The Boathouse Plymouth Wedding Guide – A Waterfront Wedding Party on Commercial Wharf
A Different Kind of Wedding Venue
The Boathouse on Commercial Wharf in Plymouth is a slightly different wedding venue from most of the places I regularly work.
It is primarily a waterfront restaurant and bar rather than a purpose-built exclusive-use wedding venue. But the space is also available for private hire, including wedding celebrations, and having now DJed a wedding evening there I can see why it appeals to couples who want something more relaxed.
It sits right on Plymouth's historic waterfront, close to the Barbican and Mayflower Steps, and the restaurant itself has large glass areas looking out towards the water.
Inside, it feels contemporary and informal rather than traditionally wedding-like.
For the right couple, that is exactly the attraction.
Charlotte and Dan's Evening Celebration
My first wedding at The Boathouse was for Charlotte and Dan, and theirs was not a conventional wedding day.
They had actually married at a registry office earlier in the week and then hired The Boathouse for their Friday evening celebration.
There was no ceremony immediately beforehand, no three-course wedding breakfast and no full day of formalities leading into the evening.
Everybody simply arrived for a party.
That made it a really good example of how The Boathouse can work for couples who want to separate the legal part of getting married from the celebration itself.
It felt much closer to a brilliant private party by the water than a traditional wedding reception.
The Room and DJ Setup
Visually, the room has some lovely features for an evening party.
One of the things that immediately stood out to me was the black-and-white patterned floor. Once my lighting was running, it worked really well with the room and gave the whole setup a slightly different look from the barn and country-house venues I work in most weeks.
The space is fairly open, which means the dancefloor, tables and bar all feel part of the same celebration rather than being separated into different rooms.
That matters more than people often realise.
If the bar is somewhere completely different from the DJ and dancefloor, guests naturally divide themselves between spaces. At The Boathouse, the evening felt contained within one social area.
It suited Charlotte and Dan's relaxed party particularly well.
There was also one completely accidental lighting effect that I am unlikely to be able to offer as an official enhancement.
During setup, steam drifting out from the working kitchen passed through some of my dancefloor lighting and behaved remarkably like haze.
For a few moments my lighting looked fantastic 🙌
I probably cannot promise kitchen-generated atmospheric effects at every wedding, but it was a memorable start to the evening.
Starting an Evening Party From Scratch
The interesting thing about Charlotte and Dan's wedding was that everybody arrived relatively fresh.
At most evening receptions I work, guests have already spent an entire wedding day together. They have had drinks, eaten, talked, laughed through speeches and become comfortable with each other long before I start the evening party.
At an evening-only celebration, that process has to happen after everybody arrives.
The guests at The Boathouse were having their first drinks and catching up when I started playing.
That meant the party needed time.
Charlotte and Dan had a brilliant selection of 90s dance and other upbeat music planned, but early in the evening I could feel that the room was not ready for all of it yet.
Their taste was right.
The timing was not.
So I gradually built the dancefloor using more familiar 80s and 90s tracks before moving further into the dance music they really loved later in the evening.
By around 10pm, the room had completely changed.
People had relaxed, the dancefloor filled and those bigger dance tracks suddenly made perfect sense.
It was a great reminder that a personalised playlist is not the same thing as a fixed running order.
A First Dance Without Too Much Formality
Charlotte and Dan were not particularly interested in being the centre of attention.
That also suited this kind of venue.
We did still have a first dance, but kept the whole thing relaxed. After a very short speech from Dan's dad, I brought everybody together around the dancefloor and introduced Charlotte and Dan.
Their first dance track was upbeat, and once the song properly kicked in I invited everyone else to join them.
Within seconds, the formal moment had become part of the party.
That is often how I prefer first dances to feel for couples who do not particularly want a spotlight on them.
It does not have to become a performance.
Sometimes its real purpose is simply to bring everybody together and signal that the evening celebration is beginning.
Who Does The Boathouse Suit?
I think The Boathouse is particularly interesting for couples who do not want a traditional country-house or barn wedding.
It has a waterfront setting, a restaurant atmosphere and enough flexibility to work for a relaxed private celebration.
The venue currently advertises private events for both seated and standing guests, so it can accommodate considerably more than just an intimate dinner.
It could work particularly well for couples having a registry-office ceremony elsewhere, couples planning an evening-only celebration, or anyone who likes the idea of bringing friends and family together for good food, drinks and dancing without building the day around lots of traditional wedding formalities.
Charlotte and Dan's wedding demonstrated exactly that.
Think About the Timing of the Evening
One practical point from my own wedding there is to check the permitted entertainment times for your particular booking.
For Charlotte and Dan's celebration, the music finished at 11pm.
The guests had assumed the party would continue later, so once the dancefloor really came alive I was very conscious that we had a limited amount of time left to fit in the music Charlotte and Dan most wanted.
That did not stop us having a great finish, but it illustrates why knowing the venue timings in advance matters.
If dancing is particularly important to you, ask what time amplified music needs to finish and build the evening backwards from there.
An 11pm finish can work perfectly well.
It simply means you probably do not want the first dance happening at 10pm.
Weddings at The Boathouse
My first experience of The Boathouse was an evening-only celebration rather than a complete wedding day, so I would not pretend to have experienced every possible way of using the venue yet.
But I liked it.
The waterfront location gives it a completely different character from most of the Devon wedding venues I visit, the open layout kept the party together, and visually my setup worked really well in the room.
Most importantly, it suited Charlotte and Dan.
Their wedding celebration was informal, personal and deliberately uncomplicated.
They did not need a grand ballroom or a day full of traditions.
They needed somewhere their friends and family could come together, have a drink, hear good music and celebrate with them.
For that kind of wedding, The Boathouse makes a lot of sense.
https://www.theboathouseplymouth.co.uk/private-hire/
