Wedding DJ at Blandwood Mansion in Greensboro, NC

The Space

Blandwood Mansion began in 1795 as a four-room Federal-style farmhouse built by Charles Bland, and it was transformed in 1844 through 1846 when architect Alexander Jackson Davis added the Italianate wing that gives the property its name in architectural history: it is believed to be the oldest surviving example of Italian Villa style architecture in the United States. That distinction earned the mansion National Historic Landmark status in 1988, and the house itself now operates as a museum rather than a rental hall.

Weddings and receptions at Blandwood happen in the Carriage House, an octagonal structure on the same grounds, not inside the mansion itself. The original Carriage House, built between 1855 and 1866 under Governor John Motley Morehead, was razed in 1967 and rebuilt in partnership with the Junior League of Greensboro, reopening in March 1970 with its original cupola restored and repositioned atop the new building.

Capacity & Layout

The Carriage House splits across two levels: a ground floor pavilion of roughly 1,200 square feet that seats 110 in rows or holds 150 standing, and a lower level of about 1,500 square feet that seats 130 at tables or holds 175 standing, for 2,700 square feet of usable event space between the two. The ground floor has high ceilings and glass doors that open onto a patio overlooking the gardens, while the lower level is carpeted and set up for reception and dining rather than ceremony.

That two-level split lets a couple separate a ceremony from a reception without leaving the building, moving guests from the glass-doored pavilion above down to the carpeted dining level below, or running the whole event on one floor if the guest count stays under 130 seated. A caterer’s kitchen and lavatories sit on the lower level, built into the space rather than added on for events.

Amenities

Events at the Carriage House require a licensed caterer from an approved list, a rule worth knowing before booking outside vendors for the meal. The grounds include the mansion’s gardens, which were significant enough in their own right to be featured in Andrew Jackson Downing’s 1844 treatise on landscape gardening, and the ground floor pavilion’s glass doors open directly onto a patio with those gardens in view.

We have worked one wedding at Blandwood, held in the Carriage House on grounds that carry real Civil War history, since the mansion served as headquarters for Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard and later for Union Generals Jacob Dolson Cox and John Schofield, and Governor Zebulon Vance surrendered to the Union generals in the mansion’s main parlor on May 2, 1865. The museum itself keeps limited public hours, Saturdays only from 11am to 4pm, separate from the Carriage House’s own event schedule.

Location & Getting There

Blandwood sits four blocks west of downtown Greensboro’s central business district, on a 4-acre property that was originally rural farmland when Charles Bland built the house in 1795 and has since been absorbed into the growing city around it. That location puts guests close to downtown hotels and restaurants without the mansion feeling boxed in by the city, since the grounds still carry gardens and the freestanding Carriage House.

The Carriage House’s ground floor pavilion, with its high ceilings and glass doors, gives a DJ an open, semi-formal room to work in that also opens straight onto the patio for outdoor sound during cocktail hour, while the carpeted lower level absorbs sound differently and suits a quieter dinner service before the dancing moves back upstairs.