Wedding DJ at Milton Rhodes Center for the Arts in Winston-Salem, NC

The Space

Before it was a stage for anything, this building made socks. Shamrock Mills went up in 1911 as the first plant for the Hanes hosiery operation, and its sawtooth roofline with north-facing skylights was engineered to flood the knitting floor with even light. The mill closed in 1926, the building spent years as a Cadillac dealership, and in 2010 Michael Graves led the adaptive reuse that connected the old mill to a former auto garage next door.

A 2019 renovation added Reynolds Place Theatre to the ground floor, and the finished 72,000 square foot complex now holds three distinct performance rooms alongside galleries and sixteen working art studios for the Sawtooth School for Visual Art. We have worked a reception here, and the mix of exposed brick, industrial roofline, and theater-grade rooms gives a couple a setting that reads as neither a plain ballroom nor a converted warehouse trying too hard.

Capacity & Layout

The room a couple picks decides the guest list. Hanesbrands Theatre seats 228 in a traditional proscenium arrangement or can be reconfigured theater-in-the-round, which suits a ceremony where guests should face the couple rather than each other. Reynolds Place Theatre holds 210 for a performance-style layout or 200 for a seated catered reception, with fully retractable seating that clears the floor for dancing once dinner service ends.

Mountcastle Forum, on the second floor, is the smallest of the three: 80 to 150 seated depending on how it is set, or up to 200 standing for a cocktail-style event. That range makes it the practical choice for an intimate wedding or a rehearsal dinner, while the two larger theatres suit a full guest list. Every room’s fixed seat count also means a couple should decide ceremony versus reception style early, since retractable or theater seating is part of the space, not a rental add-on.

Amenities

Reynolds Place Theatre’s grand two-story windows face Marshall Street and downtown Winston-Salem, and they can be closed with light-blocking curtains for an evening feel or opened for a daylight ceremony with the city as backdrop. Concessions across the venues include beer and wine along with popcorn, candy, soda, and water, with proceeds benefiting the Arts Council, so a couple should plan their own bar service separately from what the house sells.

Paid parking sits in a lot directly across the street, with several public garages within walking distance for guests arriving from out of town. The building also houses the Sawtooth School’s sixteen studios and the Arts Council’s galleries, so a cocktail hour can spread into gallery space rather than stay confined to one room. That combination of theater, gallery, and close parking keeps load-in and guest arrival simple for a wedding party working against a tight evening schedule.

Location & Getting There

The Milton Rhodes Center sits in downtown Winston-Salem, a building whose brick shell has outlasted three different uses: hosiery mill, car dealership, and now arts center. Guests driving in from out of town will find the paid lot across the street and the nearby garages more convenient than searching for street parking, especially for an evening wedding when downtown traffic has already thinned out.

Inside, the rooms trade in hard, reflective surfaces: brick walls, tall glass, and theater risers built for acoustics tuned to spoken word and amplified music rather than natural reverberation. Reynolds Place Theatre’s retractable seating and Mountcastle Forum’s smaller footprint both give a DJ a flat, cleared floor to set up on once chairs are struck, and the theatrical sound and lighting infrastructure already in each room means a wedding DJ is plugging into a space built for exactly this kind of amplified event.