Wedding DJ at Harrah’s Cherokee in Cherokee, NC

The Space

Harrah’s Cherokee opened on November 13, 1997, becoming North Carolina’s first casino under a 1994 compact between the state and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, and it was built on the site of the old Frontier Land theme park that had operated there from 1964 to 1982. What stands now is a full resort complex, four hotel towers, a casino floor, an events center, and a conference center, all connected under one roof.

A 2009-2013 renovation costing $650 million added a 21-story third tower with roughly 532 rooms and nearly doubled the gaming floor to more than 150,000 square feet, bringing the property’s total to 1,833 rooms across its four towers, the largest hotel in North Carolina. We have worked an event in this resort, and the scale shows in how far apart the ballroom, the towers, and the casino floor sit from one another.

Capacity & Layout

The 3,000-seat events center, opened in 2010, was built for concerts, trade shows, and poker tournaments, and it is a genuinely large room by any standard, suited to a big wedding or corporate event that wants stage lighting and tiered seating rather than a flat ballroom floor. The 15,000-square-foot conference center offers a more standard meeting and banquet layout for a smaller group.

With 1,833 hotel rooms across four towers, this is one of the few venues in the region where the entire guest list, wedding party included, can book rooms on site without spilling into nearby hotels. That scale also means a couple working with the resort should expect a large-property planning process, coordinating room blocks, event space, and catering across a building built more for convention business than for an intimate wedding.

Amenities

The resort runs restaurants from celebrity chefs Gordon Ramsay and Guy Fieri alongside Ruth’s Chris Steak House, so catering and rehearsal-dinner options exist without leaving the property. A 16,000-square-foot spa opened in 2012 gives a wedding party somewhere to spend the morning before the event, and the UltraStar Multi-tainment Center adds bowling and an arcade for a rehearsal-night group that wants something more casual.

Alcohol service runs 7am to 2am Monday through Saturday and noon to 2am Sunday, hours set by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians when they approved sales in 2009, which gives a late reception plenty of room to run. The property operates around the clock, seven days a week, so vendor load-in and late breakdown are not fighting a fixed closing time the way a smaller venue might.

Location & Getting There

Harrah’s Cherokee sits on the Qualla Boundary, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ land in Jackson County on US 19, roughly 56 miles from Asheville Regional Airport, which makes it more of a drive-in destination than an airport-adjacent one. The resort is owned by the tribe and operated by Caesars Entertainment, with proceeds funding schools, hospitals, and public safety on the Boundary.

Both valet and self-parking are available at the scale you would expect from North Carolina’s largest hotel. For a DJ, the 3,000-seat events center is the more demanding room to work, a tall, hard-surfaced space built for concerts and stage sound, while the conference center and smaller ballroom spaces behave more like a standard hotel banquet room, so the system and mic plan change significantly depending on which space the couple books.