Wedding DJ at Painted Plate in Greensboro, NC

The Space

Painted Plate started in 1992 in the Forum mall in Greensboro, founded by Chef Brad Semon, who had already worked as founding chef and partner at Southern Lights Bistro and Prizzi’s Trattoria before starting his own company. By 1996 the business had outgrown the mall and moved to a Church Street facility that added a full-service, on-site banquet hall, the first sign that Painted Plate was becoming an events company as much as a catering one.

In 2003, Semon and his partners took on a bigger project, renovating the former Thalheimer’s department store on South Elm Street into the Empire Room, a second banquet hall in downtown Greensboro. That growth continued into The Vineyard, the company’s current exclusive event venue, which pairs an outdoor ceremony space with a mezzanine and a main event room built for weddings and corporate events alike.

Capacity & Layout

The Vineyard seats up to 250 guests for a formal dinner or holds 500 standing for a cocktail-style reception, a wide enough range that a couple can plan either a seated wedding dinner or a looser party format in the same room. The mezzanine, described as having a rustic ambiance, works well for a smaller ceremony or an intimate cocktail hour separate from the main event space below.

The main event space itself is built with an open-plan layout, giving a couple flexibility in how they arrange dinner tables, a dance floor, and a bar within the room rather than working around fixed walls. Between the outdoor ceremony option and the indoor mezzanine and main room, The Vineyard covers ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception without requiring a couple to move to a second property.

Amenities

Painted Plate’s core business is full-service, custom-menu catering built around fresh, scratch-prepared food, which means the same kitchen team handling the menu also runs events at The Vineyard rather than a venue simply renting out space to an outside caterer. Bar service is available for events as well, so a couple can run the full reception, food and drink together, through one vendor relationship.

That combination, an in-house catering company running its own event venue, is really the throughline of Painted Plate’s growth from a mall counter in 1992 through the Church Street banquet hall, the Empire Room downtown, and now The Vineyard, each expansion adding more room to host events the company was already catering.

Location & Getting There

Painted Plate operates out of Greensboro, where the company has been based since its start in the Forum mall in 1992, growing through a series of moves and additions that eventually led to The Vineyard as its dedicated event space. The company’s history in downtown Greensboro, through the Church Street hall and the Empire Room renovation, ties it to the city’s own restaurant and events scene.

With The Vineyard’s mezzanine offering a smaller, rustic-feeling room and the main event space built with an open floor plan, a DJ working a reception there has room to set up a full system for the larger, 500-standing layout, or scale down for a seated 250-guest dinner where the open-plan room keeps sound moving evenly across the tables without corners to fight.