Wedding DJ at The Westwood in Garwood, NJ

The Space

Joe Scalzadonna broke ground on this property with four partners in 1962, on the site of the old Hotel Scandia, expecting at first to build a bowling alley. What went up instead has stayed in the same family for more than 50 years, and the venue marked that milestone with a 50th anniversary celebration in March that drew over 500 family, friends and longtime customers, which says something about how many couples have already passed through the building.

The grand entrance sets the tone before a guest reaches either ballroom: custom French-style mahogany doors open onto hand-polished granite floors under a grandiose chandelier, and ceiling-high arched windows run along fireside lounges finished in hand-crafted wood. That entrance leads to two ballrooms on two different levels, so the building reads less like one large hall and more like a layered event space with its own arrival sequence built in.

Capacity & Layout

The Westwood can accommodate events from 50 up to 400 guests, and with two ballrooms on separate floors, a couple has room to match the space to the size of the wedding rather than filling a single oversized hall for a smaller guest list. A couple planning toward the upper end of that range should expect both levels in active use, one for the ceremony or cocktail hour and one for the seated reception.

Outside, the property adds a gazebo, a garden with its own outdoor fireplace, and a patio area under a pergola, which gives a couple a real choice between an indoor ceremony in one of the ballrooms and an outdoor one in the garden, with the second ballroom or the patio standing by for cocktail hour while the reception room is turned over. That kind of layered layout is what lets 400 guests move through the day without the rooms feeling rushed.

Amenities

The starting site fee already includes the bridal suite, chairs, china, flatware, glassware, linens and tables, along with setup and cleanup, so a couple is not pricing out rentals on top of the room. The Westwood also runs an in-house floral department and is affiliated with Jersey Joe’s Barbeque for off-premise catering, which means flowers and food can both be handled under the same roof rather than coordinated across separate outside vendors.

Every wedding package includes a tiered cake from Bovella’s bakery, one more piece of the day the couple does not have to source on their own. Two large parking lots flank the building with handicapped access included, which matters at a venue built for up to 400 guests, since a wedding that size needs parking that will not back up onto the street before the ceremony even starts.

Location & Getting There

The Westwood sits in Garwood, New Jersey, on the same ground the Scalzadonna family has operated since 1962, and more than 60 years in one location means the surrounding block, the parking, and the flow of the building have long since been worked out for events at scale.

Between two ballrooms on different levels, hard granite floors at the entrance, and arched windows lining the fireside lounges, the building offers a mix of open ballroom acoustics and smaller finished lounge spaces, so a DJ setting up in either ballroom is working in a room built to hold a dance floor and speaker coverage for several hundred guests without competing with soft outdoor surfaces.