Wedding DJ at Hawksdene in Andrews, NC

The Space

Hawkesdene started as a tomato farm before opening as a bed and breakfast in 1995, and it changed hands in 2002 when Phil Rampy and Rob Scheiwiller bought what was then a 14-bedroom, 26-acre property and began expanding it into the 70-acre estate it is today. The Main House, the Phillips House, 13 cottages, and one studio now sit across the grounds, with the property backing directly into the Nantahala National Forest.

Because Hawkesdene hosts one group at a time, a couple who books it gets exclusive use of the whole estate, not just a reserved room within a larger property. Ceremony spots include a covered bridge, a pergola garden with an arbor, an open-air pavilion, and space near the estate’s own llama and alpaca stable, plus a spot under the crepe myrtle trees, giving genuinely different looks without leaving the grounds.

Capacity & Layout

With 44 private bedrooms spread across the Main House, Phillips House, and the cottages, Hawkesdene sleeps 88 to 122 guests on site, which means a couple can house most or all of their wedding party and close family under the estate’s own roofs rather than sending them to a hotel down the mountain. Event facilities handle gourmet meals for up to 125 guests, matching the ceremony and reception capacity.

The covered bridge and open-air pavilion give weather-proof options for both the ceremony and the reception, while the pergola garden and crepe myrtle setting stay open-air for a couple who wants the mountain views unobstructed. A bridal salon is available for the wedding party to get ready together before the ceremony begins.

Amenities

Couples can bring their own alcohol with no corkage fee, and the venue still supplies ice, mixers, and garnishes, which keeps bar costs down without leaving the couple to source everything themselves. Gourmet meals are included in the wedding package rather than bolted on as a separate catering line, and daily housekeeping runs throughout the stay for anyone lodging on site.

Small and medium dogs are welcome in the cottages, though not in the Main House, so a couple who wants a pet in the wedding party has somewhere on property to keep it. There are no nightly curfews, a detail that matters for a reception that wants to run past a typical venue’s cutoff, and complimentary WiFi covers the property for anyone working remotely around the wedding weekend.

Location & Getting There

The estate sits less than two hours west of Asheville and about two hours north of Atlanta, close enough to both cities for a weekend trip but remote enough that the property backs directly into the Nantahala National Forest with no neighbors in view. A two-night minimum stay applies, with additional nights running $995, and check-in is 4pm with check-out at 11am on departure day.

We have worked a wedding on these grounds, moving between the covered bridge, the pavilion, and the open lawn areas over the course of the day. The covered bridge and pavilion are enclosed enough to hold sound predictably even with weather moving through, while the open pergola garden and crepe myrtle spots are fully outdoor, so our setup shifts between a contained system for the covered spots and a wider outdoor rig for the open-air ceremony locations.