty that anything placed beside it needed to earn its place.

We commissioned Guy Goodfellow, the designer whose understanding of English interiors and historical pattern sits in a category entirely his own, to create a bespoke design for the interior walls.

Working closely with Guy throughout, we lined the space with his fabrics, introduced antique furniture from Farley, and filled every surface with the kind of considered, flickering candlelight that makes a room feel centuries old. Suddenly the marquee didn't need to compete with the Observatory. It worked with it.

Guests moved through the entrance and into what felt, with complete conviction, like a room, a series of rooms and hallways that had always been there.

Wiltshire – the one that felt like England at its most English.

If Richmond was the marquee as architectural statement, considered, layered, in quiet and confident conversation with a London landmark, Wiltshire was its perfect opposite.

Open-sided, clean, crisp and entirely at ease in its surroundings. A grand country house in stunning parkland, a lake catching the last of the afternoon light, and a marquee that didn't so much stand in the landscape as belong to it.

Long tables ran the length of the space, dressed in lightly sprigged cloths and scattered by Lucy Vail Floristry with masses of small, pretty vases, dahlias, cosmos, delicate greenery, in white and green with unexpected splashes of pink and orange. Raffia placements. White candles everywhere. Tall floral columns at the entrance, the tent poles themselves adorned with flowers, so that the architecture of the marquee became inseparable from the decoration.

It was clean without being cold. Abundant without being overwhelming.

As the afternoon spilled into evening and the parkland deepened to gold, the candles came into their own, the open sides held the last of the warmth, and the room became something else entirely. This is what we mean when we talk about a marquee that earns its place, not by competing with where it stands, but by becoming the best possible version of it.

In a world that increasingly prizes the permanent, the landmark venue, the famous address, the photographable backdrop, there is something genuinely radical about a structure that exists for a single evening and is gone by Monday.

The marquee makes no pretence at permanence. It says: this moment, these people, this night and nothing more. There is no next week's booking, no other event layered over yours, no sense that this room has seen it all before and will see it all again. It is entirely, exclusively, yours.

At Albion, we are trusted by some of the most discerning clients in the world to create celebrations that are whispered about long after the final glass of champagne is poured. The marquee, at its best, is where that magic happens most completely, a room conjured from nothing, for one night only, that feels as though it could never have been anything else.

That is why, after fifteen years and more marquees than I could possibly count, I still feel something when I walk into a well-dressed tent on the morning of a party. The quiet before it all begins. The knowledge of what the evening will become.

It never gets old for me, it never will.