Wedding DJ at Vita Vite Downtown in Raleigh, NC

The Space

Lindsay Rice built Vita Vite around a simple idea baked into its name, Italian for life and vine: a space where wine, food, and art all sit in the same room. She opened the 5,600 square foot space in 2015 in Raleigh’s Warehouse District, bringing a background in art history and wine education to a building that now works as much as an event venue as a wine bar.

The main event space runs 1,200 square feet and mixes chandeliers with exposed brick, concrete floors, overstuffed sofas, Turkish rugs, and working fireplaces, so the room reads as part gallery and part living room rather than a blank rental hall. Rotating artwork from 10 local and regional artists hangs on the walls, which means the backdrop for photos changes depending on when a couple books.

Capacity & Layout

The main event space seats up to 80 guests, a number that fits a mid sized wedding comfortably inside the room’s furnished, gallery like layout without needing to move furniture out to make space for the tables. A separate gallery space holds up to 30, which gives a couple the option of a smaller rehearsal dinner, welcome party, or an intimate ceremony apart from the main room.

Because the main room and the gallery are distinct spaces within the same 5,600 square foot building, a couple can use one for a ceremony or cocktail hour and the other for the reception without leaving the venue or coordinating a second location. The fixed furniture, rugs, and fireplaces in the main room mean the layout leans toward lounge style seating over a traditional banquet floor plan.

Amenities

A catering kitchen sits on site, along with a bar stocked with wine and craft beer, which fits a venue whose owner holds a WSET sommelier certification from Johnson and Wales. Lindsay Rice studied art history at Sweet Briar College with an Arts Management certificate, then earned a master’s in art history and museum studies at Georgetown, spending a semester at Sotheby’s Institute in London along the way.

That curatorial background shows up directly in the room: the wine list is chosen with the same care as the rotating artwork from 10 local and regional artists on the walls. For a couple who wants their wedding to feel like it is happening inside a working gallery and wine bar rather than a space rented out and dressed up for the day, that is the real draw.

Location & Getting There

Vita Vite sits in downtown Raleigh’s Warehouse District, a walkable part of the city with restaurants and bars nearby for guests who want to extend the night after the reception ends. The downtown setting also means most out of town guests staying centrally will already be close, without the drive that a venue further out from the city center would require of them.

We have worked a wedding in the main event space, where the exposed brick and concrete floors are hard surfaces that carry sound further than a carpeted room would, so a DJ system there gets set with that reflection in mind rather than treated like a soft, absorbent ballroom; the fireplaces and furnished seating areas break up some of that openness across the room.