Wedding DJ at Blue Mountain Resort in Palmerton, PA

The Space

Blue Mountain Resort traces back to 1962, when Ray Tuthill bought 322.5 acres in the Poconos with plans to build a ski area, opening it in 1977 as Little Gap Ski Area with 4 trails, 2 lifts, and $12 lift tickets. The resort was renamed Blue Mountain in 1989, and it now sits on more than 300 acres of Pocono Mountain property, with Barbara Green, Tuthill’s daughter, taking over as President and CEO in 2007 and BMR Resort, a Denver firm affiliated with KSL Resorts, managing the property since May 2021.

Event space centers on the summit, where the Vista Ballroom runs 4,500 square feet and the Alpine Ballroom runs 5,400 square feet, both with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the mountain. A second cluster of spaces sits down in what the resort calls the Valley, giving a couple ceremony and reception options at two different elevations on the same property, with Slopeside Pub & Grill operating as a mountain-top restaurant for more casual gatherings.

Capacity & Layout

The two summit ballrooms give real range depending on guest count: 4,500 square feet in the Vista Ballroom versus 5,400 in the Alpine Ballroom, both large enough to hold a full seated reception along with a dance floor without feeling cramped. Ceremony can happen outdoors at the summit or down in the Valley, so a couple is choosing between mountaintop views at 1,407 feet of elevation or a more sheltered ceremony lower on the property.

The resort’s underlying scale, 40 ski trails, 16 lifts, and 164 acres of skiable terrain, is not something a wedding uses directly, but it does mean the grounds around any ceremony or reception site are genuinely mountain terrain rather than a landscaped approximation of one. The longest run stretches 6,400 feet, a reminder of just how much vertical the property covers beyond the two ballrooms.

Amenities

On-site accommodations include camping across 40 basic sites, glamping at 15 sites each with its own mountain view, and lodge rooms, so a couple’s wedding party has real options for staying on the mountain rather than commuting in. Parking is free at both the Summit and Valley Lodges, with select premium paid spots available closer to the entrances for those who want them.

The resort runs Slopeside Pub & Grill as a full-service mountain-top restaurant, part of a broader dining and amenity build-out that included over $15 million in improvements under Barbara Green’s leadership, including three new lodges. Snowmaking covers 100 percent of the terrain and the resort averages 33 inches of natural snowfall a year, details that matter most to a couple considering a winter date against the mountain’s working ski season.

Location & Getting There

Blue Mountain sits roughly 90 minutes from both Philadelphia and New York City, a manageable drive for out of town guests coming from either direction. We have worked one wedding here, held on a property that operates year round rather than shutting down outside ski season.

Between the two summit ballrooms and the Valley spaces below, a couple is really choosing between two different rooms with two different acoustics: the Alpine and Vista Ballrooms’ floor-to-ceiling windows and larger square footage give a DJ a big, open room to fill, while a Valley reception sits lower and closer to the resort’s more casual dining spaces, so sound levels and setup placement should be planned around whichever elevation the day actually happens on.