Wedding DJ at Lake Toxaway Country Club in Lake Toxaway, NC

The Space

Lake Toxaway is the largest privately held lake in North Carolina, 640 acres with 14 miles of shoreline, and the country club that carries its name sits on that shoreline in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Reg Heinitsh founded the club in 1963, and the clubhouse went through a $7 million renovation completed in 2018, work that earned the Golden Fork Club award from Golf Inc. Magazine.

The newest event space is the Vanderbilt Ballroom, built with cathedral ceilings and views of both the mountains and the golf course, and it is used for dining as well as private celebrations. The Firestone Bar & Grille, recognized by Golf Inc. Magazine as one of the most improved private club dining rooms in the country, adds an indoor and outdoor bar for cocktail hour or a late night wind down.

Capacity & Layout

The club seats up to 300 for a wedding, and that number holds whether the room is the Vanderbilt Ballroom, the Firestone Bar & Grille, or the Lake Club Grille, so a couple can match the room to the size of their guest list rather than stretch a smaller space to fit. Ceremonies are typically outdoors, with sites chosen for lake or mountain views.

A sweeping covered dining porch overlooks the lake and the golf course and works as a weather line for an outdoor ceremony, letting a couple keep their view without gambling the whole day on clear skies. With several rooms plus the porch and patios, cocktail hour, dinner, and dancing can each get their own space instead of competing in one.

Amenities

Multiple dining venues operate on site, all with in-house catering, so a couple is not coordinating an outside caterer’s access with the clubhouse schedule. The Firestone Bar & Grille runs both an indoor and an expansive outdoor bar, useful for a reception that spills onto the porch, and the club’s heated pool and fitness center give a wedding weekend somewhere for guests to spend the Saturday before the event.

The golf course is open April through November, which is also the club’s usable season for private events, so an April or November date should be checked against that window before it goes on a save the date. We have played a wedding here, so we know the room and how the night moves from dinner to dancing.

Location & Getting There

The club sits inside the private Lake Toxaway community, with Brevard and Cashiers each about 15 miles away for guests who need a hotel, and Asheville Regional Airport roughly an hour out for anyone flying in. The mountain roads in are part of the drive, worth mentioning in a wedding website so out of town guests can budget the time and the elevation change.

Inside, the Vanderbilt Ballroom’s cathedral ceiling and the mountain view windows give a DJ setup real headroom for speakers, but that same height and glass throw sound back into the room, so we angle speakers and set levels around the ceiling and the hard surfaces rather than fighting them, keeping the dance floor loud without echo bouncing off the windows.