Wedding DJ at Valley Green Inn in Philadelphia, PA

The Space

Valley Green Inn has stood along the Wissahickon Creek since 1850, when Thomas Livezey rented a three-acre tract to Edward Rinker, who built what he first called Edward Rinker’s Temperance Tavern. The land itself traces back further still, first purchased from William Penn in 1685 and held by the Livezey family from 1791 onward. Today the inn is recognized as the last remaining example of the roadhouses and taverns that once served the carriage trade along the Wissahickon in the 19th century.

The inn sits inside Fairmount Park, and the building has been run for the last 25 years by Jack Ott, once a chef there himself, with Executive Chef Michael Jamison, who brings over two decades of culinary experience, now leading the kitchen. The Food Network has singled out brunch here as one of the best in the country, a reputation that comes up often with couples considering the inn for a wedding.

Capacity & Layout

Because Valley Green Inn is first a working restaurant, its layout for a wedding centers on a dedicated banquet area and a private room rather than a single purpose-built ballroom. The banquet area looks out over the Wissahickon Creek, and that view does real work for a couple planning a reception, since the backdrop is already set without needing draping or added decor to dress up the room.

Indoor dining rooms carry working fireplaces for a colder-weather wedding, while outdoor porch and patio seating opens up in summer along the creek. A couple choosing between an indoor banquet room and outdoor patio seating is really choosing between a fireside dinner and a creekside one, and the inn can host either depending on the season and the size of the gathering.

Amenities

A full bar covers beer, cocktails and wine, and catering for private events runs through the inn’s own catering manager, Amber Atkinson, rather than an outside vendor a couple would need to coordinate separately. The kitchen serves lunch, dinner and Sunday brunch as part of its regular restaurant operation, and that same kitchen handles the food for private events booked in the banquet space.

Wheelchair accessibility is confirmed throughout the building, and the mix of warm fireplaces in winter and welcoming porches in summer means the inn has a real answer for whatever season a couple is marrying in, rather than one indoor room that has to work year-round regardless of weather.

Location & Getting There

The inn sits inside Fairmount Park along the Wissahickon Creek, a setting that puts a Philadelphia wedding inside a wooded, creekside park rather than a downtown hotel or banquet hall. That location is part of what has made the inn a long-running favorite for both dining and events in the city.

Set along a creek inside a wooded park, the inn’s rooms mix hard-surfaced dining rooms with fireplaces against a softer, open-air patio and porch, so a DJ setup shifts depending on whether the reception is held indoors, where sound holds tighter within the dining room’s walls, or outdoors along the creek, where the open air spreads it further and calls for tighter speaker placement near the dance floor.