Wedding DJ at Belmar Fishing Club in Belmar, NJ

The Space

Not every venue on our list started out built for weddings, and this one still carries its original purpose. Forty-nine charter members organized the Belmar Fishing Club on September 1, 1909, meeting first at a hardware store on F Street. By 1930 the members had raised the two-story clubhouse that stands today, a white Spanish Mission-style building dedicated May 30 of that year, with its foundation laid the previous September. The clubhouse sits directly on the Atlantic, with a pier reaching out from it toward the water.

Inside, the club has kept the layout of a working fishing club rather than a hall built for events: a dining room known as the Myers Vista room, a separate banquet or party area with its own bar, a lounge with a fireplace, and an oceanfront bar upstairs. A hurricane on September 14, 1944 tore out the pier and damaged the clubhouse and boardwalk, and the club rebuilt both. The pier was rebuilt again and rededicated in March 2016 after Superstorm Sandy.

Capacity & Layout

The building’s rooms were never numbered for wedding headcounts, but the arrangement still shapes how a reception moves. The Myers Vista dining room and the separate banquet or party area give a couple two distinct spaces to work with, so a ceremony or cocktail hour can sit apart from dinner and dancing without guests having to leave the building. The upstairs oceanfront bar adds a third gathering point, useful for a cocktail hour with a water view before guests move down to the dining room or banquet area for dinner.

We have worked one wedding at the Belmar Fishing Club: cocktail conversation upstairs by the water, dinner in the Myers Vista room, and dancing carried through into the banquet area with its bar. The pier itself, with its bait house and a fish cleaning station open around the clock, is part of the property’s working identity rather than event decor, and it gives photographs a working New Jersey pier instead of a manicured lawn.

Amenities

The lounge’s fireplace gives an off-season wedding a warm gathering spot, and the Myers Vista dining room, named for former club president Bill Myers, is the room most couples use for a seated meal.

The club’s century of history shows up as decor rather than as a theme applied after the fact. A bronze bas relief by sculptor Olympia Brendisi, given by member H.F. Evers, has stood at the top of the stairs since August 1931, and the building itself was documented for the Historic American Buildings Survey in 1933. Trophy cases and club records mark the casting team’s 1930 national championship and Sally Farrier’s 1928 women’s surfcasting title, giving the rooms a lived-in, genuinely local character.

Location & Getting There

The clubhouse sits on the Atlantic oceanfront in Belmar, a Jersey Shore town built around its boardwalk and beaches, with the pier extending straight out from the building into the water. Guests arriving for a ceremony or reception step from a coastal street directly into a clubhouse that has occupied the same oceanfront lot since 1930, with the beach and boardwalk in view rather than a short drive away.

For a DJ, the split between rooms matters as much as the ocean view: the Myers Vista dining room and banquet area are enclosed, finished interior spaces rather than open-air tents, which keeps sound contained and predictable regardless of shore wind. Setting up in the banquet area with its bar means speakers face a defined room rather than an open pier, so the dance floor holds its energy indoors while the oceanfront bar upstairs stays available as a quieter overflow space.