Wedding DJ at The Reeds at Shelter Haven in Stone Harbor, NJ

The Space

A four-story hotel opened on this stretch of Stone Harbor Bay in September 1912, remembered locally as "the brightest spot in Stone Harbor." It carried 60 rooms with plush carpeting, a basement floor with a buffet, pool rooms, and the town’s first fully equipped barber shop, plus a yacht landing wharf and a cafe built right over the water. That building came down in the 1960s, a motel took its place and ran into the 1990s, and the lot sat empty until The Reeds opened on the same corner in 2013 as a boutique resort carrying the old name forward.

Today the property holds 58 distinctively designed rooms and suites at 96th Street and Third Avenue, in the middle of downtown Stone Harbor. The reception room is the Sweet Grass Ballroom, with full-length sliding glass doors and a dramatic open fireplace, opening onto a veranda that looks over the bay. We have worked a wedding in that ballroom, and the mix of glass, water view, and fireplace is what guests remember walking in.

Capacity & Layout

The Sweet Grass Ballroom seats up to 220 for a reception, and it is the room to plan around if the guest list runs large. Smaller groups have real options too: the Roof Garden handles 15 to 70 for cocktails and dining, the Crew Room holds up to 100 for a more casual celebration, and the Pearl Room and Skye Suite work for intimate gatherings or bridal-party events, so a 40-guest wedding is not lost inside a ballroom built for 220.

Ceremonies happen on the bayfront sundeck or the sandy beach area rather than in the ballroom itself, so most weddings here are a two-location day within one property: vows outside, reception inside. With roughly 9,000 square feet of total event space, the hotel can run a rehearsal dinner or welcome party alongside the wedding without either group feeling the other, and the Skye Suite’s two balconies and chef’s kitchen give the bridal party a real place to get ready with bay views rather than a back hallway.

Amenities

Two restaurants sit on property, SAX and the seasonal Water Star Grille, the latter built around a circular bar, so rehearsal dinners and next-day brunches do not require leaving the grounds. Valet parking is free, with complimentary electric car charging onsite, and Salt Spa occupies two levels with treatment rooms, a Brine Lounge, and a Turkish Bath for anyone building spa time into the wedding weekend.

The rooftop carries a seasonal outdoor pool and two hot tubs, with complimentary morning yoga for early risers on the wedding day itself. A complimentary beach shuttle and electric GEM cars move guests to the sand, and the Reeds Bay Activities Center rents kayaks, pedal boats, and paddleboards, which matters for out-of-town guests staying multiple nights across the 58 rooms on site.

Location & Getting There

The hotel sits directly in downtown Stone Harbor, walkable to the rest of town, roughly 40 miles from Atlantic City International Airport for guests flying in. Conde Nast Traveler has named it a World’s Best Hotel for three consecutive years, alongside a Travel + Leisure Mid-Atlantic ranking and a 2025 Knot Best of Weddings recognition, which is the level of finish other vendors on site are used to working at.

For sound, the Sweet Grass Ballroom’s full-length sliding glass doors mean the room can open straight onto the bay veranda, so a DJ setup has to cover both a hard-floored indoor space and an open-air extension at once, with the stone fireplace as the one major sound-absorbing surface in the room.