Wedding DJ at River Forest Manor and Marina in Belhaven, NC

The Space

River Forest Manor started as a private mansion, commissioned in 1899 by John Aaron Wilkinson, president of the J.L. Roper Lumber Company, and finished after more than five years of construction in 1904. The house was finished with crystal chandeliers and hand-carved plasterwork by the same Italian craftsman who worked on the Biltmore Estate, and that level of finish is still what a couple is standing inside when they walk through the manor today.

Axson Smith bought the property in 1947 and ran it for decades as an inn, restaurant, and marina before it closed in 2011; his family, Lee and Kristen Sykes, took it over in 2024 and reopened it, including a new rock jetty protecting the marina in 2025. The manor has drawn national attention over the years, written up in the New York Times, National Geographic, and Southern Living, and hosted guests including James Cagney and Walter Cronkite.

Capacity & Layout

The venue holds up to 500 guests across 13,000 square feet of combined indoor and outdoor event space, a large enough footprint that a couple can genuinely separate ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception into different areas of the property instead of resetting one room three times. Reception space spreads across the manor interior, the River Room, and a pavilion, so the floor plan does not depend on a single ballroom.

Ceremony options include the front lawn, the front steps of the mansion, and an outdoor pavilion overlooking the river, each giving a different backdrop for photos, from the columned entrance to open water. A private bridal suite and dressing area is available on site, and the manor’s guest rooms set aside for wedding packages mean the wedding party can dress, host a reception, and stay overnight without leaving the property.

Amenities

River Forest Manor is a working marina as well as an event venue, with slips for vessels up to 150 feet, deep-water access, and full hookups including 30, 50, and 100 amp electrical service, making it one of the few venues in the region where guests could realistically arrive by boat. On-site dining runs through the Bistro restaurant and a craft cocktail bar, both housed in the manor.

With nine of the ten guest rooms set aside for wedding packages, most of the wedding party can stay on the property itself rather than driving in for the ceremony and driving back out after, which changes the pace of the whole weekend. Parking is available on site, and the combination of manor, marina, and river frontage gives photographers water, lawn, and historic architecture all in one location.

Location & Getting There

The property sits at Intracoastal Waterway mile marker 136 on Pantego Creek, with a protected harbor and nine-foot depths connecting out to the Pungo River and Pamlico Sound, so guests arriving by land are in Belhaven proper while guests arriving by water have a genuine deep-water approach. It is a destination venue by nature, waterfront and a drive from anywhere else, which is part of why overnight stays on site matter so much for this wedding.

Between the manor’s original rooms, the River Room, and the outdoor pavilion, a DJ setup has to account for very different acoustics room to room: the older plaster-walled interior rooms hold sound tightly and need lower stage volume, while the open pavilion over the water needs more coverage and careful speaker aim so the music reaches the reception tables without carrying too far out over the river.