Swaneset Bay Resort and Country Club Venue Review

Swaneset is a lovely venue tucked away in the countryside of Pitt meadows. The impressive stone clubhouse lends itself to a chateau-style ambiance that does have a bit of a fairy tale type feel. Perfect for weddings.

The venue is easily and hour and thirty minutes from downtown Vancouver but of course are closer if you are coming to form Burnaby, New Westminster, etc. The drive is actually quite nice on a sunny and in the summer, the greenery of the forest and fields is quite enjoyable.

As you drive into Swaneset, you will pass the parking area on the way to the huge clubhouse. The clubhouse is well covered for rain or shine so that you can let your family or guests off at the main entrance. It is also well lit and flat so there are no obstacles for your mobility challenged guests.

After dropping off passengers at the front entrance, vehicles must be parked in the parking area. The parking area is quite large and It is a few minutes walk from the entrance to the clubhouse. In sunny weather, the walk back to the clubhouse is pleasant but when it is raining, you will need your umbrella or raincoat.

Upon entering the venue, you will notice the lovely curved stairway. This is a popular spot to take a photo opportunity. The stairway leads up to the third floor of the grand ballroom. There is also an elevator to all floors.

The grand ballroom is quite large and this is where the majority of events are held. The first thing that stands out about this room are the long beautiful windows. They allow a lot of natural light into the room and the sunsets that stream through them are impressive. In the summer, the large windows can make the room heat up. So until the air conditioning kicks in, it can be rather warm in the room.

The room is very long with the bar area far away from the dance floor and where the DJ setup is. The guest tables can often stretch down to this area. Because the room is long and guests can be seated quite far away from the DJ station, I felt that you may want to consider having your DJ add extra speakers in that area so that guests may hear the cocktail and dinner music.

There is also an odd right-hand corner with a rather large room to the right of the DJ station. The speakers at the DJ station are face foreword and those sitting around the corner in the room will not hear the cocktail and dinner music. Here again, extra speakers may be needed.

Now, they do have a microphone for speeches and a decent in house system that covers the whole room. I think the house system would work for low-level music. One option may be to ask the DJ patch into the house system for the cocktail and dinner hour music.

Swaneset has a number of outdoor options for the wedding ceremony. However, the wedding ceremony is often performed in the same room as the reception during the winter months or rainy weather in the summer. The venue fits very well into the ceremony and often those large windows I referred to earlier are often highlighted. You have to schedule a time for the room the changed over after the ceremony. This can be a bit challenging as after the ceremony guests have ushered behind a divider in the bar area while the staff. reposition the table and chairs for the reception. The only difficulty is that the guests tend to wander out of their divided area to sit at the tables as they are being set up by the staff. This makes it very hard for the staff to work and can be quite chaotic. If doing the wedding ceremony in the main ballroom during inclement weather, it might be a good idea to find something guests can do in another room during the changeover.

The staff at the venue are friendly and their manager was very helpful. Even though they were very busy changing over the room the staff was kind enough to get me a glass of water and ensure that I had dinner later in the evening. They were also patient, kind and efficient with the guests as well.

Swaneset is a classy nicely sized venue for a large number of guests. The grounds are exceptional and the venue has lots of character for any type of event. Being that the venue is a bit more into the countryside, I have heard pricing is not bad. If this is the case, I feel that it makes Swaneset all the sweeter.

Check out my venue review of Northview Golf and Country Club