Wedding DJ at Camp Cedar Cliff in Asheville, NC

The Space

East of Asheville, five miles out and three hundred acres deep into the Blue Ridge Mountains, Camp Cedar Cliff is a Christian based youth camp that also opens its grounds for private events. It was founded in 2006 and is reached through the Billy Graham Training Center at The Cove, which gives the property a wooded, gated feel before a guest ever reaches the dining hall or cabins.

The camp centers on a working summer program, so its buildings are built for groups: a large dining hall, eight cabins, and several pavilions spread across the acreage rather than one single event building. Pine Valley is the largest indoor gathering space on the property, and the Welcome Pavilion handles check-in and overflow, so couples booking here are choosing a campus of spaces rather than a single room.

Capacity & Layout

The dining hall seats up to 260, and Pine Valley, the largest indoor space, holds between 250 and 300, which makes this a venue built for a genuinely large guest list rather than an intimate one. The eight cabins provide lodging for up to 225 people, so a couple whose families and wedding party want to stay together for the weekend have real numbers to plan a room block around instead of guessing.

Hemlock, a large covered outdoor pavilion with its own stage, gives a second option for games, a rehearsal dinner, or an outdoor portion of the reception, and the athletic field has a stage of its own for a ceremony or a program in the open air. With this many separate spaces, the honest planning question is less about fitting the guest list and more about choosing which building does which job across the weekend.

Amenities

Recreation is the camp’s real strength: a new 60 foot climbing structure called Big Bear, a ropes course in both low and high versions, a climbing wall, archery, a pool, and a zipline, plus ten horses that lead trail rides. None of that is standard at a wedding venue, and for a couple who met at camp or want a genuinely active weekend for their guests, it is the reason to book here over a conventional ballroom.

A camp store sits on the property for guests who forget something, and the outdoor amphitheater is a third option beyond Pine Valley and Hemlock for any part of the day that works better outside. Because the camp runs its own youth programs from June through August, the retreat center side of the business operates year round, so weekend and off-season dates outside the main camp season are the ones with the fewest scheduling conflicts.

Location & Getting There

The camp is five miles east of downtown Asheville and closest to Asheville Regional Airport, an easy distance for out of town guests flying in, though the last stretch of road narrows into mountain terrain the way most Blue Ridge properties do. At 300 acres, the property is large enough that a couple’s ceremony site, reception hall, and guest cabins can all sit a real walk apart from each other.

We have played a wedding on these grounds, and the mix of hard-floored indoor halls like Pine Valley and open pavilions like Hemlock means sound behaves differently depending on which building is in use. Indoors, a DJ can run a full system and let the room’s flat surfaces carry it; under Hemlock’s open sides, sound needs to be aimed and leveled more carefully since it has nothing to bounce off and no walls to hold it in.